Looking Back
The Truman Books
Robert H. FerrelP
I t is no exaggeration t o say t h a t any major public figure,
notably a president of the United States, can count on appraisals
that run a gamut from fair to unfair, from works of scholarship to
works of malevolence. Such has been the case with books about
Harry S. Truman. He of course was aware that writers would not
always treat him well. He was a student-although not always a
thorough student-of history, and he enjoyed relating how nineteenth-century New England historians treated President Thomas
Jefferson for undertaking the Louisiana Purchase. The doubling of
American territory by a stroke of Jefferson’s pen, when he signed
the treaty with Napoleonic France, added a vast frontier region to
the country that was bound to overwhelm the Federalist party and,
by New England lights, wreck the very basis for the Union. The
New England historians, the twentieth-century president wrote,
took it out on Jefferson. As for himself, he believed the historians
would take it out on him because of his use of nuclear weapons on
Japan, the program of great measures (Truman Doctrine, Marshall
Plan, North Atlantic Treaty) that changed American foreign policy
from isolation to participation in world affairs, and the Korean
War. In domestic affairs they would take it out on him because he
sought to follow the New Deal of his predecessor with his own Fair
Deal. The historians would believe the calumnies of Republican
newspaper owners, which had no basis other t h a n their own
opinions.
Truman liked t o read biographies and admired the Indiana
historian Claude Bowers who a t long last gave Jefferson his due.
He liked Marquis James’s books about his historical hero, President Andrew Jackson. The historians made fun of James, but Truman was an historian, too, and he liked t o read about how the
“gin-ral”bested his enemies, all for the good of the republic.
Nonetheless he admitted to himself and anyone who would listen that he did not expect the historians immediately to be favor*Robert H. Ferrell was a member of the history department of Indiana University in Bloomington from 1953 until his retirement in 1988. There he taught the
history of American diplomacy and foreign policy. He is the author of books in his
teaching field and has published ten books on Harry S. Truman.
INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY, XCII (June, 1996).0 1996, Trustees of Indiana University
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able to his own administration. Time would be necessary for the
truth to come out.
Truman did take one measure to avoid the distortions of the
historians. This was to authorize a book by his friend Jonathan
Daniels, son of Josephus Daniels, who had been secretary of the
navy during t h e Woodrow Wilson administration. J o n a t h a n
Daniels had been a White House assistant during the Franklin D.
Roosevelt administration and for a few days in the Truman administration was presidential press secretary. But Truman thought the
younger Daniels was too much a scholar, not attuned to the ways of
newspapermen, even though he had a connection with his father’s
newspaper, the Raleigh News and Observer. The president replaced
him with a high school classmate, Charles G. Ross, a Pulitzer
prizewinner with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It may indeed have
been with some feeling of having been unfair to Daniels or a fear
that he had hurt Daniels’s feelings that he allowed Daniels to do an
authorized biography. In any event he trusted Daniels and hence
wrote letters of introduction for him to relatives and friends in
Independence and Kansas City. Moreover, Truman himself talked
at length with Daniels.
The resultant book (The Man of Independence, 1950) was a triumph of the authorized biographer’s art. It was always interesting,
if overblown in its writing. Daniels, one thinks, pumped up his
book‘s pages to get from there to here. He put in celebrations of the
American political past and of the Democratic party during that
past and discussions of the obvious. The book came close t o overwriting. Yet Daniels had gone out to Independence and Kansas City
and spoken with Truman’s contemporaries and even some of his
elders. Daniels set down their memories a decade before the
archivists of the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence began
to do oral histories. By that latter time, in the 1960s, many of Truman’s contemporaries and elders had passed on. Moreover, as
Daniels interviewed administration figures, including the president, he obtained a considerable amount of inside information. If
separated from the book’s celebrations of the Democracy and other
extraneous explanations, this information is valuable. The book,
therefore, is the only work from the first generation of Truman
books that amounts to anything and is worth reading with care.
Remarking on other first-generation books beyond t h a t of
Daniels is hardly worth the effort. A reporter who knew Truman
during the Senate years, William P. Helm of the Kansas City Journal-Post, had a few interesting things to say, including a story of
how in 1941 he persuaded Truman t o arrange a n investigating
committee for the war effort. That committee brought Truman to
national attention and made him available for the vice-presidential
nomination in 1944 (Harry Truman: A Political Biography, 1947).
A Republican department store owner in Independence, Henry A.
w
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Bundschu, published what he described as a biography of the president in 1949, this with the printing facilities of the Kansas City
Star (Harry S. Truman: The Missourian). Bundschu’s account
was hardly more t h a n a pamphlet, a few dozen pages. He had
known Truman and had good stories, and although a Republican he
was fairminded (Truman might have said) because he came from
Missouri, not New England.
One turns to what in retrospect seems to have been a second
wave of scholarship on Truman: two biographies that appeared in
the 1960s, and a considerable number of historical monographs on
the Truman administration.
The biographies were well-done, considering Truman’s political eclipse during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency and the
paucity of available sources on Truman. The Truman Library’s oral
history program was just getting started, and only the general files
of the Truman administration were open to researchers. The two
authors, Cabell Phillips of the New York Times and free-lance writer Alfred Steinberg, must have had little encouragement apart
from their own interest. But again, they did well, considering the
times and the lack of material. Phillips (The Truman Presidency,
1966) possessed thorough knowledge of the Truman presidency, for
he had reported for the Times throughout those years. He was an
incisive, well-organized writer. Steinberg (The Man from Missouri,
1962) also was a good writer, expert at putting together disparate
sources, whether interviews with people who had known Truman
o r memoirs and articles. Steinberg’s was no book to ignore, even
though Harry S. Truman, in annotating his copy, described its
author as a liar. As the old president thumbed the book he wrote his
impressions in the margins: “Never happened.” “Another big lie!”
“Another lie.” “Not a word of truth in the paragraph.” “Lie.” “Another lie.” “Wrong again.” Phillips meanwhile had irritated Truman by
asking to see his private papers. For that matter, so had Steinberg,
who one time accosted Truman when the latter was taking one of
his morning walks. To both of these friendly biographers the president said, in effect and possibly in so many words, that he would
open his papers when he was good and ready. The books had to be
written without the assistance of their subject’s papers or, contrary
to the case with Daniels, extended interviews and letters of introduction. With these limitations the books were helpful t o readers
and informative. They came as close as the authors could get to
their subject.
The monographs on Truman t h a t appeared in this second
wave were drawn from similar sources-the Truman Library’s general files together with whatever collections of private papers were
open, most of them also in the Truman Library. These books were
usually by academic scholars who used newspapers and the Con-
-
HARRYS. TRUMAN
U. S. Army, courtesy Harry S. Truman Library,
Independence, Missouri.
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gressional Record and articles in scholarly journals that themselves
suffered from the same limitations on sources.’
A third grouping of the Truman literature consisted of the
books t h a t came out in the 1970s. Here again there were two
biographies. The one by Margaret Truman was by and large a
worthwhile volume (Harry S. T r u m a n , 1972). Written with the
assistance of Thomas Fleming, it contained novelties, for the president’s daughter was as forthright as her father and had been in a
position to know a great deal. It is an affectionate book and defensive, and Margaret Truman made no effort to hide her partisanship. She showed her father as an enormously hardworking chief
executive, doing his best for the country over not merely the years
of the presidency, but the twenty years of county and Senate officeholding that preceded them.
The other biography that came out at this time was Plain
Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (1974) by the
newspaperman and writer Merle Miller. Based on tapings of the
president in 1960-1961 in preparation for a television series that
failed to attract network sponsorship, the book entranced reviewers
and readers and many scholars. The latter have quoted from its
pages down to the present time. Margaret Truman’s book had sold
well, into the hundreds of thousands of copies. Miller’s book sold
even better: in two years 500,000 hardcover copies and 1.25 million paperbacked copies. Margaret Truman, one should add, did not
like Miller’s book at all. To a Kansas City reporter she said that her
father undoubtedly said the things that were in the book but that
Miller, who had been a writer for the proposed television series, had
no right to use the tapes. She was not certain, she said, about who
owned the tapes and presumed that ownership was subject to common law copyright, the same as letters, by which the writer of a letter possesses copyright even though the recipient or someone else
holds the letter.
1 Ronald J. Caridi, The Korean War and American Politics (Philadelphia,
1968); Richard Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces: Fighting on Two
Fronts, 1939-1953 (Columbia, Mo., 1969); Richard 0. Davies, Housing Reform during the Truman Administration (Columbia, Mo., 1966); Robert A. Divine, Second
Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in America during World War II (New
York, 1967); Herbert Druks, Harry S. Truman and the Russians (New York, 1966);
Ronald T. Farrar, Reluctant Servant: The Story of Charles G. Ross (Columbia, Mo.,
1969); Robert H. Ferrell, George C. Marshall (New York, 1965); John Gimbel, The
American Occupation of Germany: Politics and the Military, 1945-1949 (Stanford,
Calif., 1968); Alan D. Harper, The Politics of Loyalty: The White House and the
Communist Issue, 1946-1952 (Westport, Conn., 1969); R. Alton Lee, Truman and
Taft-Hartley: A Question of Mandate (Lexington, Ky., 1966); Arthur F. McClure,
The T r u m a n Administration and the Problems of Postwar Labor, 1945-1948
(Rutherford, N.J., 1969); Allen J. Matusow, Farm Policies and Politics in the Truman Years (Cambridge, Mass., 1967); Donald H. Riddle, The Truman Committee:
A Study of Congressional Responsibility (New Brunswick, N.J., 1964); Irwin Ross,
The Loneliest Campaign: The Truman Victory of 1948 (New York, 1968); Richard
L. Walker, E. R. Stettinius, Jr., and George Curry, James F. Byrnes (The American
Secretaries of State and their Diplomacy, Vol. X I V ; New York, 1965).
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The Miller book deserves attention because so many copies
are in the hands of readers who accept it as containing the president’s very words. Only recently has it been possible t o check the
book out. Suffice it to say that although the book was published by
a reputable New York firm, Putnam, and has had a long life and is
still in print, it was a gross literary fraud. Miller took unpardonable
liberties with the president’s words on tape. Actually Miller had little to do with the tapings themselves. Two friends of the president,
the radio reporter William Hillman and a public relations man and
former presidential assistant, David Noyes, asked the questions
with Miller occasionally chiming in. Somehow the tapes came into
Miller’s possession, and he used them for all they were worth and a
good deal more. Years after bringing out his book, and after a
reported public row with Margaret Truman, he gave the tapes to
the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas. Austin was a
remote locality, a n d the self-designated oral biographer ensured
the tapes’ remoteness by closing them. He died in 1986, and in 1993
officials of the Johnson and Truman libraries realized t h a t the
tapes had not belonged to Miller in the first place and opened them.
The opening was heralded by a press release, and the present writer drove out from Bloomington to Independence for the occasion. No
one else turned up except a National Park Service researcher who
spent a half hour, found nothing about the Ethel and Nellie Noland
house at 216 North Delaware across the street from the Truman
house at 219 North Delaware, and went away. After listening to the
tapes and attempting to transcribe them with a primitive recorder
purchased at a local discount store, I gave up and ordered copies
and had them transcribed. Miller’s modus operandi thereupon
stood revealed. He changed Truman’s words in countless ways,
sometimes improving the literary effect. Adding or subtracting
words, he thoughtfully added his own opinions. He inserted his
favorite cuss words, damning Truman for a generation as a foulmouthed old man. He cutely claimed the president to have been a
drinker, of having imbibed during the taping sessions by stepping
out for (he presumed-he had no way of knowing) “small libations.”
He said he accompanied the president to a Howard Johnson restaurant near the Truman Library-a preposterous claim, for Truman
would have been overwhelmed with autograph seekers. There, in
the restaurant, Miller and Truman drank more libations. Worst of
all, Miller made up many pages in his book, inventing whole chapters. The material on President Eisenhower, which consumes much
of the book, is almost entirely invention. Notably the tapes say
nothing about the story that attracted readers the most of anything
in the book. This was the detailing of an alleged intervention by
General George C. Marshall (all this is in Truman’s words) against
Eisenhower, who during the war (according to Miller) desired a
divorce from his wife so he could marry his pretty driver and recep-
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tionist, Kay Summersby. It is possible that Miller obtained such
gossip from Truman’s military aide, Major General Harry H.
Vaughan, who after the book came out vouched for the story.
The Truman monographs of the 1970s, books that were various and sundry in their subjects, often reflected the passions of the
Vietnam War, which had come to a crisis in 1968 and then wound
down until the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975. The present
essay is no place to explore the extraordinary scholarly confusions
of the 1960s and 1970s coincident with Vietnam. Suffice it to say
that scholgrship tended t o focus on the Truman years because,
many scholars concluded, United States foreign policy had taken a
wrong turn in the late 1940s with the beginning of the Cold War.
The Cold War, many students believed, was as much the fault of
the United States, which meant the Truman administration, as of
the Soviet Union. Foreign policy in that administration was wrong
because i t was seeking confrontation. Domestic policy too was
wrong because the New Deal programs had been diverted by the
bogus proposals of the Fair Deal. Those proposals were nought but
a subterfuge to give the impression that the purposes of President
Roosevelt were being carried on by his successor. In reality the
money for social reform in the United States was diverted to armaments and other Cold War purposes.2
It was an extraordinary accusation about Truman foreign policy, and by extension domestic policy, and twenty years after this
attempted revisionism it all seems unfortunate. Historians should
not write from their imaginations.
But another reason the monographs of the 1970s were not
going to stand over the years was that the major (not in quantity,
but in quality) holdings of the Truman Library did not open until
the late 1970s and early 1980s. These were, first of all, the private
papers of the president, 339 Hollinger boxes five inches wide and
holding file folders full of letters and memos and other such things.
This treasure trove opened beginning in 1977 and was almost
entirely open by 1980. It was followed by a second trove, the most
2Gar Alperovitz, Cold War Essays (New York, 1970); William C. Berman, The
Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration (Columbus, Ohio, 1970); Barton J. Bernstein, ed., Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration (Chicago,
1970); Richard M. Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism:
Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and International Security, 1946-1948 (New York,
1972); Lloyd C. Gardner, Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy, 1941-1949 (Chicago, 1970); Thomas G. Paterson, Soviet-American Confrontation: Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore,
Md., 1973); Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the
Grand Alliance (New York, 1975);Athan G. Theoharis, Seeds of Repression: Harry S.
Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism (Chicago, 1971); Athan G. Theoharis, The
Yalta Myths:An Issue in U.S. Politics, 1945-1955 (Columbia, Mo., 1970); Richard J.
Walton, Henry Wallace, Harry Truman, and The Cold War (New York, 1976); Daniel
Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security
State (Boston, 1977).
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remarkable set of private papers in the history of the presidency:
1,268 letters from Truman to Bess Wallace and, after their marriage in 1919, Bess W. Truman. All but one were in the president’s
hand. They were written between 1910 and 1959. The letters were
found in the Truman house a few blocks from the library and were
opened in 1983, a year after B e d s death. They were everywhere in
the house-in boxes downstairs, in bureau drawers, under sofa
cushions. Those in the attic were saved amid confusions that would
make any historian shudder. The attic was open to animals and
birds, and a raccoon got in and discovered jars of jellies o r other
preserves, clawed open the lids, and enjoyed himself, after which he
feasted on the attic’s pigeons. All over the attic were clutches of
pigeon feathers and jam. But the letters were all saved and brought
down to the library, except for some dozens, maybe hundreds, that
Bess burned. Her daughter once described this in a book (Souvenir:
Margaret Truman’s Own Story, 1956). According to Margaret Truman, her father came into the living room where Bess was burning
letters in the fireplace. “But think of history!” said the president.
“I have,” was the response.
Another treasure of the library that became available at the
same time as the private papers and Dear Bess letters was the
diary of Truman’s assistant press secretary, Eben A. Ayers. The
diary set down in enormous detail-and in half a million words
-what went on in the executive offices each day and especially
what happened in the president’s office, which was a few feet from
Ayers’s office.
Beginning in the 1980s, because of the wonderful new material, a new group of books has appeared. At long last, a full generation after Truman’s presidency and two decades and more since
Truman’s death in 1972, the Truman literature is beginning to take
the measure of the man and his times. Robert J. Donovan in 1977
and 1982 published remarkable books on each of the Truman terms
(Conflict and Crisis and Tumultuous Years).Donald R. McCoy published a volume on the presidency (The Presidency of Harry Truman, 1984). Richard Lawrence Miller took Truman to the White
House in Truman: The Rise to Power (1986), based on careful
work in the library. William E. Pemberton, in Harry S. Truman:
Fair Dealer and Cold Warrior (19891, revived the contentions of the
1970s, using the new material. Monte M. Poen published the Truman “mad letters,” a marvelous collection of missives in which the
president customarily began on a cool note but then gradually lost
his temper, forcing him or his secretary, Rose A. Conway, to file the
result (Strictly Personal and Confidential, 1982). Poen published
another admirable collection on a variety of subjects (Letters Home,
1984). Andrew J. Dunar reexamined the Truman scandals in a
measured, fair way (The T r u m a n Scandals and the Politics of
s.
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Morality, 1984). Ken Hechler, former White House assistant,
brought out his authoritative Working with Truman (1982).
Three biographies recently have been published. Casting
about in 1982 for a subject that would hold his attention and that of
readers, David McCullough considered Pablo Picasso. When that
subject wore out more quickly than he thought possible, he turned
to Truman (1992). In time for the presidential campaign of 1992,
the book’s stories about its subject, its drawing of Truman as a son
of the Middle Border, and its appreciation of the American past at a
time when nostalgia was in short supply made it irresistible to book
buyers. The present writer published Harry S. Truman: A Life in
1994, a volume quite different from McCullough‘s in that it is not a
life and times and thereby is half as long. Reviewers have said it is
more critical of its subject. Alonzo L. Hamby in 1995 brought out
another life and times (Man of the People). It does not celebrate the
Middle Border, even though Hamby is a native of Humansville,
Missouri (population 1,084), one of those wonderful farm villages
with piquant names, such as Peculiar, Missouri. Hamby’s book
offers a psychological view of its subject. He presents him as an
overachiever who worked harder than other individuals because he
was unsure of himself.
In the midst of the biographies’ appearance occurred the confusion in Washington, D.C., over the proposed exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that delivered
the atomic bomb t o Hiroshima. The museum’s curators had prepared a text to accompany the exhibit that seemed to service histor i a n s a n d t o v e t e r a n s t o be too evenhanded i n a s s e s s i n g
responsibility for the war and to criticize use of the bomb. Revisions
were made, and they too did not please the dissenting service historians and veterans. Historians generally entered the fray, with perhaps a dozen books published in 1995, some justifying use of the
bomb, others criticizing. The criticism implicitly and sometimes
explicitly looked in the direction of the reputation of the president
of that time, Truman. On more than one occasion Truman himself
had justified what he had done. I n 1959 he told a n enormous
twelve-hundred-student “class” at Columbia University that the
bomb was just like an ordinary artillery weapon, that the Japanese
had deserved it, that he had lost no sleep over the decision, and that
if necessary he would make the same decision.
Readers of the present article will have their opinions of the
decision to use nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities, weapons
that killed between 120,000 and 150,000 men, women, and children, soldiers and civilians alike. My own opinion is t h a t the
wartime president did not so much make a decision about using the
bomb as confront a nearly impossible situation. He went along with
using the new weapon for historical (that is, emotional) reasonsthe Japanese bestialities in China that killed hundreds of thou-
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sands of people, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bataan death
march, and the inhuman treatment of prisoners throughout the
war. In addition the president faced an attack upon the Japanese
home islands that could have cost the casualties he spoke and wrote
about after the war, one quarter to one half million American
deaths. Moreover, as we now know, all Allied prisoners in Japanese
hands in 1945 were scheduled for death the moment any United
States soldier set foot on the home islands. The president faced, as
he put it, “an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other.”
But has the evaluation of Truman and his place in history now
come to rest? Here it is necessary to distinguish between the views
of the American public, which bought McCullough‘s book, and historians, who may not have bought it. The American public long ago
went over to Truman’s side, a process that began in the early 1970s
with the abject end of the Nixon administration. By that time the
busloads of tourists were filling the semi-circular road outside the
Truman Library, and inside the citizens were fighting for souvenirs. Time magazine described the scene as “Trumania.”
The three recent biographers agree with the public view. In
McCullough’s evaluation and my own and Hamby’s, no more sorting of Truman’s qualities needs to be done. In spite of my criticisms
of Truman’s public career, and Hamby’s sensitivity to Truman’s
personal insecurities, all of us place him high among holders of his
office. His foreign policy by and large has turned out to have been
right. Everything coming from the archives of the former Soviet
Union has backed Truman up, including the recent discovery that
Stalin was responsible for starting the Korean War.3 As for Truman’s domestic proposals, the country in the years after his presidency accepted all of them, save only his proposal for health
care-about which he may have been uncannily prescient. (For
what was the country coming to, Truman once asked himself, when
it was possible for a working man to pay as much as $25 a day for a
hospital bed?)
From this positive judgment the historians generally have
held back. They have not yet come around to Truman, certainly not
to Trumania. For them the new Truman books, the biographies and
the others using the new material, have not made much of a difference. Perhaps they think that David McCullough is only another
Claude Bowers or Marquis James. For myself and Hamby, they
may believe t h a t we have spent too much time in the Truman
Library and have been overwhelmed by Truman’s presence there.
3 Kathryn Weathersby, Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean
War, 1945-1950: New Evidence from Russian Archives (Cold War International
History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Working Paper
VIII, Washington, D.C., 1993); Kathryn Weathersby, “The Soviet Role in the Early
Phase of the Korean War: New Documentary Evidence,” Journal of AmericanEast Asian Relations, I1 (Winter, 1993), 425-58.
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After all, his grave is in the library courtyard, outside the windows
of the search room. Taken as a group the historians are not enthusiastic about Harry S. Truman and his
This is the case even
though the polls of historians and other experts in the ranking of
presidents have shown Truman eighth or ninth in what (because of
the frequency of recent four-year presidents) is becoming a large
group. In evaluating Truman the historians by and large find themselves uncertain. They need more time before they can come around
to the right point of view.
4Barton J. Bernstein, “Seizing the Contested Terrain of Early Nuclear History,” Diplomatic History, XVII (Winter, 1993), 35-72; Barton J. Bernstein, “The
Struggle over the Korean Armistice,” in Bruce Cumings, ed., Child of Conflict: The
Korean-American Relationship, 1943-1953 (Seattle, Wash., 19831, 261-307; Bruce
Cumings, The Origins ofthe Korean War (2 vols., Princeton, 1981-1990); Rosemary
Foot, The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1985); Rosemary Foot, A Substitute for Victory: The Politics of Peacemaking at the Korean Armistice Talks (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990); Fraser J. Harbutt, The
Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War (New York, 1986);
Frank Kofsky, Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign
to Deceive the Nation (New York, 1993); Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of
Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, Calif., 1991); Robert L.Messer, The End of Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Rooseuelt, Truman, and the Origins of the Cold War (Chapel Hill, 1982); Thomas G.
Paterson, On Every Front: The Making and Unmaking of the Cold War (revised
ed., New York, 1992); Leon V. Sigal, Fighting to the Finish: The Politics of War Termination in the United States and Japan, 1945 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988).