A Time for Leadership: Facing the Music
Truman Assumes the Presidency
By Elizabeth Shannon
Harry Truman and George C. Marshall
A Hard-Earned Tribute
On May 8, 1948, George C. Marshall paid a deeply moving tribute to President Harry S. Truman. It was a private birthday for the President and one of the rare occasions when Marshall had accepted an invitation to dine out in Washington. After the first two toasts, Marshall rose, pushed his chair back, leaned forward with his hands on the table and looked squarely at Truman.
“I wish to say that I do not believe, at least I cannot recall that there has been a President in our history who has more clearly demonstrated courageous decision (sic), and complete integrity in his decisions than the birthday guest of honor. I ask you all to drink to the health of the President and to the courage with which he has fought for the peace and good of all mankind.”
Truman flushed. He rose to respond but struggled to compose himself. For a few minutes he stood in silence with his arms half-outstretched, thinking of something to say. Finally he gestured toward Marshall and simply said: “He won the war.”
No one had prepared warm words of admiration for Senator Truman of Missouri at the 1944 Democratic National Convention, where he was reluctantly selected as the compromise choice for the party’s vice presidential nomination. On what grounds did Marshall, who paid no compliment lightly or insincerely, make his tribute to the “haberdasher from Missouri” who had been waiting in the wings while his predecessor led the nation and fought a global war?
Truman may have been underestimated, but he was not unprepared. He was ready to take up the tremendous responsibility of his new role.
The Terrible Responsibility
On April 12, 1945, at 3:35 p.m., Vice President Truman was presiding over the Senate. Shortly after adjourning at 5 p.m., he returned a call from President Roosevelt’s press secretary. “Please come right over,” the secretary said in a strained voice, “and come in through the main Pennsylvania Avenue entrance.”
When he arrived at the White House less than half an hour later, he was ushered into Eleanor Roosevelt’s study. The First Lady, her daughter, her son-in-law and her husband’s press secretary were in the room when Truman walked in. He knew immediately that “something unusual had taken place.” Eleanor put her arm gently around his shoulder. “Harry,” she said quietly, “the President is dead.”
When Truman finally found his voice, he asked her, “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Is there anything we can do for you?” she replied. “For you are the one in trouble now.”
Truman spared only a few minutes of silence before turning to face the “terrible responsibility” of his new role. He called a Cabinet meeting. As its members were gathered, he made other personal and official arrangements. He secured a government plane for Eleanor to go to Warm Springs at once. He broke the news to his wife and daughter, and sent a car for them to come immediately. He phoned Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone to swear him in as soon as possible.
The ceremony for acknowledging the successor of the nation’s leader during the greatest war in its history was small, simple and brief. Chief Justice Stone began administering the oath at 7:08 p.m. and finished at 7:09 p.m. “Less than two hours before,” Truman later reflected, “I had come to see the President of the United States, and now, having repeated that simply worded oath, I myself was President.”
Although Truman had long known that Roosevelt would not survive his fourth term, there was still a sense in which he simply found himself in a new position of leadership before he rose to meet the demands of that position. Nevertheless, he did rise to meet those demands, and within hours of becoming the President of the United States he became the leader that the United States needed at that time.
The Weight of Leadership
His leadership was immediately tested. After the Cabinet meeting adjourned, everyone filed out silently, except for Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who remained to speak with Truman on a “most urgent matter.” Stimson told him that there was an “immense project that was underway—a project looking to the development of a new explosive of almost unbelievable destructive power.” This was the first Truman had heard about the atomic bomb, and he would not be more fully briefed on it until later.
As he returned to his apartment that evening, Truman thought about how much catch-up he would be playing in the coming weeks. He knew Roosevelt had met many times with Prime Minister Churchill and Marshal Stalin, but he was “not familiar with any of these things.” At any rate, he decided the best he could do was “go home and get as much rest as possible and face the music.”
Truman’s first full day in office began with an official report from Secretary of War Edward Stettinius. He eagerly accepted Stettinius’s offer to continue the two-page summaries of major diplomatic events that the State Department had prepared daily for Roosevelt. These written reports, along with material from other departments and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came to Truman regularly. He studied these “indispensable” aids with great care, poring over them in detail night after night, never going to bed until he had “thoroughly digested the information they contained.”
After Stettinius left, Truman met for the first time with the nation’s military leaders, including Chief of Staff Marshall. “I knew and respected all these men,” Truman recalled, “and it was comforting to know that I would be advised by leaders of such ability and distinction.”
Later that day, as he was leaving the Senate office, Truman was greeted by a long line of page boys and reporters. “I don’t know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you,” he said, “but when they told me yesterday what happened, I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me.”
Rising to the Occasion
Although Roosevelt had led the nation through years of war, it was no small task for Truman to lead it through the final deluge of wartime events over the next few months. He also knew that even after the present conflict was over, the future remained unclear. His real concern at the time was divided between war and peace.
He had begun familiarizing himself with the most important and pressing problems of this complicated juncture, but he could see more difficulties ahead. “The next few months, I knew, could well be decisive in our effort to achieve an orderly world, reasonably secure in peace.”
Those next few months were indeed decisive. But at the end of them, Truman was actively playing a formative role in shaping the foreign policy that helped bring about a durable post-war peace. By the time Marshall raised his glass to him in 1948, it was clear that the man who had once been underestimated had risen to the occasion through one of the most perilous periods of history.
Truman had not been briefed for the presidency he assumed in 1945, but he had been preparing for it with the quiet qualities of leadership–integrity, resilience, a willingness to listen and the courage to decide–that enable one to face the music when suddenly called to center stage.