Giangreco D. M. - Dear Harry...: Trumans mailroom, 1945-1953: the Truman administration through correspondence with everyday Americans

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DEAR HARRY
Copyright 1999 by D. M. Giangreco

This electronic format is published by Tantor eBooks,
a division of Tantor Media, Inc, and was produced in the year 2012, All rights reserved.

Work hard, keep your mouth shut, and answer your mail.

Advice given to Harry S. Truman by political boss Tom Pendergast when the newly elected senator left for Washington in 1933

CHAPTER 1
Truman, his staff, and everyday Americans

CHAPTER 2
Civil rights and 1948 presidential election

CHAPTER 3
World War II, Potsdam Conference, demobilization of the armed forces, cessation of hostilities, occupation of Germany, continued rationing, unemployed veterans, Easter Egg rolling at the White House, the Truman Balcony, the Marshall Plan, Sacred Cow, and death of Mother

CHAPTER 4
Aid to Greece and Turkey, Palestine and the birth of Israel, Churchill correspondence, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin airlift, 1948 presidential election

CHAPTER 5
Personal questions, suggestions, look-alikes, and nut mail

CHAPTER 6
The MacArthur firing

CHAPTER 7
The atom bomb

CHAPTER 8
Korea

CHAPTER 9
Joe McCarthy, Marine Corps propaganda machine, assassination attempt, and the Hume affair

CHAPTER 10
Threats, friends, atom bomb, and leaving office

1. Margaret Truman, Bess W. Truman (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1986), 230.

2. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1973), 209.

3. Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, vol. 1, Years of Decision (New York: Double-day and Co., 1955), 67.

4. Francis H. Heller, ed., The Truman White House: The Administration of the Presidency, 19451953 (Lawrence, KS: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1980), 9.

5. Truman, Memoirs, vol. 1, 228.

6. Ibid., 22728.

7. Charles Robbins, Last of His Kind: An Informal Portrait of Harry S. Truman (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1979), 11718.

8. Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), 5.

9. David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 623.

10. Samuel Elliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 945.

11. Ibid., 946.

12. Ibid., 948.

13. Ibid., 949.

14. Louis McHenry Howe, The Presidents Mail Bag, The American Magazine, June 1934, 22.

15. Heller, ed., The Truman White House, 153.

16. Ferrell, ed., Off the Record, 241.

17. Heller, ed., The Truman White House, 110.

18. J. B. West, Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies (New York: Warner Books, 1973), 71.

19. Ibid., 74.

20. Truman, Memoirs, vol. 1, 351.

21. Truman, Memoirs, vol. 2, Years of Trial and Hope (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1956), 361.

22. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman, 35556.

23. Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (New York: Berkley Publishing Corp., 1973, 1974), 52.

24. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman, 351.

25. Ferrell, ed., Off the Record, 21415.

26. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman, 331.

27. McCullough, Truman, 858.

28. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman, 451.

29. Howe, The Presidents Mail Bag, 23.

30. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman, 450.

31. Heller, ed., The Truman White House, 45.

32. Ibid., 15859.

33. Ibid., 65.

1. Heller, ed., The Truman White House, 55.

2. Ibid., 63.

3. Ibid., 82.

4. Margaret Truman, Bess W. Truman, 278.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., 279.

7. Ferrell, ed., Off the Record, 70.

8. Heller, ed., The Truman White House, 5253.

9. Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, vol. 1, 48485.

10. Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, vol. 2, 180.

11. Alfred Steinberg, The Man from Missouri: The Life and Times of Harry S. Truman (New York: G. P. Putnams Sons), 315.

12. Truman, Memoirs, vol. 2, 184.

13. West, Upstairs at the White House, 70.

14. Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 19101959 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), 33.

15. Jonathan Daniels, The Man of Independence (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1950), 121.

16. Miller, Plain Speaking, 123.

17. Harry Vaughan: Oral History, Harry S. Truman Library (HSTL).

18. Daniels, The Man of Independence, 12627.

19. Edgar Hinde: Oral History, HSTL.

20. Miller, Plain Speaking, 128.

21. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman, 68.

22. Miller, Plain Speaking, 28.

23. Ibid.

24. Truman, Memoirs, vol. 2, 182.

25. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman, 12729; text of speech from HSTL.

26. Ibid., 15556.

27. Heller, ed., The Truman White House, 77.

28. Mary Jane Truman, from an interview conducted by Jonathan Daniels in preparation of The Man of Independence, HSTL.

29. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman, 392.

30. Miller, Plain Speaking, 259.

31. Ibid., 41920.

32. Ibid., 259.

33. Truman, Memoirs, vol. 2, 183.

34. McCullough, Truman, 592.

35. Margaret Truman, Bess W. Truman, 305.

36. Truman, Memoirs, vol. 2, 183.

37. Heller, ed., The Truman White House, 88.

38. Miller, Plain Speaking, 38.

1. Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember, memoirs, vol. 2, (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1949), 95.

2. McCullough, Truman, 594.

3. Margaret Truman, Bess W. Truman, 314.

4. McCullough, Truman, 594.

5. Margaret Truman, Bess W. Truman, 314.

6. Miller, Plain Speaking, 136.

7. Margaret Truman, Bess W. Truman, 315.

1. Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History, 19291969 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1973), 240.

2. Charles E. Bohlen, The Transformation of American Foreign Policy (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1969), 86.

3. Steinberg, The Man from Missouri, 308.

4. Ibid., 303.

5. Ferrell, ed., Off the Record, 109.

6. Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Truman in the White House: The Diary of Eben A. Ayers (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 266.

1. Jack Wilson, What Kind of Pianist Is Truman? Look.

2. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1947 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1963), 330.