Harry S.

Truman:
a Biography

Heesoo Kim
Family and Early Life
Family history and Birth

John Anderson Truman Martha Ellen Truman

(farmer & livestock dealer) (nee Young)

Harry S. Truman
(May 8, 1884 - Dec 26, 1972)

● Ancestry: Primarily English, some Scottish, German, and French

● Born in Lamar, Missouri
● Moved to various places in Missouri (Harrisonville, Belton, Grandview,
Independence) during his childhood
Family

Harry S. Truman Elizabeth Virginia Wallace

(May 8, 1884 - Dec 26, 1972) (Feb 13, 1885 - Oct 18, 1982)

Mary Margaret Truman

(Feb 17, 1924 - Jan 29, 2008)

● Married Bess Wallace from Independence, Missouri, in 1919, and lived in

Wallace House in Independence with Bess’ mother
● Only daughter, Mary Margaret, became a classical soprano singer
Early Adulthood
● In 1901, Truman briefly attended Spalding’s Commercial College for a year
where he studied bookkeeping, shorthand, and typing, but could not afford to
attend a college
○ Last president to have never obtained a college degree
● Took on a series of clerical jobs from 1902-1906 before returning to
Grandview farm
● Joined the army in 1917 to fight in the World War 1.
Military career (1905-1919)
● Joined Missouri Army National Guard in 1905
● Obtained the rank of corporal in Battery B, 2nd
Missouri Field Artillery Regiment by 1911
● Obtained captainship in 1918, and became the
commander of Battery D, 129th Field Artillery,
60th Artillery Brigade, 35th Division
● Honorably discharged as the rank of a major in
May 1919
● Continued to serve in the Reserve Officer Corps,
advancing to becoming a commander of a
regiment
Political Rise
Jackson County Civil Servantship (1922-1934)
● Elected as County Court judge of Jackson County to serve in an
administrative position, thanks to the Tom Pendergast’s Democratic machine
in Kansas City
● Lost re-election bid in 1924 in the Republican landslide election wave
spearheaded by the election of Calvin Coolidge to the office of presidency
● Elected and re-elected as the presiding judge in 1926 and 1930 with the
support of Pendergast, and coordinated various public works projects in the
Jackson County and the Kansas City
● Appointed the director of Missouri’s Federal Re-Employment program piloted
by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and cemented Truman’s support for the
New Deal and FDR’s policies
U.S. Senator (D-Missouri) (1934-1945)
● Truman was elected to senatorship only after securing Pendergast support
● Won in general election as part of the wave of New Deal Democrats being
elected in the throes of the Great Depression
● Was nicknamed “the Senator from Pendergast” because patronage decisions
were all made by Pendergast
○ Ironic considering how Truman opposed politicians being controlled by corporations but is
okay with working for a political machine
○ Truman struggled to get his calls returned from the White House because of his image as
Pendergast pawn
● During re-election bid in 1940, Truman won because of two bids splitting the
anti-Pendergast votes when Pendergast was imprisoned on tax-evasion
charges
Vice Presidency (1945)
● Put on the FDR’s ticket for the sitting president’s bid for the fourth term as a
‘Second Missouri Compromise’
○ Roosevelt and his advisors found the sitting vice president, Henry Wallace, to be too
left-leaning and supportive of laborers, and feared Wallace becoming the president should
Roosevelt die in office
● Truman was often set aside by Roosevelt, and was uninformed of major
decisions involving both domestic and international affairs
● Truman was ignorant of the top-secret Manhattan Project, and received
mostly negative publicity when he caught the attention of the media
○ E.g. Truman attended the funeral of the highly unpopular and disgraced Pendergast
Presidency (1945-1953)
● President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in officer from massive cerebral
hemorrhaging on April 12th, 1945, only 82 days after Truman began his term
as the Vice President
● Truman was not informed of the atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project until
April 25th
○ Truman was kept ignorant of policies and decisions, even ones as major as the Manhattan
Project, during his tenure as the Vice President for President Franklin D. Roosevelt
● Truman kept the group of advisors for FDR, but made clear that he would be
the one making decisions and the advisors were there to support him
Presidency (1945-1953) cont.
The Atomic Bomb (1945)
● U.S. conducted a successful Trinity Test of the first atomic bomb on July 16th,
1945
● Truman approved the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki on August 6th and August 9th, respectively
● For the rest of his life, Truman continued to defend his decision to drop the
nuclear bomb, stating that the world would have seen a lot more casualty had
the bombs not been dropped.
Presidency (1945-1953) cont.
Economic Instabilities and Strikes (1946)
● Difficult transition from wartime economy to a peacetime economy
● Unstable prices and economy due to demobilization and the costs of war
effort
● When the railroad workers organized a massive strike, Truman initially sought
to mobilize veterans against the unionists, and upon admonishments from his
advisors, sought to force the strikers into joining the military
● Truman, who is a Democrat, fought bitterly with the Republican-controlled
congress over the majority of the domestic policy issues such as tax-cut,
national health insurance, and labor policy
Presidency (1945-1953) cont.
Truman Doctrine (1947-1948)
● A doctrine put into action via the Marshall plan on containing the expansion of
the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union
● Truman declared in his speech on March 12th, 1947, “to support free peoples
who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside
pressures” by giving massive economic aids to rebuild war-torn countries in
Europe
○ This was in response to the expansion of the influence of the Soviet Union throughout the
Eastern Europe
Presidency (1945-1953) cont.
Creation of Intelligence Agencies
● In 1947, Truman signed the National Security Act, which restructured the
military and intelligence federal offices
○ Created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Council
○ In 1952, Truman further consolidated the cryptographic aspects of intelligence gathering into
the National Security Agency
● Truman soon found CIA to have too great of a purview and sought to
significantly curtail the scope of the agency
Presidency (1945-1953) cont.
Recognition of Israel (1948)
● Recognized Israel as a state just 11 minutes after the people declared
themselves a nation
● Supported zionism, the idea that the Jewish people are entitled to return and
establish an independent government in their ancient homeland, despite
oppositions in the Congress who feared angering their Arab allies
○ The region was heavily populated and culturally dominated by the Arabs
○ This is interesting, considering that Truman refused to invite Jewish people to his Wallace
home in which he lived his wife because of his wife’s antisemitism
Presidency (1945-1953) cont.
1948 Re-Election
● Despite low approval ratings near the end of his first term, Truman won the
presidency over both Thomas Dewey (Republican) and other Democratic
candidates in an upset victory
○ The Chicago Tribune even had an erroneous headline pre-printed proclaiming “Dewey
Defeats Truman”
● A large part of inaccurate polling data was due to the polling being done
primarily over the phone, and much of Truman’s populist base did not own a
phone
Presidency (1945-1953) cont.
Korean War
● Truman called the American military action in Korea as a ‘police action’ and
did not seek the approval of the Congress on the matter, assuming that the
majority of the members in Congress supported military action in Korea
● The Korean War became one of the bloodiest war in history, with some 2.5
million civilians killed or injured, and over 30,000 American soldiers killed, with
no change in the division of the Korean peninsula
● The bloody stalemate conflict was dubbed as “Mr. Truman’s War”
Presidency (1945-1953) cont.
Assassination Attempt (1950)
● Two Puerto Rican nationalists sought to assassinate President Truman
because of the colonization of the Puerto Rican islands by the United States
and the uncertain territory status of the islands
● As a result, Puerto Rico was allowed to hold a referendum on a new
constitution in 1952 to determine the relationship that the islands will continue
to have with the United States
Presidency (1945-1953) cont.
Civil Rights Reforms
● Proposed creating federal offices dedicated to ensuring that voting rights and
fair employment are indeed being practiced
● This was a result of the abuse and persecution that was faced by black
veterans after returning from fighting in the World War II
○ “My forebears were Confederates… but my very stomach turned over when I had learned that
Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of Army trucks in Mississippi
and beaten”
● Resulted in the Executive Order 9981 that require equal opportunity in the
armed forces, and lead to the formation of the Committee on Equality of
Treatment and Opportunity
Retirement and Death
Retirement
● Went back to live in Independence, Missouri to live with his wife and his
mother-in-law
● Refused offers to endorse corporations because Truman believed that
corporate financial ties diminishes the integrity of the office of presidency
● While his memoirs were successful, Truman did not get paid as much, and
lived in great financial difficulty
○ Truman’s post-presidency financial difficulty likely was crucial in the Congress passing the
Former Presidents Act which gives a significant yearly pension to each former president
● Continued to support Democratic candidates for office and remained involved
in politics in retirement
Death
● Admitted to hospital on Dec
5th, 1972, with lung
complications from pneumonia.
● Died on Dec 26 after coma
induced from multiple organ
failure
● Was buried in Independence at
the Harry S. Truman Library
and Museum with his wife,
Bess, who died in 1982. Image credit:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/TrumanFuneralWreath.jpg/220px-TrumanFuneral
Wreath.jpg
References
● McCullough, David. Truman 1992
● Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum
https://www.trumanlibrary.org/
● Harry S. Truman, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman
Thank You!