However, Truman conducted a vigorous whistle-stop campaign in which he traveled by train around the country, giving hundreds of speeches. The president and his running mate Alben Barkley , a U. Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond earned 39 electoral votes and 2. Harry Truman was sworn in for his second term in January ; his inauguration was the first to be nationally televised.
The president set forth an ambitious social reform agenda, known as the Fair Deal, which included national medical insurance, federal housing programs, a higher minimum wage, assistance for farmers, repeal of the Taft-Hartley labor act, increases in Social Security and civil rights reforms.
The president supported the creation in of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO , a military alliance of democratic nations, including the United States, Canada, France, the United Kingdom and eight other countries, and appointed Dwight Eisenhower as its first commander. Also that year, a revolution in China brought the Communists to power, and the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon. Additionally, during his second term Truman had to contend with unproven accusations made by U.
State Department, among other organizations, had been infiltrated by communist spies. Although he was eligible to run for another presidential term, Truman announced in March that he would not do so.
There, the former president penned his memoirs, met with visitors, continued his habit of brisk daily walks and raised funds for the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library , which opened in Independence in After hospitalization for lung congestion, heart irregularity, kidney blockages and digestive system failure, Truman died at age 88 on December 26, , in Kansas City, Missouri. He was buried in the courtyard of the Truman Library. His wife, who died at age 97 in , was buried beside him.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Ulysses Grant commanded the victorious Union army during the American Civil War and served as the 18th U.
During the Civil Truman, the 33rd president of the United States. An intensely private woman, Bess reluctantly agreed to attend political events with her husband throughout his career. Truman faced some of the most complex issues to ever face any world leader. Internationally these decisions included the decision to drop the atomic bomb to end World War II, the daunting task of re-building both Europe and Japan, the changing of American foreign policy.
Domestic issues proved equally challenging with issues of labor unrest, expansion of the GI bill for returning veterans, a proposal for national health care and the issuing of four civil rights executive orders made Truman not particularly popular during his terms in office.
Yet today, Truman is thought to be one of the best presidents in U. On December 26, , Harry S. Truman died in Kansas City, MO at the age of In the year , a C-Span Poll ranking of all U.
Presidents was conducted by 58 presidential historians and scholars. Truman ranked 5th behind Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Washington and Theodore Roosevelt. Have you ever heard of the famous one-man play about Harry Truman? But things were different in the s after Truman left office. On one occasion, Truman and his wife Bess decided they would take a drive across the country. Republicans and conservative Democrats attacked this strategy and the President mercilessly.
An immediate postwar economy characterized by high inflation and consumer shortages further eroded Truman's support and contributed to the Democrats losing control of Congress in the midterm elections.
Newly empowered Republicans and conservative Democrats stymied Truman's liberal proposals and began rolling back some New Deal gains, especially through the Taft-Hartley labor law moderately restricting union activity. Truman's political fortunes reached their low point in and , a nadir from which few observers believed the President could recover to win a second term.
Freed from shouldering primary responsibility for the nation's economy which began to stabilize and the nearly impossible burden of uniting the disparate Democratic party behind a progressive agenda, Truman let the Republicans try to govern. When they faltered or pushed conservative programs, Truman counterattacked with skill, fire, and wit. The President also took steps to energize his liberal Democratic base, especially blacks, unions, and urban dwellers, issuing executive orders that pushed forward the cause of African-American civil rights and vetoing unsuccessfully the Taft-Hartley bill.
Truman won the presidential nomination of a severely divided Democratic party in the summer of and faced New York's Republican governor Thomas Dewey in the general election.
Few expected him to win, but the President waged a vigorous campaign that excoriated Republicans in Congress as much as it attacked Dewey. Truman defeated Dewey in November , capping one of the most stunning political comebacks in American history.
Truman viewed his reelection as a mandate for a liberal agenda, which he presented under the name "The Fair Deal. He did win passage of some important liberal legislation that raised the minimum wage and expanded Social Security.
Moreover, the American economy began a period of sustained growth in the early s that lasted for nearly two decades. Increasingly, though, his administration was buffeted by charges of corruption and being "soft on communism. Some of the most virulent and irresponsible anti-communists, like Wisconsin's Republican senator Joseph McCarthy, lambasted the administration and the State Department, in particular.
Significant foreign policy challenges persisted into Truman's second term. The President committed the United States to the defense of South Korea in the summer of after that nation, an American ally, was invaded by its communist neighbor, North Korea. The American military launched a counterattack that pushed the North Koreans back to the Chinese border, whereupon the Chinese entered the war in the fall of The conflict settled into a bloody and grisly stalemate that would not be resolved until Truman left office in The Korean War globalized the Cold War and spurred a massive American military build-up that began the nuclear arms race in earnest.
Truman's popularity sank during his second term, due largely to accusations of corruption, charges that the administration was "soft on communism," and the stalemated Korean War. Unsurprisingly, Truman chose not to run in Eisenhower in the fall election. Truman's legacy has become clearer and more impressive in the years since he left office. Most scholars admit that the President faced enormous challenges domestically, internationally, and politically.
While he occasionally failed to measure accurately the nation's political tenor and committed some significant policy blunders, Truman achieved notable successes. His policy of communist containment started the Cold War, and he initiated U. Truman left office in and died in Truman was the first of three children born to John Anderson Truman, a farmer and mule trader, and his wife, Martha Ellen Truman. Truman grew up on the family farm in Independence, Missouri, and did not attend college.
He worked a variety of jobs after high school, first as a timekeeper for a railroad construction company, and then as a clerk and a bookkeeper at two separate banks in Kansas City. After five years, he returned to farming and joined the National Guard. When World War I erupted, Truman volunteered for duty. Though he was 33 years-old—two years older than the age limit for the draft—and eligible for exemption as a farmer, he helped organize his National Guard regiment, which was ultimately called into service in the th Field Artillery.
Truman was promoted to captain in France and assigned Battery D, which was known for being the most unruly battery in the regiment.
In spite of a generally shy and modest temperament, Truman captured the respect and admiration of his men and led them successfully through heavy fighting during the Meuse-Argonne campaign.
That same year, he made a foray into business when he and an associate, Eddie Jacobson, set up a hat shop in Kansas City. But with America experiencing an economic decline in the early s, the business failed in He refused to accept bankruptcy and insisted on paying back all the money he borrowed, which took more than 15 years. About this time, he was approached by Democratic boss Thomas Pendergast, whose nephew James served with Truman during the war.
Pendergast appointed Truman to a position as an overseer of highways, and after a year, chose him to run for one of three county-judge positions in Jackson County. He was elected judge, which was an administrative rather than a judicial position, but he was defeated when he ran for a second term. Truman ran again in and was elected as a presiding judge, a position he held until he ran for senator.
0コメント