Retroactive continuity (often shortened to retcon) is an oxymoron that refers to the alteration of previously established facts in a literary work. Retcons may be carried out for a variety of reasons, such as to accommodate sequels or further derivative works in the same series, to reintroduce popular characters, to resolve chronological issues, to reboot a familiar series for modern audiences, or to simplify an excessively complex continuity structure.

Retcons are common in pulp fiction, especially comic books published by long-established houses such as DC, Marvel and leading manga publishers. The long history of popular titles and the plurality of writers who contribute stories can often create situations that demand clarification or revision of exposition. Retcons appear as well in soap operas, serial drama, movie sequels, professional wrestling, video games, radio series, and other kinds of serial fiction. Retcons have been criticized as "cheating" on the part of the author, seen as an effort to purge "unpopular" elements from the storyline and force literary fads upon the audience, thus hurting suspension of disbelief.

Origins of the term

The first published use of the phrase "retroactive continuity" is found in Elgin Frank Tupper's 1974 book The theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg.

Pannenberg's conception of retroactive continuity ultimately means that history flows fundamentally from the future into the past, that the future is not basically a product of the past.

The first known printed use of "retroactive continuity" as referring to the altering of history within a fictional work is in All-Star Squadron #18 (cover-dated February 1983) from DC Comics. The series was set on DC's Earth-Two, an alternative universe in which Golden-Age comic characters proceed and age subsequent to their first appearances in real time. Thus by the early 1980s Superman was in his 60s and the Batman had died and been succeeded by his daughter, The Huntress, whereas the Superman and Batman of Earth-One, DC's primary universe, are perpetually young to early middle-age adults. All-Star Squadron in particular, was set during World War II on Earth-Two, so it was in the past of an alternative universe, thus all its events had repercussions on the contemporary continuity of the DC multiverse. Each issue literally changed the history of the fictional world in which it was set. In the letters column, a reader remarked that the comic "must make you [the creators] feel at times as if you're painting yourself into a corner," and "Your matching of Golden-Age comics history with new plotlines has been an artistic (and I hope financial!) success."

Writer Roy Thomas responded, "we like to think that an enthusiastic ALL-STAR booster at one of Adam Malin's Creation Conventions in San Diego came up with the best name for it a few months back: 'Retroactive Continuity'. Has kind of a ring to it, don't you think?" The term, possibly in limited similar use before All-Star Squadron #18, then took firm root in the consciousness of fans of American superhero comics.

"Retroactive continuity" was shortened to "retcon", reportedly by Damian Cugley in 1988 on USENET. Hard evidence of Cugley's abbreviation has yet to surface, though in a USENET posting on August 18, 1990, Cugley posted a reply in which he identified himself as "The originator of the word 'retcon'." Cugley used the newly-shortened word to describe a development in the comic book Saga of the Swamp Thing, which reinterprets the events of the title character's origin by revealing facts that, up to that point, are not part of the narrative and were not intended by earlier writers. In this case, the revelation is that the titular character's memories are false and he is not who he thinks he is. Alan Moore's retcons often involve false memories, for example Marvelman (aka Miracleman in America), and .

Types

Although there is considerable ambiguity and overlap between different kinds of retcon, there are some distinctions that fans have made between them, depending on whether the retcon in question adds to, alters, or removes material from the narrative's continuity. These distinctions often evoke different reactions from fans of the material.

Addition

Some retcons do not directly contradict previously established facts, but "fill in" missing background details, usually to support current plot points. This was the sense in which Thomas used "retroactive continuity", as a purely additive process that did not "undo" any previous work, a common theme in his work on All-Star Squadron. Kurt Busiek took a similar approach with Untold Tales of Spider-Man, a series which told stories that specifically fit between issues of the original The Amazing Spider-Man series, sometimes explaining discontinuities between those earlier stories. Another series with a similar structure was .

Related to this is the concept of shadow history or secret history, in which the events of a story occur within the bounds of already-established events (especially real-world historical events), revealing a different interpretation of (or motivation for) the events. Some of Tim Powers novels are examples of this, such as Last Call, which suggests that Bugsy Siegel's actions were due to his being a modern-day Fisher King.

Alan Moore's additional information about the Swamp Thing's origins did not contradict or change any of the events depicted in the character's previous appearances, but changed the reader's interpretation of them. Such additions and reinterpretations are very common in Doctor Who,

J. R. R. Tolkien in The Hobbit described the circumstances in which Bilbo Baggins won a magic ring from Gollum. However, by the time he wrote the sequel, The Lord of the Rings, his concept of the ring's nature had changed, at odds with the previous depiction. To explain this discrepancy, Tolkien retold this incident in the new work, explaining the original version as a lie inspired by the malevolent influence of the ring. However, later editions of The Hobbit incorporated the revised version of the story.

In many of his detective novels, Rex Stout implies that his character Nero Wolfe was born in Montenegro, and gives some details of his early life in the Balkans prior to and during World War I. However, in Over My Dead Body (1939), Wolfe tells an FBI agent that he was born in the United States. Stout revealed the reason for the change in a letter obtained by his authorized biographer, John McAleer: "In the original draft of Over My Dead Body Nero was a Montenegrin by birth, and it all fitted previous hints as to his background; but violent protests from The American Magazine, supported by Farrar & Rinehart, caused his cradle to be transported five thousand miles."

Fans may invent unofficial explanations for inconsistencies, the challenge itself becoming a source of entertainment. Sometimes these fan-made explanations become so popular and widespread that they slip into accepted canon, and the original creators of the characters accept them. For example, in the film , the character Boba Fett suffers a horrible death. However, the character was popular, so some fans held that he had somehow escaped "off-screen", and later books, graphic novels, and even an official action figure accepted this conjecture and depicted Boba Fett as having escaped the ordeal. In the commentary for the Special Edition Release of the film, George Lucas stated that had he known of the character's popularity, he would have made the death scene more impressive. Lucas left it ambiguous if the new interpretation was correct. However, in Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, which takes place after Episode 6, the player must fight Boba Fett in Ord Mantel. (One reason Fett might have survived is he was drawn into the Sarlaac with all his weapons, unlike Jabba's other victims. It is not inconceivable he was able to use them to escape, killing the creature instead.)

It is commonplace for fictional characters appearing over a long period of time to remain the same age, or to age out of sync with real time. This concept, called a floating timeline, may be interpreted as an ongoing implicit retcon of their birthdate. When historical events are involved in their biography, overt retcons may be used to accommodate this; a character who served in the army during World War II might have his service record retconned to place him in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, etc. A famous example of this type of retcon is the television show The Simpsons and Marvel Comics' characters Nick Fury and The Punisher. The James Bond movie series is another well-known example of this technique.

While retconning is usually done without comment by the creators, DC Comics has on rare occasions promoted special events dedicated to revising the history of the DC Comics universe. The most important and well known such event was the mini-series Crisis on Infinite Earths; this allowed for wholesale revisions of their entire multiverse of characters. The storyline of this mini-series involved an alternative version of Lex Luthor (called Alexander Luthor) surviving the destruction of his entire universe by a malign entity known as the Anti-Monitor. Alexander would then go on to lose his sanity along with Superboy-Prime after the small group of survivors of the first Crisis of which they were a part had been trapped in a pocket universe for an unspecified amount of time. (See DC Comics' Infinite Crisis) The repercusions of the second Crisis led into the events of 52. The wave of retcons and hero killings and resurrections didn't stop there or indeed ever. After the events of 52, DC was on the road to one of the largest single retcons in their history. (See Countdown and Final Crisis)

A storyline in Spider-Man, named , culminated in the magical revision of history, eliminating the marriage between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson, and subsequent developments in the character's history over the previous twenty years. It has been argued that these were not true retcons, however, because the cause of the changes to their universe actually appeared within the story, similar to stories in which a time traveler goes to the past and changes history from how he remembered it.

In live-action television series, real-world developments may prompt alteration-type retcons. For example, in , limits in budget and technology resulted in the appearance of Klingons as metallic-skinned people with vaguely central Asian features. When the franchise was later revived in films and new series enjoying larger budgets and improved makeup techniques, the appearance of Klingons was changed drastically. Skin looked more natural and spinal bones were brought up into the foreheads for a decidedly more alien appearance. The new look was explained by the producers to be how Klingons had always appeared, but that they could not be portrayed accurately before. The difference was marked upon in dialog between characters in "Trials and Tribble-ations", an episode of when modern-era characters travel back in time to the days of Kirk and Spock (and via then-brand new CGI techniques, appear within the TOS episode "The Trouble With Tribbles", frequently coming into contact with the Enterprise crew). When (modern) Klingon Worf and his crewmates see an original-series Klingon, his crewmates ask about the stunning difference in appearance; Worf says tersely that the matter is something Klingons "do not discuss with outsiders". This retcon itself was later retconned, in , via a storyline in which it is revealed that the original, quasi-human appearance of the Klingons is due to a genetic mutation caused by an engineered virus - ironically, "genetic engineering" (Chief O'Brien) and "viral mutation" (Dr. Bashir) had been the guesses Worf refused to confirm or deny.

Subtraction

Sometimes retconned alterations are so drastic as to render prior stories untenable. Many of the retcons introduced in Crisis on Infinite Earths and DC's later Zero Hour were specifically intended to wipe the slate clean, and permit an entirely new history to be written for the characters. This is commonly referred to as a reboot. This is often very unpopular, upsetting fans of the material that has been removed from continuity.

Unpopular or embarrassing stories are sometimes later ignored by publishers, never referred to again, and effectively erased from a series' continuity. They may publish stories that contradict the previous story or explicitly establish that it "never happened" – for example by claiming that events in a previous installation were "just a dream", like one season of Dallas, which became Pam's dream so that her husband Bobby could return from the dead. An unpopular retcon may even be re-retconned away, as happened with John Byrne's .

An example of subtraction can be found in Disney's The Lion King series. After the success of the first movie, Disney released a group of books titled The Lion King: Six New Adventures in which Simba is said to have a son named Kopa. It is also mentioned in the storybook version of the film that he has a son. However, in the film sequel , Simba only has a daughter named Kiara. Kopa is non-existent and no mention is made of him. Kiara also has a different coloring and more feminine features than the cub shown at the end of the first movie.

This concept was parodied in She-Hulk (vol. 2) #3, in which the title character is threatened with erasure from continuity via a device that does such a thing. Eventually, she is pardoned, but not before two characters never seen before or since, Knight Man and Dr. Rocket, are erased from continuity, leaving those who didn't see it to respond, "Who?"

Related

Retroactive continuity is similar to, but not the same as, plot inconsistencies introduced accidentally or through lack of concern for continuity; retconning is done deliberately. For example, the ongoing continuity contradictions on episodic TV series such as The Simpsons (in which the timeline of the family's history must be continually shifted forward to explain them not getting any older. For instance, when the series started, Bart would have to have been born in about 1980, but that would make him 30 years old as of 2010) reflects intentionally lost continuity, not genuine retcons. However, in series with generally tight continuity, retcons are sometimes created after the fact to explain continuity errors.

Retconning is also generally distinct from replacing the actor who plays a part in an ongoing series, which is more commonly an example of loose continuity rather than retroactively changing past continuity. The different appearance of the character is either ignored, as was done with the character of Darrin Stephens on the television show Bewitched, or explained within the series, such as with "regeneration" in Doctor Who, or the Oracle in .

It also differs from direct revision. For example, when George Lucas re-edited the original Star Wars trilogy, he made changes directly to the source material, rather than introducing new source material that contradicted the contents of previous material.

The "clean slate" reinterpretation of characters — as in movie and television adaptations of books, or the reintroduction of many superheroes in the Silver Age of Comics — is similar to a reboot retcon, except that the previous versions are not explicitly or implicitly eliminated in the process. These are merely alternative or parallel reinterpretations, such as the character re-interpretations of the DC animated universe or the Ultimate Marvel line of comics.

Literature involving retconning

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off his most-beloved character Sherlock Holmes by plunging him to his death over the Reichenbach Falls with his arch nemesis Professor Moriarty, the public's demand for Holmes was so great that Doyle was compelled to bring him back to life in a subsequent story, where he details that Holmes had merely faked his death.

In Stephen King's novel Misery the protagonist, Paul Sheldon, is forced to write a sequel to his book Misery's Child, in which the main character, Misery Chastain, dies. He at first attempts to retcon the events in that book, but his captor, Annie Wilkes, regards this as cheating and makes him create a sequel that doesn't actively deny what the reader already knows. The second attempt to bring Misery Chastain back to life (which Annie Wilkes likes) is almost an example of a comic book death.

Another example of retcon used in literature is that found in Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series. This technique is used several times throughout the series, the most notable found in Scorpia, where the reader is led to believe the main protagonist was killed by a sniper bullet to the heart. It is later revealed in Ark Angel that this is not the case, and that the bullet missed his heart by a matter of centimeters.

Though the term "retcon" did not yet exist when George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, the totalitarian regime depicted in that book is involved in a constant, large-scale retconning of past records. For example, when it is suddenly announced that "Oceania was not after all in war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia and Eurasia was an ally" (Part Two, Ch. 9), there is an immediate intensive effort to change "all reports and records, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound-tracks and photographs" and make them all record a war with Eastasia rather than one with Eurasia. "Often it was enough to merely substitute one name for another, but any detailed report of events demanded care and imagination. Even the geographical knowledge needed in transferring the war from one part of the world to another was considerable." See historical revisionism (negationism).

References in popular culture

The revived series of British science fiction television program Doctor Who, and its television spin-offs, heavily and playfully uses retroactive continuity plot devices. For example, in Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood, created by Russell T Davies, a drug used to erase the memory of characters is called "retcon"; the use of the drug is often referred to by characters as "retconning". The nod to retroactive continuity is a joke meant to be shared between the writers and the viewers as a way of pointing out that anything done throughout the course of the series can easily be undone with a simple plot device; it also points to parent show Doctor Whos frequent use of the device in its several-decade run. For example, Davies introduced the Time War in the backstory to Doctor Whos 2005 revival to account for discrepancies between the classic series and the revamp. When Steven Moffat took over in 2010, he introduced cracks in the universe which erase events and individuals from history; using this device, he 'undid' the events of "Journey's End" and "The Next Doctor" so that in the series' narrative, the people of Earth would be (once again) unaware of alien life. Moffat's fifth series finale provided a similar device when the Doctor "rebooted" the universe. In answer to a fan's question, Moffat tweeted: "The whole universe came exactly as it was. Except for any continuity errors I need to explain away." And in the sixth series, Moffat introduces new aliens the Silence, who erase your memory of them the moment you look away. Creative use of the device is mined for new kinds of television suspense. In the episode "Day of the Moon", characters were shown to have had dozens of (unseen) encounters with the creatures in the space of a few seconds in viewer's time. Commenting on this device, writer MaryAnn Johanson writes, "That could be happening throughout this story... indeed, through the entire history of Doctor Who. Moffat has just created a pretty much unassailable narratively sound reason for inserting retcons anywhere throughout the half-century history of the show."

The Daleks are another example of retconning in the Doctor Who series. Several times throughout the history of the show the Daleks have become extinct only to be 'reborn' at a later time due to their huge fan base and iconic placement as the Doctor's greatest foes.

In Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, the Hobgoblin of the year 2211 carries a weapon known as a 'Retcon Bomb'; upon impact, it erases its target and all memories of the target from existence, though not erasing the consequences of their existence (which is how the cracks in the skin of the universe work as well). This weapon has not been used since, because its inventor fell victim to one.

In Champions Online, a MMORPG for the PC, a character may use a "retcon" item to reset the statistics and powers of their superhero character.

One will also find frequent use of the term retcon in Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the three shows spawned by it The Film Crew, Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax, all shows which mock films (usually incredibly bad ones).

A famous example of self-aware ret-conning is in the 5th season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when the character Dawn Summers is suddenly inserted into the show and all characters act as though she has always been there. This is an example of dramatic irony, as we the audience realize that Dawn has only recently joined the show whereas the characters come to this realization gradually (explaining it as a magical manipulation of history).

The term retcon is used several times in the 2010 novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by American writer Charles Yu.

See also

Back-story

Canon (fiction)

Continuity (fiction)

Floating timeline

Jumping the shark

List of retcons

Plot hole

Prequel

Reboot (fiction)

Retcon (Torchwood)

Retronym

Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome

Spin-off (media)

Footnotes

External links

Retconning: Just Another Day Like All The Others at websnark.com An essay on the advantages and disadvantages of the various types of retcons.

Category:Continuity (fiction) Category:Narrative techniques

Coordinates	52°13′56″N6°35′12″N
Caption	Harry Truman in 1945.
Alt	A middle-aged Caucasian male wearing a dark business suit and wireframe glasses is depicted smilingly pensively at the camera in a black-and-white photo.
Order	33rd President of the United States
Term start	April 12, 1945
Term end	January 20, 1953
Vicepresident	None (1945–1949)Alben Barkley (1949–1953)
Predecessor	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Successor	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Birth date	May 08, 1884
Birth place	Lamar, Missouri
Death date	December 26, 1972
Death place	Kansas City, Missouri
Order2	34th Vice President of the United States
Term start2	January 20, 1945
Term end2	April 12, 1945
President2	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Predecessor2	Henry A. Wallace
Successor2	Alben W. Barkley
Order3	United States Senatorfrom Missouri
Term start3	January 3, 1935
Term end3	January 17, 1945
Predecessor3	Roscoe C. Patterson
Successor3	Frank P. Briggs
Party	Democratic
Spouse	Bess Wallace Truman
Children	Mary Margaret Truman
Occupation	Small businessman (haberdasher), farmer
Religion	Southern Baptist
Signature	Harry S Truman Signature.svg
Signature alt	Cursive signature in ink
Rank	Major (World War I)Colonel (United States Army Reserve)
Branch	Missouri National GuardUnited States ArmyUnited States Army Reserve (1920–1953)
Serviceyears	1905–19111917–1919
Commands	Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, 60th Brigade, 35th Infantry Division
Battles	World War I

Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 December 26, 1972) was the 33rd President of the United States (1945–1953). As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice-president and the 34th Vice President of the United States (1945), he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his historic fourth term.

During World War I, Truman served in combat in France as an artillery officer in his National Guard unit. After the war he became part of the Democratic Party political machine of Tom Pendergast in Kansas City. He was elected a county official and in 1934 United States senator. After he gained national prominence as head of the wartime Truman Committee, Truman replaced vice president Henry A. Wallace as Roosevelt's running mate in 1944.

Truman faced many challenges in domestic affairs. The disorderly postwar reconversion of the economy of the United States was marked by severe shortages, numerous strikes, and the passage of the Taft–Hartley Act over his veto. He confounded all predictions to win election in 1948, helped by his famous Whistle Stop Tour of rural America. After his election he was able to pass only one of the proposals in his Fair Deal program. He used executive orders to end racial discrimination in the armed forces and created loyalty checks that dismissed thousands of communist supporters from office. Truman's presidency was also eventful in foreign affairs, with the defeat of Nazi Germany and his decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan, the founding of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, the Truman Doctrine to contain communism, the beginning of the Cold War, the Berlin Airlift, the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Chinese Civil War, and the Korean War. Corruption in Truman's administration, which was linked to certain members in the cabinet and senior White House staff, was a central issue in the 1952 presidential campaign and helped cause Adlai Stevenson, Truman's successor for the Democratic nomination for president, to lose to Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential election.

Truman, in sharp contrast to the imperious Roosevelt who kept personal control of all major decisions, was a folksy, unassuming president who relied on his cabinet. He popularized such phrases as "The buck stops here" and "If you can't stand the heat, you better get out of the kitchen." His approval ratings in the polls started out very high, then steadily sank until he was one of the most unpopular men to leave the White House. Popular and scholarly assessments of his presidency eventually became more positive after his retirement from politics. Truman's legendary upset victory in 1948 over Thomas E. Dewey is routinely invoked by underdog presidential candidates.

Personal life

Harry S. Truman was born on May 8, 1884 in Lamar, Missouri, the oldest child of John Anderson Truman (1851–1914) and Martha Ellen Young Truman (1852–1947). His parents chose the name Harry after his mother's brother, Harrison Young (1846–1916), Harry's uncle. His parents chose "S" as his "middle name" in an attempt to please both of Harry's grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young. The initial did not actually stand for anything, a common practice among the Scots-Irish. A brother, John Vivian (1886–1965), soon followed, along with sister Mary Jane Truman (1889–1978).

In his autobiography, Truman stated, "I was named for ... Harrison Young. I was given the diminutive Harry and, so that I could have two initials in my given name, the letter S was added. My Grandfather Truman's name was Anderson Shippe [sometimes also spelled 'Shipp'] Truman and my Grandfather Young's name was Solomon Young, so I received the S for both of them." He once joked that the S was a name, not an initial, and it should not have a period, but official documents and his presidential library all use a period.

John Truman was a farmer and livestock dealer. The family lived in Lamar until Harry was ten months old. They then moved to a farm near Harrisonville, then to Belton, and in 1887 to his grandparents' 600 acre (240 ha) farm in Grandview. When Truman was six, his parents moved the family to Independence, so he could attend the Presbyterian Church Sunday School. Truman did not attend a traditional school until he was eight.

As a young boy, Truman had three main interests: music, reading, and history, all encouraged by his mother, to whom he was very close. As president he solicited political as well as personal advice from her. He got up at five every morning to practice the piano, which he studied twice a week until he was fifteen. Truman was a page at the 1900 Democratic National Convention at Convention Hall in Kansas City.

After graduating from Independence High School (now William Chrisman High School) in 1901, Truman worked as a timekeeper on the Santa Fe Railroad, sleeping in "hobo camps" near the rail lines; he then worked at a series of clerical jobs. He worked briefly in the mail room of the Kansas City Star. Truman decided not to join the International Typographical Union. He returned to the Grandview farm in 1906 where he remained until entering the army in 1917. During this period he courted Bess Wallace and proposed to her in 1911. She turned him down, and Truman said he wanted to make more money than a farmer before he proposed again.

World War I

Truman enlisted in the Missouri Army National Guard in 1905, and served until 1911. At his physical in 1905, his eyesight had been an unacceptable 20/50 in the right eye and 20/40 in the left. Reportedly, he passed by secretly memorizing the eye chart.

With the onset of American participation in World War I, Truman rejoined the Guard. Before going to France, he was sent to Camp Doniphan, near Lawton, Oklahoma for training. He ran the camp canteen with Edward Jacobson, a Kansas City clothing store clerk. At Ft. Sill he also met Lieutenant James M. Pendergast, nephew of Thomas Joseph (T.J.) Pendergast, a Kansas City politician. Both men were to have a profound influence on Truman's later life.

Truman became an officer, and then battery commander in an artillery regiment in France. His unit was Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, 60th Brigade, 35th Infantry Division, known for its discipline problems. During a sudden attack by the Germans in the Vosges Mountains, the battery started to disperse; Truman ordered them back into position using profanities that he had "learned while working on the Santa Fe railroad." On November 11, 1918 his artillery unit fired some of the last shots of World War I into German positions after the armistice was signed at 5 am but before the ceasefire took effect at 11 am. In a letter he wrote, "It is a shame we can't go in and devastate Germany and cut off a few of the Dutch kids' hands and feet and scalp a few of their old men". The war was a transformative experience that brought out Truman's leadership qualities; he later rose to the rank of Colonel in the Army Reserves, and his war record made possible his later political career in Missouri. The couple had one child, Mary Margaret (February 17, 1924 – January 29, 2008).

Truman was the only president who served after 1897 without a college degree: poor eyesight prevented him from applying to West Point (his childhood dream). When his high school buddies went off to the state university in 1901, Truman instead enrolled in a local business school, but only lasted a semester. In 1923–25 he took night courses toward a law degree at the Kansas City Law School (now the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law), but dropped out after losing his government job.

A month before Truman married, he and Jacobson opened a haberdashery at 104 West 12th Street in downtown Kansas City. After a few successful years, the store went bankrupt during the recession of 1921. Jacobson and Truman remained close friends, and Jacobson's advice to Truman on Zionism later played a critical role in the US government's decision to recognize Israel.

Freemasonry

On February 9, 1909, Harry Truman was initiated into Freemasonry in the Belton Lodge, Missouri. In 1911 he helped establish the Grandview Lodge, and he served as its first Worshipful Master. In 1940, Harry Truman was elected the 97th Grand Master of the Masons of Missouri. In 1945, he was made a 33° Sovereign Grand Inspector General and an Honorary Member of the supreme council at the Supreme Council A.A.S.R. Southern Jurisdiction Headquarters in Washington D.C. In 1959, he was awarded the 50 year award.

Hereditary memberships

Truman was a member of Sons of the Revolution and a card-carrying member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Two of his relatives were Confederate soldiers. Truman's grandmother Harriet (Gregg) Young was put in a "prison camp" due to Gen. Thomas Ewing's General Order No. 11 and his mother remembered her home being burned as a child, following Order #11.

Politics

Jackson County judge

In 1922, with the help of the Kansas City Democratic machine led by boss Tom Pendergast, Truman was elected as a judge of the County Court of the eastern district of Jackson County — an administrative, not judicial, position similar to county commissioners elsewhere. Though Truman at times expressed anger towards Jews in his diaries, his business partner and close friend Edward Jacobson was Jewish. Tales of the abuse, violence, and persecution suffered by many African American veterans upon their return from World War II infuriated Truman, and were a major factor in his decision to issue Executive Order 9981, in July 1948, to back civil rights initiatives and require equal opportunity in the armed forces.

He was not reelected in 1924, but in 1926 was elected the presiding judge for the court, and was reelected in 1930. In 1930 Truman coordinated the "Ten Year Plan," which transformed Jackson County and the Kansas City skyline with new public works projects, including an extensive series of roads, construction of a new Wight and Wight-designed County Court building, and the dedication of a series of 12 Madonna of the Trail monuments honoring pioneer women.

In 1933 Truman was named Missouri's director for the Federal Re-Employment program (part of the Civil Works Administration) at the request of Postmaster General James Farley as payback to Pendergast for delivering the Kansas City vote to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. The appointment confirmed Pendergast's control over federal patronage jobs in Missouri and marked the zenith of his power. It was also to create a relationship between Truman and Harry Hopkins and assure avid Truman support for the New Deal.

U.S. Senator

First term

.]] After serving as judge, Truman wanted to run for Governor or Congress, but Pendergast rejected these ideas. In 1934, Pendergast's aides suggested Harry Truman as a candidate for Senator; after three other men turned him down, Pendergast reluctantly backed Truman as the candidate for the 1934 U.S. Senate election for Missouri. During the Democratic primary, Truman defeated John J. Cochran and Tuck Milligan, the brother of federal prosecutor Maurice M. Milligan. Truman then defeated the incumbent Republican, Roscoe C. Patterson, by nearly 20%.

Truman assumed office as "the senator from Pendergast." He gave patronage decisions to Pendergast but always maintained he voted his conscience. Truman always defended the patronage by saying that by offering a little, he saved a lot.

In his first term as a U.S. Senator, Truman spoke out against corporate greed and the dangers of Wall Street speculators and other moneyed special interests attaining too much influence in national affairs. He was largely ignored by President Roosevelt, who did not take him seriously at this stage, and had difficulty getting White House secretaries to return his calls.

1940 election

In 1940, both Stark and Maurice Milligan challenged him in the Democratic primary for the Senate. Truman's organization was a loose-net network of old friends, prominent Masons, Army buddies, and National Guard activists, combined with old Pendergast allies in the Kansas City and St. Joseph areas. Truman was especially weak in the St. Louis area, where Robert E. Hannegan controlled the party. Hannegan decided to support Truman; he would go on to broker the 1944 deal that put Truman on the vice presidential ticket for Roosevelt. In the end, Stark and Milligan split the anti-Pendergast vote in the Democratic primary, and Truman won by 8000 votes. In the November election, Truman trailed Roosevelt slightly, but defeated the Republican Manvel H. Davis by a margin of 51% to 49%.

In September 1940, during the general election campaign, Truman was elected Grand Master of the Missouri Grand Lodge of Freemasonry. Truman said later that the Masonic election assured his victory in the general election.

Foreign policy

On June 23, 1941, the day after Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Senator Truman declared: "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances. Neither of them thinks anything of their pledged word." Although the sentiment was in line with what many Americans felt at the time, it was regarded by later biographers as both inappropriate and cynical.

Truman Committee

Truman gained national visibility by fighting waste and mismanagement in the war effort through his committee (popularly known as the "Truman Committee"). The Roosevelt administration had initially feared the Truman Committee would hurt war morale, and Undersecretary of War Robert P. Patterson wrote to the president declaring it was "in the public interest" to suspend the committee. Truman replied that the committee was "100 percent behind the administration" and had no intention of criticizing the military conduct of the war. The committee is reported to have saved at least $15 billion and thousands of lives. Truman's advocacy of common-sense cost-saving measures for the military attracted much attention. In 1943, he appeared on the cover of Time. He would eventually appear on nine Time covers and be named the magazine's Man of the Year for 1945 and 1948. After years as a marginal figure in the Senate, Truman was cast into the national spotlight after the success of the Truman Committee.

Vice presidency

Following months of uncertainty over whether Vice President Henry Wallace would continue as Roosevelt's running mate in 1944, Truman was ultimately selected to replace him as the vice presidential candidate in a deal worked out by Hannegan, who was Democratic National Chairman that year. Roosevelt's physical condition had deteriorated sharply by mid-1944. Key FDR advisers, including outgoing Democratic National Committee Chairman Frank C. Walker, incoming Chairman Robert Hannegan, party treasurer Edwin W. Pauley, strategist Ed Flynn, and lobbyist George E. Allen wanted to keep Wallace off the ticket. They considered Wallace too liberal and "realized that the man nominated to run with Roosevelt would in all probability be the next President. . ."

After meeting personally with the party leaders, FDR agreed to replace Wallace however Roosevelt left the final selection of his running mate until the end of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Before the convention began, Roosevelt wrote a note saying he would accept either Truman or Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. State and city party leaders strongly preferred Truman, but Truman himself did not campaign for the number two spot and later maintained he had not wanted the job of vice president. Roosevelt devised a plan to pressure him to accept the vice presidency and on July 19, the party bosses summoned Truman to a suite in the Blackstone Hotel to listen in on a phone call that, unknown to the senator, they had rehearsed in advance with the president. During the conversation, FDR asked the party bosses whether Truman would accept the position. When they said no, FDR angrily accused Truman of disrupting the unity of the Democratic party in the middle of a war, then hung up. Feeling that he had no choice, Truman reluctantly agreed to become Roosevelt's running mate.

Truman's candidacy was humorously dubbed the second "Missouri Compromise" at the 1944 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and his broad appeal contrasted with that of the liberal Wallace and the conservative James F. Byrnes. His nomination was well received, and the Roosevelt–Truman ticket went on to a 432–99 electoral-vote victory in the 1944 presidential election, defeating Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York and Governor John Bricker of Ohio. Truman was sworn in as vice president on January 20, 1945, but was to serve less than three months.

Truman's brief vice-presidency was relatively uneventful. Roosevelt rarely contacted him, even to inform him of major decisions, and they met infrequently. In one of his first acts as vice president, Truman dismayed many when he attended the funeral of his disgraced patron Tom Pendergast a few days after being sworn in. He brushed aside the criticism saying simply, "He was always my friend and I have always been his."

Presidency 1945–1953

First term (1945–1949)

Assuming office

: Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Joseph Stalin, William Daniel Leahy, James F. Byrnes, Harry S. Truman and others.]] , Harry S. Truman and Winston Churchill in Potsdam, July 1945]] , Harry S. Truman, Joseph Stalin; behind: William Daniel Leahy, Ernest Bevin, James F. Byrnes and Vyacheslav Molotov.]] Truman had been vice president for only 82 days when President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. He had had very little communication with Roosevelt about world affairs or domestic politics and was uninformed about major initiatives relating to the war and the top secret Manhattan Project, which was about to test the world's first atomic bomb.

Shortly after taking the oath of office, Truman said to reporters: :"Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

Upon assuming the presidency, Truman asked all the members of FDR's cabinet to remain in place, told them that he was open to their advice, but laid down a central principle of his administration: he would be the one making decisions, and they were to support him. Just a few weeks after he assumed office, on May 8, 1945, Truman's 61st birthday, the Allies achieved victory in Europe.

Atomic bomb

Truman, who had not known of it beforehand, was briefed on the ultra secret Manhattan Project by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson on the day Roosevelt died, following his first Cabinet meeting as President. While in Europe for the Potsdam Conference, he learned the news that the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb on July 16 had been successful. He hinted to Joseph Stalin that the U.S. was about to use a new kind of weapon against the Japanese. Though this was the first time the Soviets had been officially given information about the atomic bomb, Stalin was already aware of the bomb project, having learned about it (through espionage) long before Truman himself did.

In August, after the Japanese government refused the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, Truman authorized the use of atomic weapons against Japan.

On Sunday morning, August 6, 1945, at 8:15am local time, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped a uranium fueled atomic bomb, Little Boy, on Hiroshima. Two days later, after Truman's broadcast warning of further attacks, yet having heard nothing further from the Japanese government, the U.S. military executed its plan to drop a second atomic bomb. On August 9, Nagasaki was devastated using a plutonium implosion-type atomic bomb, Fat Man, dropped by the B-29 bomber Bockscar. The bombs killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945, with roughly half of those deaths occurring on the days of the bombings. Truman received news of the bombing while aboard the heavy cruiser on his way back to the U.S. after the Potsdam Conference. The Japanese surrender came on August 14.

Supporters of Truman's decision argue that, given the tenacious Japanese defense of the outlying islands, the bombings saved hundreds of thousands of lives that would have been lost in an invasion of mainland Japan. In 1954, Eleanor Roosevelt said that Truman had "made the only decision he could," and that the bomb's use was necessary "to avoid tremendous sacrifice of American lives." Others have argued that the use of nuclear weapons was unnecessary and inherently immoral. Truman himself wrote later in life that, "I knew what I was doing when I stopped the war ... I have no regrets and, under the same circumstances, I would do it again."

Strikes and economic upheaval

" sign on his desk]] The end of World War II was followed by an uneasy transition from war to a peacetime economy. The president was faced with the renewal of labor-management conflicts that had lain dormant during the war years, severe shortages in housing and consumer products, and widespread dissatisfaction with inflation, which at one point hit 6% in a single month. In this polarized environment, there was a wave of destabilizing strikes in major industries, and Truman's response to them was generally seen as ineffective. While delivering a speech before Congress requesting authority for this plan, Truman received word that the strike had been settled on his terms. Faced with Communist abandonment of commitments to democracy made at the Potsdam Conference, and with Communist advances in Iran, Greece (leading to the Greek Civil War) and in Turkey, Truman and his foreign policy advisors took a hard line against the Soviets.

Although he claimed no personal expertise on foreign matters, Truman won bipartisan support for both the Truman Doctrine, which formalized a policy of containment, and the Marshall Plan, which aimed to help rebuild postwar Europe. To get Congress to spend the vast sums necessary to restart the moribund European economy, Truman used an ideological argument, arguing that Communism flourishes in economically deprived areas. As part of the U.S. Cold War strategy, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 and reorganized military forces by merging the Department of War and the Department of the Navy into the National Military Establishment (later the Department of Defense) and creating the U.S. Air Force. The act also created the CIA and the National Security Council.

Fair Deal

After many years of Democratic majorities in Congress and two Democratic presidents, voter fatigue with the Democrats delivered a new Republican majority in the 1946 midterm elections, with the Republicans picking up 55 seats in the House of Representatives and several seats in the Senate. Although Truman cooperated closely with the Republican leaders on foreign policy, he fought them bitterly on domestic issues. He failed to prevent tax cuts or the removal of price controls. The power of the labor unions was significantly curtailed by the Taft–Hartley Act, which was enacted by overriding Truman's veto.

As he readied for the 1948 election, Truman made clear his identity as a Democrat in the New Deal tradition, advocating national health insurance, the repeal of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, and an aggressive civil rights program. Taken together, it all constituted a broad legislative agenda that came to be called the "Fair Deal."

Truman's proposals were not well received by Congress, even after Democratic gains in the 1948 election. Only one of the major Fair Deal bills, the Housing Act of 1949, was ever enacted.

Recognition of Israel

Menorah from the Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion (center). To the right is Abba Eban, Ambassador of Israel to the United States]] Truman made the decision to recognize the establishment of the State of Israel over the objections of Secretary of State George Marshall, who feared it would hurt relations with the Arab states. At a meeting in the White House on November 10, 1945, he told envoys to Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt: "I am sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents."

Rejecting Arab, British, and U.S. State Department warnings that Jewish immigration to Palestine and a Jewish state would destabilize the Middle East, Truman and Congress continued to support the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people. American policy makers in 1947–48 agreed that the highest foreign policy objective was containment of Soviet expansion as the Cold War unfolded. From Washington's perspective Palestine was secondary to the goal of protecting the "Northern Tier" of Greece, Turkey, and Iran from Communism, as promised by the Truman Doctrine. Truman set three goals for the region: a peaceful solution, unwillingness to send US troops, and the need to prevent Soviet penetration.

According to George Lenczowski, Truman's policy on Palestine was influenced by Jewish lobbyists. In his memoirs, Truman wrote that top Jewish leaders in the United States put pressure on him to promote Jewish aspirations in Palestine. At the urging of the British, a special UN committee, UNSCOP, recommended the immediate partitioning of Palestine into two states. With Truman's support, the plan was approved by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947. Secretary of State George Marshall and foreign affairs experts continued to oppose the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. When Truman agreed to meet with Chaim Weizmann, the Secretary of State objected but did not publicly dispute his decision. Secretary of Defense James Forrestal warned about the perils of arousing Arab hostility, which might result in denial of access to petroleum resources in the area, and about "the impact of this question on the security of the United States." Truman recognized the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, eleven minutes after it declared itself a nation.

Truman wrote:

Berlin Airlift

visits Buchenwald, shortly after its liberation by American forces on April 24, 1945]] On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blocked access to the three Western-held sectors of Berlin. The Allies had never negotiated a deal to guarantee supply of the sectors deep within the Soviet-occupied zone. The commander of the American occupation zone in Germany, General Lucius D. Clay, proposed sending a large armored column across the Soviet zone to West Berlin with instructions to defend itself if it were stopped or attacked. Truman believed this would entail an unacceptable risk of war. He approved a plan to supply the blockaded city by air. On June 25, the Allies initiated the Berlin Airlift, a campaign that delivered food and other supplies, such as coal, using military airplanes on a massive scale. Nothing remotely like it had ever been attempted before, and no single nation had the capability, either logistically or materially, to have accomplished it. The airlift worked; ground access was again granted on May 11, 1949. The airlift continued for several months after that. The Berlin Airlift was one of Truman's great foreign policy successes as president; it significantly aided his election campaign in 1948.

Defense cutbacks

Truman adopted a strategy of rapid demobilization after World War II, mothballing ships and sending the veterans home. The reasons for this strategy, which persisted through Truman's first term and well into his second, were largely financial. To fund domestic spending requirements, Truman had advocated a policy of defense program cuts for the U.S. armed forces at the end of the war. The Republican majority in Congress, anxious to enact numerous tax cuts, approved of Truman's plan to "hold the line" on defense spending. In addition, Truman's experience in the Senate left him with lingering suspicions that large sums were being wasted in the Pentagon. In 1949, Truman appointed Louis A. Johnson as Secretary of Defense. Impressed by U.S. advances in atomic bomb development, Truman and Johnson initially believed that the atomic bomb rendered conventional forces largely irrelevant to the modern battlefield. This assumption eventually had to be revisited, however, as the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic weapon in the same year.

Nevertheless, reductions continued, adversely affecting U.S. conventional defense readiness. Both Truman and Johnson had a particular antipathy to Navy and Marine Corps budget requests. Truman proposed disbanding the Marine Corps entirely as part of the 1948 defense reorganization plan but the idea was abandoned after a letter-writing campaign and the intervention of influential Marine veterans. The Marine Corps, its budgets slashed, was reduced to hoarding surplus inventories of World War II-era weapons and equipment.

Election of 1948

The 1948 presidential election is best remembered for Truman's stunning come-from-behind victory. In the spring of 1948, Truman's public approval rating stood at 36%, and the president was nearly universally regarded as incapable of winning the general election. The "New Deal" operatives within the party — including FDR's son James — tried to swing the Democratic nomination to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a wildly popular figure whose political views — and party affiliation — were totally unknown. Eisenhower emphatically refused to accept, and Truman outflanked opponents to his nomination. Unfazed, Truman delivered an aggressive acceptance speech attacking the 80th Congress and promising to win the election and "make these Republicans like it."

Within two weeks, Truman issued Executive Order 9981, racially integrating the U.S. Armed Services. Truman took considerable political risk in backing civil rights, and many seasoned Democrats were concerned that the loss of Dixiecrat support might destroy the Democratic Party. The fear seemed well justified — Strom Thurmond declared his candidacy for the presidency and led a full-scale revolt of Southern "states' rights" proponents. This revolt on the right was matched by a revolt on the left, led by former Vice President Henry A. Wallace on the Progressive Party ticket. Immediately after its first post-FDR convention, the Democratic Party found itself disintegrating. Victory in November seemed a remote possibility indeed, with the party not simply split but divided three ways.

There followed a remarkable presidential odyssey, an unprecedented personal appeal to the nation. Truman and his staff crisscrossed the United States in the presidential train; his "whistlestop" tactic of giving brief speeches from the rear platform of the observation car Ferdinand Magellan came to represent the entire campaign. His combative appearances, such as those at the town square of Harrisburg, Illinois, captured the popular imagination and drew huge crowds. Six stops in Michigan drew a combined total of half a million people; a full million turned out for a New York City ticker-tape parade.

The large, mostly spontaneous gatherings at Truman's depot events were an important sign of a critical change in momentum in the campaign, but this shift went virtually unnoticed by the national press corps, which continued reporting Republican Thomas Dewey's apparent impending victory as a certainty. One reason for the press' inaccurate projection was polls conducted primarily by telephone in a time when many people, including much of Truman's populist base, did not own a telephone. This skewed the data to indicate a stronger support base for Dewey than existed, resulting in an unintended and undetected projection error that may well have contributed to the perception of Truman's bleak chances. The three major polling organizations also stopped polling well before the November 2 election date — Roper in September, and Crossley and Gallup in October — thus failing to measure the very period when Truman appears to have surged past Dewey.

In the end, Truman held his midwestern base of progressives, won most of the Southern states despite his civil rights plank, and squeaked through with narrow victories in a few critical "battleground" states, notably Ohio, California, and Illinois. The final tally showed that the president had secured 303 electoral votes, Dewey 189, and Thurmond only 39. Henry Wallace got none. The defining image of the campaign came after Election Day, when Truman held aloft the erroneous front page of the Chicago Tribune with a huge headline proclaiming "Dewey Defeats Truman." Truman did not have a vice president in his first term. His running mate, and eventual vice president for the term that began January 20, 1949, was Alben W. Barkley.

Second term (1949–1953)

Truman's inauguration was the first ever televised nationally." His second term was grueling, in large measure because of foreign policy challenges connected directly or indirectly to his policy of containment. He quickly had to come to terms with the end of the American nuclear monopoly. With information provided by its espionage networks in the United States, the Soviet Union's atomic bomb project progressed much faster than had been expected and they exploded their first bomb on August 29, 1949. On January 7, 1953, Truman announced the detonation of the first U.S. hydrogen bomb.

NATO

Truman was a strong supporter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which established a formal peacetime military alliance with Canada and many of the democratic European nations that had not fallen under Soviet control following World War II. Truman successfully guided the treaty through the Senate in 1949 and appointed Dwight D. Eisenhower as the first commander. NATO's stated goals were to contain Soviet expansion in Europe and to send a clear message to communist leaders that the world's democracies were willing and able to build new security structures in support of democratic ideals. The United States, Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, Portugal, Iceland, and Canada were the original treaty signatories; Greece and Turkey joined in 1952.

Chinese Civil War

On December 21, 1949, Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) and his National Revolutionary Army left mainland China, fleeing to Taiwan in the face of successful attacks by Mao Zedong's communist army during the Chinese Civil War. In June 1950, Truman ordered the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent further conflict between the communist government at the China mainland and the Republic of China on Taiwan. Truman also called for the ROC not to make any further attacks on the mainland.

Soviet espionage and McCarthyism

Throughout his presidency, Truman had to deal with accusations that the federal government was harboring Soviet spies at the highest level. Testimony in Congress on this issue garnered national attention, and thousands of people were fired as security risks. Truman was dubious about reports of potential Communist or Soviet penetration of the U.S. government, and his oft-quoted response was to dismiss the allegations as a "red herring."

In August 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a former spy for the Soviets and a senior editor at Time magazine, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and presented a list of what he said were members of an underground communist network working within the United States government in the 1930s. One was Alger Hiss, a senior State Department official. Hiss denied the accusations.

Chambers' revelations led to a crisis in American political culture, as Hiss was convicted of perjury, in a controversial trial. On February 9, 1950, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the State Department of having communists on the payroll, and specifically claimed that Secretary of State Dean Acheson knew of, and was protecting, 205 communists within the State Department. At issue was whether Truman had removed all the subversive agents that had entered the government during the Roosevelt years. McCarthy insisted that he had not.

By spotlighting this issue and attacking Truman's administration, McCarthy quickly established himself as a national figure, and his explosive allegations dominated the headlines. His claims were short on confirmable details, but they nevertheless transfixed a nation struggling to come to grips with frightening new realities: the Soviet Union's nuclear explosion, the loss of U.S. atom bomb secrets, the fall of China to communism, and new revelations of Soviet intelligence penetration of other U.S. agencies, including the Treasury Department. He counterattacked, saying that "Americanism" itself was under attack by elements "who are loudly proclaiming that they are its chief defenders. ... They are trying to create fear and suspicion among us by the use of slander, unproved accusations and just plain lies. ... They are trying to get us to believe that our Government is riddled with communism and corruption. ...  These slandermongers are trying to get us so hysterical that no one will stand up to them for fear of being called a communist. Now this is an old communist trick in reverse. ... That is not fair play. That is not Americanism."

Truman called for a naval blockade of Korea, only to learn that due to budget cutbacks, the U.S. Navy no longer possessed a sufficient number of warships to enforce such a measure. Truman promptly urged the United Nations to intervene; it did, authorizing armed defense for the first time in its history. The Soviet Union, which was boycotting the United Nations at the time, was not present at the vote that approved the measure. However, Truman decided not to consult with Congress, an error that greatly weakened his position later in the conflict.

In the first four weeks of the conflict, the American infantry forces hastily deployed to Korea proved too few and were under-equipped. The Eighth Army in Japan was forced to recondition World War II Sherman tanks from depots and monuments for use in Korea. On November 1, 1950, Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempted to assassinate Truman at Blair House. On the street outside the residence, Torresola mortally wounded a White House policeman, Leslie Coffelt, who shot Torresola dead before dying himself. Collazo, as a co-conspirator in a felony that turned into a homicide, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in 1952. Truman later commuted his sentence to life in prison. Acknowledging the importance of the question of Puerto Rican independence, Truman allowed for a plebiscite in Puerto Rico to determine the status of its relationship to the United States. The attack, which could easily have taken the president's life, drew new attention to security concerns surrounding his residence at Blair House. He had jumped up from his nap, and was watching the gunfight from his open bedroom window until a passerby shouted at him to take cover.

Steel and coal strikes

In response to a labor/management impasse arising from bitter disagreements over wage and price controls, Truman instructed his Secretary of Commerce, Charles W. Sawyer, to take control of a number of the nation's steel mills in April 1952. Truman cited his authority as Commander in Chief and the need to maintain an uninterrupted supply of steel for munitions to be used in the war in Korea. The Supreme Court found Truman's actions unconstitutional, however, and reversed the order in a major separation-of-powers decision, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. The 6–3 decision, which held that Truman's assertion of authority was too vague and was not rooted in any legislative action by Congress, was delivered by a Court composed entirely of Justices appointed by either Truman or Roosevelt. The high court's reversal of Truman's order was one of the notable defeats of his presidency. After coal miners went on strike in the spring of 1946, Truman threatened to draft the miners into the Army if they did not return to work, or use members of the Army to replace the workers.

Scandals and controversies

In 1950, the Senate, led by Estes Kefauver, investigated numerous charges of corruption among senior Administration officials, some of whom received fur coats and deep freezers for favors. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was involved. In 1950, 166 IRS employees either resigned or were fired, and many were facing indictments from the Department of Justice on a variety of tax-fixing and bribery charges, including the assistant attorney general in charge of the Tax Division. When Attorney General Howard McGrath fired the special prosecutor for being too zealous, Truman fired McGrath. Historians agree that Truman himself was innocent and unaware, with one exception. In 1945, Mrs. Truman received a new, expensive, hard-to-get deep freezer. The businessman who provided the gift was the president of a perfume company and, thanks to Truman's aide and confidante General Harry Vaughan, received priority to fly to Europe days after the war ended, where he bought new perfumes. On the way back he "bumped" a wounded veteran from a flight back to the U.S. Disclosure of the episode in 1949 humiliated Truman. The President responded by vigorously defending Vaughan, an old friend with an office in the White House. Vaughan was eventually connected to multiple influence-peddling scandals.

Truman pardoned a Louisiana political figure, George A. Caldwell, a building contractor from Baton Rouge who had been imprisoned in the United States Penitentiary, Atlanta for income tax evasion and accepting kickbacks. He also similarly pardoned the controversial Texas political boss, George Parr of Duval County, the political benefactor of Lyndon B. Johnson, winner of a contested 1948 U.S. Senate election, which ultimately catapulted Johnson into the presidency.

Charges that Soviet agents had infiltrated the government bedeviled the Truman Administration and became a major campaign issue for Eisenhower in 1952. In 1947, Truman issued Executive Order 9835 to set up loyalty boards to investigate espionage among federal employees. Between 1947 and 1952, "about 20,000 government employees were investigated, some 2500 resigned 'voluntarily,' and 400 were fired." He did, however, strongly oppose mandatory loyalty oaths for governmental employees, a stance that led to charges that his Administration was soft on Communism. In 1953, Senator Joseph McCarthy and Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr. claimed that Truman had known Harry Dexter White was a Soviet spy when Truman appointed him to the International Monetary Fund.

On December 6, 1950, music critic Paul Hume wrote a critical review of a concert by Margaret Truman: "Miss Truman is a unique American phenomenon with a pleasant voice of little size and fair quality ... (she) cannot sing very well ... is flat a good deal of the time — more last night than at any time we have heard her in past years ... has not improved in the years we have heard her ... (and) still cannot sing with anything approaching professional finish."

In response Truman wrote a scathing response: I've just read your lousy review of Margaret's concert. I've come to the conclusion that you are an "eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay." It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you're off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work. Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below! Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you'll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.

Civil rights

A 1947 report by the Truman administration titled To Secure These Rights presented a detailed ten-point agenda of civil rights reforms. In February 1948, the president submitted a civil rights agenda to Congress that proposed creating several federal offices devoted to issues such as voting rights and fair employment practices. This provoked a storm of criticism from Southern Democrats in the run up to the national nominating convention, but Truman refused to compromise, saying: "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."

Instead of addressing civil rights on a case by case need, Truman wanted to address civil rights on a national level. Truman made three executive orders that eventually became a structure for future civil rights legislation. The first executive order, Executive Order 9981 in 1948, is generally understood to be the act that desegregated the armed services. This was a milestone on a long road to desegregation of the Armed Forces. After several years of planning, recommendations and revisions between Truman, the Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity and the various branches of the military, Army units became racially integrated. This process was also helped by the pressure of manpower shortages during the Korean War, as replacements to previously segregated units could now be of any race.

The second, also in 1948, made it illegal to discriminate against persons applying for civil service positions based on race. The third executive order, in 1951, established Committee on Government Contract Compliance (CGCC). This committee ensured that defense contractors to the armed forces could not discriminate against a person on account of race.

Administration and cabinet

All of the cabinet members when Truman became president in 1945 had been previously serving under Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Name	Truman
President	Harry S. Truman
President start	1945
President end	1953
Vice president	none
Vice president start	1945
Vice president end	1949
Vice president 2	Alben W. Barkley
Vice president start 2	1949
Vice president end 2	1953
State	Edward R. Stettinius, Jr.
State date	1945
State 2	James F. Byrnes
State start 2	1945
State end 2	1947
State 3	George C. Marshall
State start 3	1947
State end 3	1949
State 4	Dean G. Acheson
State start 4	1949
State end 4	1953
War	Henry L. Stimson
War date	1945
War 2	Robert P. Patterson
War start 2	1945
War end 2	1947
War 3	Kenneth C. Royall
War date 3	1947
Treasury	Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
Treasury date	1945
Treasury 2	Fred M. Vinson
Treasury start 2	1945
Treasury end 2	1946
Treasury 3	John W. Snyder
Treasury start 3	1946
Treasury end 3	1953
Defense	James V. Forrestal
Defense start	1947
Defense end	1949
Defense 2	Louis A. Johnson
Defense start 2	1949
Defense end 2	1950
Defense 3	George C. Marshall
Defense start 3	1950
Defense end 3	1951
Defense 4	Robert A. Lovett
Defense start 4	1951
Defense end 4	1953
Justice	Francis Biddle
Justice date	1945
Justice 2	Tom C. Clark
Justice start 2	1945
Justice end 2	1949
Justice 3	J. Howard McGrath
Justice start 3	1949
Justice end 3	1952
Justice 4	James P. McGranery
Justice start 4	1952
Justice end 4	1953
Post	Frank C. Walker
Post date	1945
Post 2	Robert E. Hannegan
Post start 2	1945
Post end 2	1947
Post 3	Jesse M. Donaldson
Post start 3	1947
Post end 3	1953
Navy	James V. Forrestal
Navy start	1945
Navy end	1947
Interior	Harold L. Ickes
Interior start	1945
Interior end	1946
Interior 2	Julius A. Krug
Interior start 2	1946
Interior end 2	1949
Interior 3	Oscar L. Chapman
Interior start 3	1949
Interior end 3	1953
Agriculture	Claude R. Wickard
Agriculture date	1945
Agriculture 2	Clinton P. Anderson
Agriculture start 2	1945
Agriculture end 2	1948
Agriculture 3	Charles F. Brannan
Agriculture start 3	1948
Agriculture end 3	1953
Commerce	Henry A. Wallace
Commerce start	1945
Commerce end	1946
Commerce 2	W. Averell Harriman
Commerce start 2	1946
Commerce end 2	1948
Commerce 3	Charles W. Sawyer
Commerce start 3	1948
Commerce end 3	1953
Labor	Frances Perkins
Labor date	1945
Labor 2	Lewis B. Schwellenbach
Labor start 2	1945
Labor end 2	1948
Labor 3	Maurice J. Tobin
Labor start 3	1948
Labor end 3	1953

Judicial appointments

Supreme Court

Truman appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

Harold Hitz Burton — 1945

Fred M. Vinson (Chief Justice) — 1946

Tom C. Clark — 1949

Sherman Minton — 1949

Truman's judicial appointments have been called by critics "inexcusable." A former Truman aide confided that it was the weakest aspect of Truman's presidency. The New York Times condemned the appointments of Tom C. Clark and Sherman Minton in particular as examples of cronyism and favoritism for unqualified candidates. However, Truman decided not to run for reelection.

At the time of the 1952 New Hampshire primary, no candidate had won Truman's backing. His first choice, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, had declined to run; Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson had also turned Truman down; Vice President Barkley was considered too old; and Truman distrusted and disliked Senator Estes Kefauver, whom he privately called "Cowfever."

Truman's name was on the New Hampshire primary ballot but Kefauver won. On March 29 Truman announced his decision not to run for re-election. Stevenson, having reconsidered his presidential ambitions, received Truman's backing and won the Democratic nomination.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, now a Republican and the nominee of his party, campaigned against what he denounced as Truman's failures regarding "Korea, Communism and Corruption" and the "mess in Washington," and promised to "go to Korea." Eisenhower defeated Stevenson decisively in the general election, ending 20 years of Democratic rule. While Truman and Eisenhower had previously been good friends, Truman felt betrayed that Eisenhower did not denounce Joseph McCarthy during the campaign.

Post-presidency

Truman Library, Memoirs, and life as a private citizen

Truman returned to Independence, Missouri, to live at the Wallace home he and Bess had shared for years with her mother. Four months after leaving office, Truman was invited to address the Reserve Officers Association in Philadelphia. Refusing official transportation, Truman instead drove his brand-new Chrysler New Yorker, with Bess accompanying him in the passenger seat. The trip, which included stops in Washington, D.C., New York City, and smaller towns, caused a media sensation, especially when the former President was pulled over by a policeman for driving too slowly in a passing lane.

Truman's predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had organized his own presidential library, but legislation to enable future presidents to do something similar still remained to be enacted. Truman worked to garner private donations to build a presidential library, which he donated to the federal government to maintain and operate — a practice adopted by all of his successors.

Once out of office, Truman quickly decided that he did not wish to be on any corporate payroll, believing that taking advantage of such financial opportunities would diminish the integrity of the nation's highest office. He also turned down numerous offers for commercial endorsements. Since his earlier business ventures had proved unremunerative, he had no personal savings. As a result, he faced financial challenges. Once Truman left the White House, his only income was his old army pension: $112.56 per month. Former members of Congress and the federal courts received a federal retirement package; President Truman himself ensured that former servants of the executive branch of government received similar support. In 1953, however, there was no such benefit package for former presidents.

Bill on July 30, 1965, by President Lyndon B. Johnson.]] He took out a personal loan from a Missouri bank shortly after leaving office, and then set about establishing another precedent for future former chief executives: a book deal for his memoirs of his time in office. Ulysses S. Grant had overcome similar financial issues with his own memoirs, but the book had been published posthumously, and he had declined to write about life in the White House in any detail. For the memoirs Truman received only a flat payment of $670,000, and had to pay two-thirds of that in tax; he calculated he got $37,000 after he paid his assistants.

Truman's memoirs were a commercial and critical success; they were published in two volumes in 1955 and 1956 by Doubleday (Garden City, N.Y) and Hodder & Stoughton (London): Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Year of Decisions and Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Years of Trial and Hope.

Truman was quoted in 1957 as saying to then-House Majority Leader John McCormack, "Had it not been for the fact that I was able to sell some property that my brother, sister, and I inherited from our mother, I would practically be on relief, but with the sale of that property I am not financially embarrassed."

In 1958, Congress passed the Former Presidents Act, offering a $25,000 yearly pension to each former president, and it is likely that Truman's financial status played a role in the law's enactment. Hoover may have been remembering an old favor: shortly after becoming President, Truman had invited Hoover to the White House for an informal chat about conditions in Europe. This was Hoover's first visit to the White House since leaving office, as the Roosevelt administration had shunned Hoover. The two remained good friends for the remainder of their lives.

Later life and death

In 1956, Truman traveled to Europe with his wife. In Britain he received an honorary degree in Civic Law from Oxford University and met with Winston Churchill. On returning to the U.S., he supported Adlai Stevenson's second bid for the White House, although he had initially favored Democratic Governor W. Averell Harriman of New York.

Upon turning 80, Truman was feted in Washington and to address the United States Senate, as part of a new rule that allowed former presidents to be granted privilege of the floor. He also campaigned for senatorial candidates. After a fall in his home in late 1964, his physical condition declined. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare bill at the Truman Library and gave the first two Medicare cards to Truman and his wife Bess to honor his fight for government health care as president.

On December 5, 1972, he was admitted to Kansas City's Research Hospital and Medical Center with lung congestion from pneumonia. He developed multiple organ failure and died at 7:50 am on December 26 at the age of 88. His wife died nearly ten years later, on October 18, 1982.

Legacy

]] When he left office in 1953, Truman was one of the most unpopular chief executives in history. His job approval rating of 22% in the Gallup Poll of February 1952 was lower than Richard Nixon's was in August 1974 at 24%, the month that Nixon resigned. American public feeling toward Truman grew steadily warmer with the passing years, and the period shortly after his death consolidated a partial rehabilitation among both historians and members of the general public. As early as 1962, a poll of 75 distinguished historians conducted by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. ranked Truman among the "near great" presidents. Since leaving office, Truman has fared well in polls ranking the presidents among Americans. He has never been listed lower than ninth, and most recently was fifth in a C-SPAN poll in 2009.

Truman has been honored on two U.S. postage stamps, the first issued in 1973 and the second stamp in 1984.

He has also had his critics. After a review of information available to Truman on the presence of espionage activities in the U.S. government, Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan concluded that Truman was "almost willfully obtuse" concerning the danger of American communism. As early as the late 1960s, revisionist historians began attacking Truman. Today, the consensus among historians is that "Harry Truman remains a controversial president."

Truman died during a time when the nation was consumed with crises in Vietnam and Watergate, and his death brought a new wave of attention to his political career. In the early and mid-1970s, Truman captured the popular imagination much as he had in 1948, this time emerging as a kind of political folk hero, a president who was thought to exemplify an integrity and accountability many observers felt was lacking in the Nixon White House. Truman has been portrayed on screen many times, several in performances that have won wide acclaim, and the pop band Chicago recorded a nostalgic song, "Harry Truman" (1975).

Due to Truman's critical role in the U.S. government's decision to recognize Israel, the Israeli village of Beit Harel was renamed Kfar Truman.

Despite Truman's attempt to curtail the naval carrier arm, which led to the 1949 Revolt of the Admirals, the navy decided to name an aircraft carrier after him. The was christened on September 7, 1996. The ship, sometimes known as the 'HST', was authorized as USS United States, the same as the carrier that Truman had cancelled in 1949, but her name was changed before the keel laying.

129th Field Artillery Regiment is designated "Truman's Own" in recognition of Truman's service as commander of its D Battery during World War I.

The Truman Scholarship, a federal program that seeks to honor U.S. college students who exemplified dedication to public service and leadership in public policy, was created in 1975. The President Harry S. Truman Fellowship in National Security Science and Engineering, a distinguished postdoctoral three-year appointment at Sandia National Laboratories was created in 2004. The University of Missouri established the Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs to advance the study and practice of governance. The university's Missouri Tigers athletics programs have an official mascot named Truman the Tiger. To mark its transformation from a regional state teachers' college to a highly selective liberal arts university and to honor the only Missourian to become president, Northeast Missouri State University became Truman State University on July 1, 1996. A member institution of the City Colleges of Chicago, Harry S Truman College in Chicago, Illinois is named in honor of the president for his dedication to public colleges and universities. The headquarters for the United States Department of State, built in the 1930s but never officially named, was dedicated as the Harry S Truman Building in 2000.

In 1991, Truman was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians, and a bronze bust depicting him is on permanent display in the rotunda of the Missouri State Capitol. Thomas Daniel, grandson of the Trumans accepted a star on the Missouri Walk of Fame in 2006 to honor his late grandfather. John Truman, Truman's nephew, accepted a star for Bess Truman in 2007. The Walk of Fame is in Marshfield, Missouri, a city Truman visited in 1948.

He was honored by the United States Postal Service with a 20¢ Great Americans series postage stamp.

Historic sites

Harry S. Truman National Historic Site includes the Wallace House at 219 N. Delaware in Independence and the family farmhouse at Grandview, Missouri (Truman sold most of the farm for Kansas City suburban development including the Truman Corners Shopping Center).

Harry S. Truman Birthplace State Historic Site is the house where Truman was born and spent 11 months in Lamar, Missouri.

Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum — The Presidential library in Independence

Harry S. Truman Little White House — Truman's winter getaway at Key West, Florida

See also

Electoral history of Harry S. Truman

Liberal coalition

National Mental Health Act

Truman Day

List of Presidents of the United States

US Presidents on US postage stamps

References

Bibliography

(35 volumes)

External links

Harry Truman's cabinet

Medical and health history of Harry Truman

C-SPAN's Presidential Libraries: Harry S. Truman

PBS American Experience Video Biography of Harry Truman

White House biography

Harry S. Truman’s Homes - slideshow by The New York Times

Harry S. Truman: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress

Truman Tapes Presidential Recording Project Miller Center of Public Affairs

The American Presidency Project at UCSB: The Most Comprehensive Resource on the Web

'The American Presidency: Transformation and Change — Harry Truman', lecture by Professor Vernon Bogdanor at Gresham College, January 29, 2008 [available for free audio, video and text download]

a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan">Harry Truman and Independence, Missouri: "This is Where I Belong," a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan

President Harry S. Truman American President: An Online Reference Resource. Miller Center of Public Affairs

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