As the first returns came in, the Republican National Committee’s chief Herbert Brownell issued a statement from his command post on the sixth floor of the Hotel Roosevelt in New York:
“Early reports reaching us from Republican State organizations in all parts of the country indicate what may well be a record breaking popular vote, and from the indications thus far available, the Dewey-Warren Ticket will be overwhelmingly elected.”
At the Muehlebach Hotel, the teletype machines continued to crank out returns while waiters carried trays with Missouri ham sandwiches and pitchers of orange juice and black coffee. Truman was ahead in New York City, but the tide was turning on him as the rural votes poured in. New York looked dubious for the Democrats. As expected, Philadelphia voters went for Truman, but not by as much as was hoped—not by enough to counter the rural Pennsylvania votes that would follow from the western part of the state. An early lead in Maryland was slipping away. It looked like Truman would carry Virginia, but South Carolina was going to go to Strom Thurmond.
By nightfall, much of the eastern vote was in. Dewey carried both New York and Maryland. It was Henry Wallace who had cost Truman those states; Wallace voters had made the difference. Both states had gone to FDR and the Democrats in four straight elections, but both went for Dewey in 1948 by slim margins. Now the Midwest would follow. Truman had an enormous lead in Chicago as expected, but the rest of the state was a mystery. Ohio was looking bright, but who knew? The Wallace vote in Ohio could be strong too.
As the Midwest votes were tallied, Truman and Dewey were running neck-and-neck in the popular vote, but not in the electoral college, where Dewey was still ahead.
All the while, some 150 to 200 reporters were milling about the hotel, flabbergasted that they had no idea of the president’s whereabouts.
Where was Truman?
Bess and Margaret were at home on Delaware Street. Outside, a crowd of two hundred locals were in the street, singing “Missouri Waltz” and “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here.” They chanted “We want Harry”—but Harry was nowhere to be found. Around 9 p.m., radio networks began to report that Truman—while still behind in the electoral college—was pulling ahead in the popular vote. Due to the strange rubric the founding fathers had built into the Constitution, Truman was winning more votes nationwide than Dewey, but losing in the official tally that would ultimately decide the outcome. Reporters outside the Truman home were growing “frantic,” as Margaret later put it. “I am not using the word ‘frantic’ loosely either,” she recalled. “It became more and more apropos as the votes began to come in. At first everyone was told there would be a Dewey victory message at nine p.m. But Harry Truman seemed to be winning at nine p.m.”
Wearing her favorite black dress and ballet slippers to keep her feet comfortable for the long night ahead, Margaret came out the front door and, standing under a porch light, she announced: “Dad isn’t here. I don’t know where he is.”
From Republican headquarters at the Roosevelt, Herbert Brownell released his next statement: “At this moment the polls have closed in 12 of the 48 states . . . On the basis of reports which I have been receiving from organizational leaders throughout the country, I am confident that the Dewey-Warren Ticket has already carried 10 of these 12 states . . . It is now apparent that we will wind up by sweeping two-thirds of the states for the Republican Ticket. This is definitely a Republican year. The people have made up their minds and have registered their decision in many of the States.”
Perhaps even Brownell knew his estimates were overly optimistic. The night was young, and nothing was going as planned. In homes all over the country, Americans who had expected an early result and an early bedtime were adjusting to the idea of a long night. Truman’s first cousin Mary Ethel Noland would remember sitting in a room in her modest house in Independence, not interested in hearing the election returns because she believed they would be depressing. Others in the residence were huddled around a radio; Noland wanted no part of it. She lived across the street from the Truman home and could see out the window the crowds out front.
“Along in the evening,” she remembered, “the returns had begun to come in. We were sitting in the next room trying to read our paper or something because we hated to hear that everything was going against him. One of the men [at the house] said, ‘Don’t you want to hear this? It’s getting better. You’d better come in.’”
Soon friends began to drop by the house and coffee was brewing. The excitement became tangible. Suddenly, the news over the radio was completely gripping. “That went on all night long,” Noland recalled.
32
“Under No Circumstance Will I Congratulate That Son of a Bitch”
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE night, the Biltmore Hotel ballroom—the Democrats’ campaign headquarters in New York—was nearly empty. “The halls leading to the Biltmore’s grand ballroom, and the ballroom itself, had been bare of campaign posters and pictures early in the evening,” remembered one reporter that night. “But, as optimism grew, one party worker dashed upstairs to the nineteenth floor [Democratic National Committee headquarters] and brought down several dozen pictures of Mr. Truman and Sen. Alben Barkley. They were hastily tacked up.” Soon the room was “jammed with television cameras, klieg lights and radio microphones and cables.”
Dewey remained secluded in suite 1527 at the Roosevelt. He had won most of New England, as expected, but lost Massachusetts. That was sixteen electoral votes predicted to go his way. He had pulled out the pivotal states of Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, but Ohio was dangerously tight. Dewey had been expected
