With guru letters in hand, Pegler took aim.
“We have had evidence,” Pegler wrote, “that Mr. Wallace is not altogether one of us in his mental and religious or spiritual makeup.” Pegler had experts compare Wallace’s handwriting to that of the Roerich letters and found that the “screwball documents were written by the same person.” Pegler quoted the letters extensively, such as this one, which ran in Pegler’s March 9, 1948, column:
The protecting shield of the great ones has been felt under very trying conditions. The Tigers are going through various tricks but with respect to them the man now in charge at the old house is excellent. The Flaming One is softhearted toward the Tigers and I fear has made commitments of some sort. The battle against the vermin is fierce . . .
Pegler wondered aloud before his millions of readers: “Is Wallace fit for power?”
One after the other, Pegler’s columns raked Wallace’s reputation. In the face of extreme embarrassment, however, Wallace kept his course, exhibiting an inner strength that only served to rally his hardcore followers.
All winter and into the spring of 1948, Wallace remained in the public eye. In highly charged testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on February 24, 1948, in the crowded caucus room in the Old House Office Building across from the Capitol, congressmen probed Wallace’s intentions with biting questions. If he were president, and his secretaries of state and defense reported to him that Soviet aggression constituted the main threat to world peace, what would he do?
“I would tell them to get ready for war,” Wallace said. Then he added quickly that such a scenario would be impossible, as he would never have such men in his cabinet. Wallace read an eleven-thousand-word statement condemning the Marshall Plan, and accusing Truman of “laying the foundations” for war with the Soviet Union. When asked why Wallace’s condemnations of the Marshall Plan sounded markedly similar to those coming out of the Soviet Union—that the Marshall Plan was nothing but warmongering on the part of the United States—Wallace answered, “I’m not familiar with the Communist approach and am unable to discuss it.”
A month later, Wallace appeared before the Senate Armed Forces Committee in another hearing packed with journalists and cameramen and gawkers who came to see the most controversial man in American politics. Wallace charged that the Truman administration had “deliberately created [a] crisis.” Truman’s Universal Military Training proposal would lead to a war that would result in “death and taxes for the many and very handsome profits for the few.”
“Our country is in danger,” Wallace said. “But the danger comes from our own policies which will bring war—unnecessary war—upon our country.”
Back out on the road, Wallace’s candidacy proved just how divided America had become. He could venture into large cities where numerous liberal intellectuals lived, and he could pack stadiums to the rafters with passionate followers. If the contest was to be held in March 1948 only among black youth in the South, Wallace would be elected president by a landslide. However, in white America far from the coasts and big cities—even in his home state of Iowa—his message seemed inexplicable and infuriating.
Wallace’s tone conveyed such conviction and mistrust of the establishment, his presence was bound to incite violence. It was only a matter of time.
On April 6 Wallace arrived in Evansville, Indiana, for a rally at the Evansville Coliseum. As the sun set, he was in his hotel room preparing for his speech. A few miles away, a group numbering some twenty-five hundred—mostly angry white men—gathered at the event venue, pounding on doors and busting them open. Crowds of picketers swarmed into the coliseum’s lobby. Police wielding nightsticks struggled to maintain control. All the while, the candidate was quietly practicing his speech, unaware of the maelstrom awaiting him.
Wallace’s campaign manager, Beanie Baldwin, arrived at the venue ahead of the candidate. As Baldwin approached the coliseum entrance, picketers swarmed him; Baldwin was struck on the chin. More blows landed, and by the time the fracas ended, Baldwin’s face swelled with bruises. Another Wallace campaign worker was bleeding from a cut over his eye. An usher working the event caught a shot to the face.
Minutes later, Wallace entered the coliseum through a side door. The protest had intimidated locals; only five hundred people were in the audience to hear Wallace speak. A local philosophy professor, George F. Parker, introduced the candidate. Professor Parker had been warned by Evansville College that his presence onstage at a Wallace event would be cause for his firing. Wallace defended Professor Parker: “Our country’s heritage means nothing if it doesn’t mean our freedom to express our political views without danger of losing our jobs.” After the speech, Wallace required a police escort to get him to his car. Picketers surrounded the vehicle, and the candidate sat stone-faced for an hour, waiting for the protesters to disperse. Two days later, Professor Parker was fired.
Wallace headed west. In Albuquerque, he told a crowd, “According to newspapers I’m getting a lot of support from the Communists, and the Communist leaders seem to think they have to endorse me every day or so. There’s no question that this sort of thing is a political liability. The Communists oppose my advocacy of progressive capitalism. They support me because I say that we can have peace with Russia. I will not repudiate any support which comes to me on the basis of interest in peace.”
He was booed in response.
Wallace later remembered, “I was very much shocked
