Secretly, he had a plan.
Days earlier, a memo had appeared circulating in the White House, dated June 29, 1948, called, “Should the President Call Congress Back in Session?” The memo was unsigned, and the author of it would remain a mystery. It began: “This election can only be won by bold and daring steps, calculated to reverse the powerful trend now running against us. The boldest and most popular step the President could possibly take would be to call a special session of Congress in early August.”
Congress had broken for recess, and was not scheduled to convene again until after the November election, which was more than three months away. Thus members of Congress who were running for reelection would have time to go home and campaign in their states. However, the president technically had the legal right to call an emergency session of Congress.
The Republicans at their convention had come up with a platform that exposed a schism within the GOP. The most influential Republicans in the Eightieth Congress were those on the farther right. They were out of step with the liberal Dewey-Warren ticket on many of the election’s most important issues, such as housing reform and extension of Social Security benefits. Indeed, Dewey supported some of the same positions that the Truman administration did.
By calling the conservative-leaning Congress back into session and demanding that Congress enact legislation that reflected Dewey’s own platform, Truman could drive a stake right through the Republican Party. If the conservative Eightieth Congress failed to enact Dewey’s liberal legislation, Dewey would be embarrassed by his own party and an identity crisis within the Republican Party would be exposed. If Congress did pass the kinds of legislation the Dewey-Warren plank called for, the president would get the credit for it.
The idea was brilliant but controversial. Not since 1856 had a president called Congress back into an emergency session from recess during an election year.
Truman was scheduled to travel to Philadelphia on the convention’s final night, July 14, to accept the nomination. Of the six vice presidents who had ascended to the Oval Office following the death of a president, only two had been renominated by their party to run for another four years—Calvin Coolidge and Theodore Roosevelt. The day before Truman left for Philadelphia, he arrived at his morning staff meeting full of anger and spewing epithets.
“He said he had made some outline of what he plans to say [at the convention] and added that he was going up there—to the convention—and if he can keep the swear words out of it, tell them just what he thinks,” assistant press secretary Eben Ayers wrote in his diary. Truman broached the idea of calling a special session of Congress. “He said he was going to wind up by calling Congress back for a special session on July 19,” recorded Ayers. “Putting in the swear words he expressed his attitude about calling them back, something like this: ‘Now, you s–– of a b––, come on and do your g–– d––t.’”
When this staff meeting broke up, Truman told his team to get ready. Recalled Ayers: “As . . . we started to leave, the President commented we were going to have more fun in the next six months than we ever had in our lives.”
Truman and his entourage arrived at Washington’s Union Station at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, July 14, for the trip to Philadelphia. His wife and daughter had returned to the capital that morning, and they were by his side at the station. TV cameras followed Truman as he boarded the train. He wore a crisp cream-colored linen suit, with a dark tie and pocket square. When the train arrived in Philadelphia, rain was pounding the city.
A motorcade with police escort delivered Truman to the back door of Philadelphia Convention Hall, so the crowds would not see him. The convention speeches and resolutions were hours behind schedule, and the hall itself had no air-conditioning. The backstage room was so crowded “you couldn’t have gotten a toothpick in that room, it was so jammed with people,” recalled one of Truman’s aides, General Louis H. Renfrow, who was present. Truman headed to a balcony outside where he could breathe. Soon the VP candidate Alben Barkley appeared and the two sat talking about old times under an awning to keep dry. As Barkley later recalled, they talked about “many things: politics, trivia, how to bring up daughters.”
In the convention hall, alcohol and stifling heat had left the crowd in a daze. An electrical storm outside knocked out a fuse, causing further delay. “It seemed like almost everything was going wrong,” recalled White House correspondent Robert Nixon, who was covering the convention for the United Press.
The worst was yet to come.
During the final session of resolutions leading up to Truman’s acceptance speech, protesters took control of the night. The Democrats had adopted a plank heavy on civil rights, supporting the right to equal opportunity in employment, equal treatment of all races in the military, and “security of person” (the lawful right not to be lynched). Southern Democrats were ready to make their protest against Truman’s civil rights policies in front of television cameras. First, a delegate from Georgia named Charles J. Bloch came onstage and demanded to be heard.
“The south is no longer going to be the whipping boy of the Democratic party,” Bloch yelled with a hoarse southern accent. “And you know that without the south you cannot elect a President of the United States.” He called for the nomination of a new candidate to represent the Democratic Party, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, adding, “You shall not crucify the south on the cross of civil rights.”
A crowd of southern leaders paraded in front of the microphone. One yelled: “Mississippi has gone home!” Another voice, delegate Byrd Sims of Florida, came through: “He can’t win. We must have new leadership.” Governor Strom Thurmond
