A large group of delegates from Mississippi and Alabama gathered in the aisle and walked out, waving Confederate flags on their way. The convention band started up with an impromptu version of “Dixie.” Truman supporters blocked the aisles, forcing the southern protesters to push their way through. Grown men in suits were now jostling and shoving as if the arena floor was a school yard. The scene was descending into chaos. One reporter cataloged the moment: “A live donkey was led in and seemed properly astounded at the goings on. An Indian in full dress did a war dance in front of the speaker’s rostrum . . . Firecrackers crackled, cowbells were banged, and over and over, and faster and faster, the band played ‘Dixie.’”
The Washington Post’s Marquis Childs put the moment in perspective: “We may well be watching . . . the liquidation of one of the major parties.”
Onstage, a convention organizer pounded a gavel before the microphone, attempting to regain control. By the time Governor Phil Donnelly of Missouri took the stage to introduce Truman, it was nearly 2 a.m.
The president marched up to the speaker’s podium like a fighter entering a ring. The crowds stood for him and he smiled, picking up a glass of water off the podium and taking a sip. Behind him, Alben Barkley stood clapping his hands, his face grimly focused on the president. A brass band belted out an intro, and Truman said, “Thank you, thank you very much,” just loud enough to be heard over the trombones.
He did not look like a president with a 36 percent approval rating. He looked like a man who knew in his heart he was going to win. But scanning the crowd, he saw a picture of defeat. “The delegates that evening were a tired, dispirited, soggy mass of beaten humanity,” recalled David C. Bell, a Truman special assistant who was there that night. Truman’s wife and daughter were in the crowd, on their feet but not clapping their hands. A scaffolding stood in front of the stage holding the TV cameras, but it was so late that the TV broadcasters had called it a night. Only the nationwide radio hookup was working. Truman struggled for a moment to adjust the phalanx of microphones in front of him. Then he began, his voice full of Missouri flavor.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the honor which you’ve just conferred upon me,” he said. “I shall continue to try to deserve it.” He paused for applause. “I accept the nomination.” (More applause.) “And I want to thank this convention for its unanimous nomination of my good friend and colleague, Senator Barkley of Kentucky. He’s a great man and a great public servant.”
For months, rage had boiled in the president’s gut. Now, all that anger came out as if a floodgate had opened. With a single sentence, Truman transformed the night.
“Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make these Republicans like it—don’t you forget that!”
The crowd came alive instantly.
“We will do that because they are wrong and we are right,” Truman said, “and I’m going to prove it to you in just a few minutes!”
In his memoirs, Truman recalled speaking this line. “I meant just that, and I said it as if I meant it. There could be no mistake. I intended to win.”
Truman unleashed his fighting speech. He had tried to get the Eightieth Congress on board to enact his policies addressing high prices and the housing crisis, he said, but Congress had failed to pass these laws, and the American people were suffering. He denounced the Republican-controlled legislature as the “worst Congress in history.” He called on farmers to vote for Democrats. Farmers—who traditionally voted Republican—had never been as well off as they were in 1948, following sixteen years of Democratic leadership, Truman said.
“Never in the world were the farmers of any republic or any kingdom or any country as prosperous as they are in the United States,” he said. “And if they don’t do their duty by the Democratic Party they are the most ungrateful people in the world!”
He called on the nation’s workers, who were also seeing wages higher than they’d ever been before. “And I’ll say to labor just what I said to the farmers. They are the most ungrateful people in the world if they pass the Democratic Party by this year!”
The crowds were on their feet. Tired eyes widened. “It was one of the most electrifying things that I had ever been present at,” recalled Truman adviser Max Lowenthal. “He just had them on the ropes.” Recalled Truman’s Missouri friend Tom Evans: “I never in all my life got such a tremendous buildup in such a short time.”
Truman took on the Southern Democrats who had just bolted the party in protest of his civil rights support.
“Everybody knows that I recommended to the Congress the civil rights program,” Truman railed. “I did that because I believed it to be my duty under the Constitution. Some of the members of my own party disagree with me violently on this matter. But they stand up and do it openly! People can tell where they stand. But the Republicans all professed to be for these measures [as clearly stated in their platform]. But Congress failed to act.”
Truman’s speech reached its climax. “My duty as president requires that I use every means within my power to get the laws that people need on matters of such importance and urgency. I am therefore calling this Congress back into session on the 26th of July!”
The roar of approval was so loud it was a full thirty seconds before Truman could get another word in. “On the 26th day in July, which out in Missouri we call Turnip
