This time, H. L. Mencken stood up—Mencken, the literary lion, the “sage of Baltimore,” one of the most famous political writers of his time. “Mr. Wallace,” Mencken said, “do you call me a stooge of Pegler? If you won’t answer the question as to whether you wrote those letters, tell us, at least, the reason you won’t answer it.”
“Because it is not important.”
But it was. When the Progressive Party opened its first convention, the biggest story in the newspapers the next day was the guru letters. “The American press had one of its finest hours today,” wrote the Associated Press’s Relman Morin, “in an astonishing news conference with Henry Wallace.”
The convention carried on. By this time the Progressive Party’s campaign had taken on the nickname Wallace had given it when he announced his candidacy seven months earlier: Gideon’s Army, referring to the biblical story of Gideon, who led a small army in a decisive victory over the oppressive Midianites thousands of years earlier. It was an apt allegory for Wallace for obvious reasons, and also because it reflected his deep religious thinking. Gideon’s Army turned out in force for him. The crowds packed the hall, with more outside. Folk singer Pete Seeger sang songs and played his banjo. In the crowd were the writers Norman Mailer and Lillian Hellman, the future US senator and presidential candidate George McGovern, and large numbers of war veterans and union leaders.
For the first time in history, a black man gave a keynote speech at a national political convention. Charles P. Howard, publisher of a black newspaper in Iowa, addressed the teeming crowds on opening night, pleading with voters to support cooperation with the USSR, and charging the Truman administration with fomenting “corruption . . . betrayal . . . murder.” It was “Wallace or war,” Howard said.
“What is at stake here is the very survival of Western civilization,” he told the crowd.
Over the next days, the crowds poured on the love for the Wallace movement. W.E.B. Du Bois spoke. VP candidate Glen Taylor brought out his wife and kids and played a number on his banjo. The black entertainer Paul Robeson spoke and sang. Wallace campaign manager Beanie Baldwin told reporters that the convention was not just some flash-in-the-pan movement; it was the “birth of a new party soon to be the first party.” Outside the arena, “Peace Caravans” lined streets, where Gideon’s Army members banged peace drums and slept in tents on Philadelphia’s cement sidewalks.
On the final night, the whole convention moved to nearby Shibe Park, home to the city’s baseball team, the Philadelphia Athletics. Wallace and his running mate Taylor accepted the new party’s nominations. Wallace whipped a crowd of thirty thousand into a frenzy. Caucasians and African Americans mixed freely, as did union workers and intellectuals. Young women danced in sundresses. Wallace told them all that, if he had been president, the Berlin crisis would never have happened.
“Berlin did not happen,” Wallace said. “Berlin was caused.” He summed up what he perceived to be happening before everyone’s eyes that night: “This convention is going to mark a great turning point not only in the history of the New Party, but also in the history of the world.” The Wallace platform supported desegregation of public schools, a nationalized health insurance program, equal rights for women, minimum wages for workers who currently did not qualify under law (such as farmworkers), immigration reform, statehood for Alaska and Hawaii, support for Israel, and the rights of Communists to express their views.
“To make that dream come true,” Wallace said, “we shall rise above the pettiness of those who preach hate and factionalism, of those who think of themselves rather than the great cause they serve. All you who are within the sound of my voice tonight have been called to serve mightily in fulfilling the dream of the prophets and the founders of the American system.”
Wallace fans responded with “almost fanatical enthusiasm,” New York Times reporter James Hagerty recorded. Crowds chanted “We want Wallace!” and “One, two, three, four, we don’t want another war.” An organist struck up “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Before the night was over, a Time reporter asked Henry Wallace why the Progressive Party’s platform so closely resembled that of the Communist Party. “I’d say they have a good platform,” Wallace answered. “I would say that the Communists are the closest things to the early Christian martyrs.” At that press conference, Wallace’s running mate was asked the same question. Senator Taylor responded that he had renounced Communism, but would not renounce Communist votes.
“Nobody can stop them from voting for us,” Taylor said, “if they want.”
Despite the Westbrook Pegler debacle, Wallace’s convention was a rousing success. A new candidate, a new political party, a stadium packed to the rafters to participate in the party’s very first election convention—all of it came together quickly and unexpectedly. “It will remain a thing of awe to professional politicians that people paid hard cash to see a man baptize his own party,” the Associated Press columnist Hal Boyle commented. “This was something new.”
The Wallace campaign was flush with cash. Days earlier, a single donor—the philanthropist Anita McCormick Blaine of Chicago, an heir to the McCormick Reaping Machine Works fortune—had agreed to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars. Wallace wrote to thank her, explaining that the money would go toward campaign literature and radio time and for party organizations in every state.
When Gideon’s Army dispersed from Philadelphia, the stage was set for a historic election. Voters now had four major candidates to choose from. The Democrats were split on the right (by the Dixiecrats) and the left (by the Progressives). Truman and Dewey, meanwhile, held similar positions on many major issues, but not all. Four campaigns were out of the starting block, charging in different directions, fueled by the base support of masses of people convinced that they were in the right and that their foes were in the wrong. The nation was divided as
