“They can call us Reds and call us pinks,” Marcantonio announced. “But we never double-crossed anybody and nobody can call us yellow.”
Wallace took the stage at 11:30 p.m. to thunderous applause. “This is a great American meeting,” he said. “It is a meeting in the best American tradition—a meeting of men and women of all races, of all creeds.” Wallace told his fans of the ugliness he had seen in the South, how the eggs and tomatoes had rained on him, how the faces of white Americans were “contorted with hate.” But the trip exemplified “our American rights to freely assemble and freely speak,” he said. “Fear is a product of inactivity and the greatest remedy for fear is to stand up and fight for your rights.”
“We must work,” he said in conclusion. “We will work so that on November 2, Americans can clearly choose.”
22
“We’re Going to Give ’Em Hell”
AFTER HIS DETROIT SPEECH ON Labor Day weekend, Truman returned to Washington on September 13, before his campaign train headed west for California and all stops in between.
At 1 p.m., Truman welcomed Secretary of Defense James Forrestal and Secretary of the Army General Kenneth Royall to the Oval Office to discuss Berlin and the bomb. Forrestal bluntly asked Truman if he was prepared to push the proverbial button, in the event of war. According to Forrestal, Truman answered “that he prayed that he would never have to make such a decision, but that if it became necessary, no one need have a misgiving but what he would do so . . .”
“The situation in Berlin is bad,” the Atomic Energy Commission chief David Lilienthal wrote in his diary on this same day. “The Russians seem prepared to kick us in the teeth on every issue. Their planes are in the air corridor today, and anything could happen . . . The President is being pushed hard by Forrestal to decide that atomic bombs will be used . . . The President has always been optimistic about peace. But he is blue now, mighty blue. It is very hard on him, coming right now particularly.”
Later that night of September 13, Truman’s campaign-finance chief Louis Johnson held a fund-raising event at the White House. Johnson arranged to have some thirty wealthy potential donors gather for a tea in the Red Room. After the staff served drinks on silver trays, Truman stood up on a chair and asked for the group’s attention. He said his campaign was so desperate for money that, if donors did not come through with $25,000, the Truman Special, which was about to embark on a cross-country campaign trip, would not get beyond Pittsburgh.
“I am appealing to you for help,” he said, “help to carry my message to the American people. We just haven’t got the money to buy radio time. In Detroit on Labor Day we had to cut one of the most important parts of my speech because we didn’t have the money to stay on air.”
“Mr. Truman looked pathetic and alone,” Drew Pearson wrote of this moment, in the Washington Post. (Pearson was presumably in the room.) “Some of the [Democratic National] committee’s operations have been so amateurish they are unbelievable.”
Still, two men wrote checks for $10,000 apiece.
At the end of this hectic day, Truman wrote in his diary: “I have a terrible feeling . . . that we are very close to war. I hope not . . . My staff is in a turmoil. Clifford has gone prima donna on me. So has Howard McGrath. It’s hell but a part of the game. Have had to force McGrath to behave and Clifford too . . . I get a headache over it. But a good night’s sleep will cure it.”
Four days later, Truman left the White House again with Margaret. Bess was still in Denver visiting family. On track 16 at Union Station, the Truman Special was ready for departure. Vice presidential candidate Alben Barkley arrived at the track siding to see Truman off.
“I think I am going to mow ’em down,” Truman said.
“Are you going to carry the fight to them, Mr. President?”
Truman smiled. “We’re going to give ’em hell.”
The president’s twenty-four-year-old daughter leaned in and said, “Daddy, you shouldn’t say ‘hell.’”
Truman and Barkley grasped each other’s hands, and then the president climbed into the Ferdinand Magellan. He was suffering a cold, which would serve to compound the discomfort of rail travel. That afternoon, he spoke in Pittsburgh, then in Crestline, Ohio. The train rolled into the small farming community of Rock Island, Illinois, at sunrise the next morning. Truman stepped out onto the Ferdinand Magellan’s back platform at 5:45 a.m. To his surprise, there were four thousand people waiting to hear him.
“I don’t think I have ever seen so many farmers in town in all my life,” he told the crowd. “I had no idea that there would be anybody else in a town the size of Rock Island at this time of day.”
After his talk, he stood staring out at the scene with a staffer named William Bray, who remarked that this was a good beginning to this next leg of the trip. Truman asked why.
“Well, those people had to get up maybe at 4:30 in the morning to be here and if such a crowd is willing to come out to hear you it looks like a good omen,” Bray said. “Maybe in spite of the polls, there are a lot of people who have not made up their minds and are willing to listen. And,” Bray concluded, “that’s all we can hope for.”
On the morning of September 17, the Truman Special crossed into enemy territory. Like most heavily agricultural states, Iowa was firmly Republican. The state had gone to the GOP in all but three presidential elections dating back to 1856, and had landed squarely in Thomas Dewey’s column over FDR four years earlier. Iowa had a Republican governor, and all
