“What on earth can we do to prevent this?” Truman asked his aides.
Ewing suggested sending Marshall a cable straightaway, with a suggestion of a statement that Marshall should make, instead of Marshall making any statement of his own.
“That’s a good idea,” Truman answered. “Do you and Clark mind missing the speech at Madison Square Garden tonight and use the time to draft a statement for General Marshall to make?”
“Of course,” came the answer. “We’d be glad to.”
Sending cables to the secretary of state in Paris was no easy task, however. Clifford and Elsey drafted two cables, then Clifford called the undersecretary of state, Bob Lovett, in Washington and dictated the two cables over the phone. Lovett then had to go to the State Department coding office to encrypt the cables. The messages would then go over the wire to Marshall. “There was six hours difference in time between Washington and Paris,” recalled Ewing, “so it would be nip and tuck as to whether the President’s message would reach General Marshall before he had delivered his statement to the [UN] conference.” The first cable read:
From: The President (in New York)
To: The Secretary of State (in Paris)
I am deeply concerned over reports here of action taken in [UN] Security Council on Palestine question. I hope that before this nation takes any position or any statement is made by our Delegation that I be advised of such contemplated action and the implications thereof.
The second cable contained a statement that Marshall should use, if he was going to make any statement on Palestine. Lovett sent it along with his own memo to Marshall, stating, “President again directs every effort be made to avoid taking position on Palestine prior to Wednesday [November 3, the day after the election]. If by any chance it appears certain vote [on the Palestine matter] would have to be taken on Monday or Tuesday he directs US Delegation to abstain.”
That night, Truman ate a quick dinner at the Biltmore. Joining him was his adviser Donald Dawson, who got a phone call from an official at Madison Square Garden. Truman was hoping for a moment of rest before his MSG rally. But not tonight. The pressure was relentless. Dawson learned that the arena’s seats were nearly empty, and the president was expected to arrive soon. Dawson jumped from the table and rushed down to the Garden, which was about a dozen blocks away. He recalled, “The place was half empty . . . The lights were blazing down from the highest balcony. I walked up there, ran and saw—there were no people at all . . . I saw few spectators but several photographers.”
Dawson figured out the problem. The Democratic National Committee had run out of money and so a fringe group called the Liberal Party had paid for the hall that night. The Liberal Party was so small that it could not possibly fill the Garden’s thousands of seats, and party officials had reserved all the tickets for party members, a relatively small number. If Truman gave one of his most important speeches to an empty hall at the climax of the campaign, the results would be disastrous. It would confirm what all the reporters and pollsters had been saying: Truman was a lost cause.
There were thousands and thousands of people outside Madison Square Garden, and Dawson arranged for the doors to be opened to the public. Soon crowds of people were filing through turnstiles and filling the seats. By the time Truman arrived, the venue was full. “We had a big motorcade and marching parade coming over from the Biltmore Hotel to the Garden with the President,” Dawson recorded. “I marched the parade into Madison Square Garden, and closed the gates so they couldn’t go out.”
By the time Truman stepped onto the stage at the Garden, he had already given fourteen speeches on this one day, no two exactly alike. The first had been a whistle-stop at 7:30 a.m. in Quincy, Massachusetts. Now it was just after 10:30 p.m. Onstage with the president was Herbert Lehman, the former Democratic governor of New York, labor leader David Dubinsky, and Bess and Margaret, clutching bouquets of flowers. A band played “I’m Just Wild About Harry” and “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
Truman approached the podium amid tremendous applause. Innumerable drafts of his speech had been written, but Truman now made a bold decision to go off script. He had a surprise for everyone.
“There is a special reason why I am glad to be here tonight,” Truman said onstage at Madison Square Garden. “We have come here tonight with one mind and one purpose. We have come to pledge once more our faith in liberal government, and to place in firm control of our national affairs those who believe with all their hearts in the principles of Franklin D. Roosevelt.”
Truman then began to taunt Thomas Dewey. The GOP candidate had spoken in Los Angeles, right after Truman. Dewey had spoken in Cleveland, right after Truman. He had spoken in Boston, right after Truman. Now Dewey would be coming to New York, the night after the president’s speech. “Now,” Truman said, “I have a confession to make to you here tonight”:
For the last two or three weeks I’ve had a queer feeling that I’m being followed, that someone is following me. I felt it so strongly that I went into consultation with the White House physician. And I told him that I kept having this feeling, that everywhere I go there’s somebody following behind me. The White House physician told me not to worry. He said: “You keep right on your way. There is one place where that fellow is not going to follow you—and that’s in the White House.”
The crowd exploded with
