Truman went on: “He can follow me to Cleveland . . . [Applause!] He can follow me to Chicago . . . [Applause!] He can follow me to Boston . . . [More!] He can follow me to Pittsfield and Providence . . .”
The Republican candidate can follow me all the way from Los Angeles to Madison Square Garden, but the Republican record makes it certain that he will still be trailing along behind when the votes are counted. He is doing all he can to make you forget that record. He doesn’t dare talk about it. I have never in my life been in a campaign where the opposition refused absolutely to discuss the issues of the campaign. I can’t understand that sort of an approach . . .
Truman was more than halfway through his speech before he brought up the main subject of the night: Israel. Here in New York—where there were probably more Jews than there were in the Holy Land—he reiterated his support for the Democratic platform. Without committing to de jure recognition of the new Israeli government, Truman pledged his support for the success of this new nation.
“That is our objective,” he said. “We shall work toward it, but we will not work toward it in a partisan and political way. I am confident that that objective will be reached.”
Nearing his finish, Truman said, “I have only one request to make of you: vote on election day. Vote for yourselves. You don’t have to vote for me. Vote in your own interests.”
The applause resonated throughout the building, and even after Truman left the stage, it kept on coming.
Truman delivered nearly eighteen thousand words of campaign speeches on this single day, many of them off the cuff. He had one more day to make his case to New Yorkers before heading home. For over a year he had been the catalyst for a new civil rights movement, one he hoped would recast the nation’s racial and political landscape forever. He was scheduled to speak on October 29 in a place no presidential candidate had ever gone: Harlem, the spiritual home of black America.
30
“I Stand by My Prediction. Dewey Is In.”
FOR MONTHS, THE Republican National Committee had been holding regular meetings, meticulously planning every detail of Dewey’s triumphant return to New York City. When the governor arrived at Grand Central Station, all that work paid off. There were brass bands and color guards, a torchlight parade, and even an airplane that spelled Dewey’s name in the sky with its exhaust.
On the stage at Madison Square Garden, when Dewey appeared, he was flanked by a forty-by-twenty-five-foot statue of the United States Capitol. Huge portraits of Dewey and Earl Warren hung from the rafters. Every seat was filled, and the roar was the loudest Dewey had heard his entire campaign.
“It is great to be home again,” Dewey said, “and you have given me a perfectly wonderful homecoming. It is all the more wonderful because it is a homecoming on the eve of victory.”
In Dewey’s final major campaign appearance, he stayed the course, speaking philosophically on unity, attacking the Democrats without singling out particular issues. The Democratic Party “has been divided against itself for so long that it has forgotten the meaning of unity, and it never did know the meaning of teamwork or competence,” Dewey said. He punctuated his remarks by punching his open palm with his fist as he criticized his opponent’s “desperate tactics” and the failure of the administration to bring peace to the world. Dewey did not mention the Jews, Israel, or Palestine. Nor did he mention what his plans were regarding taxes, immigration, or the Taft-Hartley law. He said, “We will follow strong, clear policies,” without saying what those policies would be.
To end his final campaign appearance, he expressed satisfaction with what his team had accomplished: “I am very happy that we can look back over the weeks of our campaigning and say: ‘This has been good for our country.’ I am proud we can look ahead to our victory and say: ‘America won.’”
Later that night, back on the Dewey Victory Special, the candidate headed for Albany. As the train traveled north along the Hudson River, Dewey engaged members of the press with an unexpected, impromptu talk. “On that trip . . . he came into the press car and told his plans—all off the record,” recalled Raymond P. Brandt, the Washington bureau chief of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “He was positive as to whom he was going to have in his Cabinet. They were really confident. I have to admit that I thought he was going to be elected.”
“He assumed in ’48 that he was already President,” remembered Jack Bell of the Associated Press, who was aboard the train. “And he even gave us, at one point, the makeup of his Cabinet—off the record as it were—going back to Albany.”
Even before Election Day, congratulatory mail poured into the Dewey offices. Senator Vandenberg of Michigan wrote Dewey on November 1, “I am ‘jumping the gun’ to send you my heartiest congratulations upon your inevitable Tuesday victory. As you move into this new responsibility, I offer you every cooperation within my power . . . Again, I congratulate you upon your victory in advance.”
The president of the Fitchburg Paper Company, George R. Wallace, wrote his friend on November 1, “By the time you receive this letter you will be our next President and first of all, I want to congratulate you on winning the election and for the splendid campaign you conducted.” Another of Dewey’s friends, Clellan Forsythe of Syracuse, wrote Dewey on November 1: “Since knowing you I have been certain that one day you would be our President and now that the time has arrived it is my earnest prayer that God will grant you in these troubled times the strength and wisdom to become our greatest president . . . Good luck—and Godspeed!”
Throughout the night
