pushed him with FDR, the more antagonistic the President became.
There are some historians and biographers who suggest that FDR’s alienation from Eleanor in the last years of his presidency changed the course of history. Unquestionably, her attempt to make Henry Wallace President of the United States backfired disastrously and, by ironic coincidence, helped make Senator Truman his replacement. After telling Wallace he was his “personal choice,” FDR, warned that large sections of the party would revolt rather than nominate himagain, told Harry Truman he had to take the job or risk breaking up the Democratic Party in the middle of a war.
Both the incumbent First Lady and her soon-to-be successor watched with dismay as the Democratic Convention beat off an attempt by Wallace supporters to stampede the delegates and nominated Harry S Truman. When a rhapsodic crowd engulfed us as we left the Chicago convention center at the end of that sweltering July night, my mother exclaimed: “Are we going to have to put up with this for the rest of our lives?” That negative reaction acquired ominous momentum nine months later, when FDR’s death catapulted us into the White House.
Bess Truman underwent a terrific inner struggle to overcome her deep aversion to becoming First Lady. She was still worried about the Wallace family secret and as my father’s longtime political partner, she was deeply concerned about how he could cope with the enormous responsibility that had descended on him. “This is going to put a terrific load on Harry,” she said to one of their close friends. “Roosevelt has told him nothing.”
Never has any President in American history had to learn more about the problems facing him—and make world-shaping decisions about them faster—than Harry S Truman. Between that fateful April 12 when he took the oath of office in the Cabinet Room of the White House and September 2, he presided over the close of the war against Germany, supervised the opening of the United Nations, and ended the war with Japan by ordering atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this avalanche of decisions and events, Bess Truman played little part. More and more, she began to feel that the presidency had virtually dissolved the political partnership that had been at the heart of her relationship with her husband for so many years.
For the rest of that tumultuous year 1945, my father worked at the same frantic pace, trying to stabilize a war-ravaged world, deal with a steadily more hostile Russia, and solve a dozen domestic crises. My mother struggled to give some shape and coherence to her role as First Lady in the shadow of her famous predecessor. At first she announced she would hold a press conference, but the closer she gotto it, the more the idea horrified her. She canceled it at the last moment and said she would only answer written questions, submitted in advance. That left the White House press corps underwhelmed, to put it mildly.
Their sniping comments about her inaccessibility only deepened Bess’s resistance. When a reporter called to inquire what Mother was wearing to a reception, she was blunt: “Tell her it’s none of her business.” Her secretary managed to stutter out something about the First Lady being undecided for the moment.
Bess’s letters to friends in Independence became a lament about how homesick she was. This from a woman who had spent most of the previous eleven years in Washington. Bess was suffering from the White House blues. She told someone that her favorite First Lady was Elizabeth Monroe—primarily, I suspect, because of her success at virtually disappearing from the White House for most of her husband’s two terms. She may also have been identifying with a First Lady who succeeded the media icon of her era, Dolley Madison—as Mother had succeeded Eleanor Roosevelt.
It got worse—as things tend to do in the White House. Bess was invited to a DAR tea in her honor at
There are some historians and biographers who suggest that FDR’s alienation from Eleanor in the last years of his presidency changed the course of history. Unquestionably, her attempt to make Henry Wallace President of the United States backfired disastrously and, by ironic coincidence, helped make Senator Truman his replacement. After telling Wallace he was his “personal choice,” FDR, warned that large sections of the party would revolt rather than nominate himagain, told Harry Truman he had to take the job or risk breaking up the Democratic Party in the middle of a war.
Both the incumbent First Lady and her soon-to-be successor watched with dismay as the Democratic Convention beat off an attempt by Wallace supporters to stampede the delegates and nominated Harry S Truman. When a rhapsodic crowd engulfed us as we left the Chicago convention center at the end of that sweltering July night, my mother exclaimed: “Are we going to have to put up with this for the rest of our lives?” That negative reaction acquired ominous momentum nine months later, when FDR’s death catapulted us into the White House.
Bess Truman underwent a terrific inner struggle to overcome her deep aversion to becoming First Lady. She was still worried about the Wallace family secret and as my father’s longtime political partner, she was deeply concerned about how he could cope with the enormous responsibility that had descended on him. “This is going to put a terrific load on Harry,” she said to one of their close friends. “Roosevelt has told him nothing.”
Never has any President in American history had to learn more about the problems facing him—and make world-shaping decisions about them faster—than Harry S Truman. Between that fateful April 12 when he took the oath of office in the Cabinet Room of the White House and September 2, he presided over the close of the war against Germany, supervised the opening of the United Nations, and ended the war with Japan by ordering atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this avalanche of decisions and events, Bess Truman played little part. More and more, she began to feel that the presidency had virtually dissolved the political partnership that had been at the heart of her relationship with her husband for so many years.
For the rest of that tumultuous year 1945, my father worked at the same frantic pace, trying to stabilize a war-ravaged world, deal with a steadily more hostile Russia, and solve a dozen domestic crises. My mother struggled to give some shape and coherence to her role as First Lady in the shadow of her famous predecessor. At first she announced she would hold a press conference, but the closer she gotto it, the more the idea horrified her. She canceled it at the last moment and said she would only answer written questions, submitted in advance. That left the White House press corps underwhelmed, to put it mildly.
Their sniping comments about her inaccessibility only deepened Bess’s resistance. When a reporter called to inquire what Mother was wearing to a reception, she was blunt: “Tell her it’s none of her business.” Her secretary managed to stutter out something about the First Lady being undecided for the moment.
Bess’s letters to friends in Independence became a lament about how homesick she was. This from a woman who had spent most of the previous eleven years in Washington. Bess was suffering from the White House blues. She told someone that her favorite First Lady was Elizabeth Monroe—primarily, I suspect, because of her success at virtually disappearing from the White House for most of her husband’s two terms. She may also have been identifying with a First Lady who succeeded the media icon of her era, Dolley Madison—as Mother had succeeded Eleanor Roosevelt.
It got worse—as things tend to do in the White House. Bess was invited to a DAR tea in her honor at
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