Michael is a son of Mary Acheson Bundy, Acheson’s younger daughter. Michael attended the Sunday-evening anniversary dinner.
May 7, 1957
Dear Mr. Truman,
Our warmest greetings on your birthday. I wish that I could be at the dinner your friends and neighbors are giving you and to which they kindly invited me. But we shall be thinking of you and Alice and I drink a toast.
You both gave everyone a great thrill on Sunday evening. Michael has not calmed down yet. Yesterday when Mary picked him up at school his first words were, “Boy, what a party that was!” He then went on to say that he was going to write a book about you. “And I have a title, too,” he added. Mary asked what it was. “The Best Natured American,” he said. So there is an endorsement for you to use with the boss when she gives you hell for wondering who lives in the White House now.
We all feel better for your visit and because you both looked so well.
As ever,
Dean
A few weeks after the 1956 presidential election, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) formed the Democratic Advisory Council (DAC), which was charged with formulating policy positions for the Democratic Party. DNC Chair Paul Butler asked Truman to ask Acheson to chair the DAC’s foreign-policy committee. Truman sends Acheson a telegram, and Acheson subsequently accepts the position.
May 27, 1957
HONORABLE DEAN ACHESON
THE NATIONAL CHAIRMAN CALLED ME ABOUT A FOREIGN POLICY PROGRAM FOR THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE. HE WANTS YOU TO HEAD THE ORGANIZATION. I HOPE YOU CAN DO IT. I WILL WRITE YOU AS SOON AS I HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO SIT DOWN.
HARRY S. TRUMAN
The Harry S. Truman Library was to be dedicated on July 6. Truman wants Acheson to be with him that day.
June 1, 1957
Dear Dean:
I am starting the first month of summer with a letter to you. I sent you a telegram on May 27th at the behest of Paul Butler. Maybe it isn’t worthy of any consideration. As you know from long experience some—maybe all—my aberrations need looking at very carefully.
That anniversary party your children gave you was quite the nicest one I’ve been to in all my checkered career. That young grandson of yours has a real political future. He has the public relations touch to start with. It is hard to cultivate if it isn’t a natural asset to begin with.
I’ve been doing more things I shouldn’t than ever before. A local keynote speech for local Democrats, a series of invitations to public officials and has been public officialites, an agreement to address the Police Chiefs of Missouri on the Bill of Rights, appearances here and there for no reason whatever but some friend and former supporter in hard times past asked me.
The “Boss” has about made up her mind to go in with some Independence people and run me for Mayor! And then charge admission to the City Hall to see the striped mule from Missouri. I think she’s ridiculing me, don’t you?
Anyway I’m having a hell of a time and a lot of fun. I expect to be knee deep in “Big Shots” July 6th and I want you and Alice to be here to help me out of what Huey Long would call a deep “More Ass.” It’s in the Congressional Record.
Be sure and come. I may tell some Ambassador or Senator “to go to hell” and you’ll have to keep him from going. As you know Stanley’s gone to the other side of the pond. I rather think he went because there’ll be too much protocol here on July 6th—or none at all!
Be sure and come. I won’t mix you in my difficulties, but I want you and Alice here.
You helped more than anyone to make things come out right.
Sincerely,
Harry S Truman
Acheson has in effect become the Democratic Party spokesman on foreign-policy issues. Paul Nitze was associated with the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and Milton Eisenhower, President Eisenhower’s brother, was president of Johns Hopkins University. An interview with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was broadcast on the CBS news program Face the Nation on June 2. Acheson portrays the interview as free propaganda for Khrushchev. The Soviet premier had bragged that the Soviet Union would soon outpace the United States in agricultural production and predicted, “Your grandchildren in America will live under socialism.” Most important, and potentially most damaging to American interests, he portrayed the Soviet Union as a peaceful nation that wished to end nuclear testing, end all trade restrictions throughout the world, and bring about the withdrawal of all Soviet and American troops from Europe. About ten million Americans saw or heard Khrushchev’s interview. In the P.S., he refers to the birth of Truman’s first grandson, Clifton Truman Daniel, on June 5.
June 5, 1957
Dear Mr. President:
There is no better way for me to start the summer than for you to start it by writing me—and you pleased us both mightily by what you said about the children’s party for us and about Michael. He is the only source of energy I know of which equals the atom. After he had spent a month with us while his parents went around the world Alice reports saying to me “Don’t you miss Michael?” and my exhausted reply, “Not yet.” I feel sure that if he ever landed in the White House no puzzled countryman would have to ask, “I wonder who lives there now?”
The boys finally twisted my arm until I agreed to be Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee appointed by your Advisory Committee, about which you telegraphed me. Charlie Murphy was eager to have me do it because, he said, the party was getting over the foolish attitude of backing away from the Truman administration and that I would help the reform by joining the Committee. What the Committee can do still puzzles me, but then if it doesn’t do anything it won’t do any harm, which for some Democrats these days is a big achievement. Paul Nitze has agreed to be Vice Chairman, which is fine and hard for him in view of the necessity of his School’s access to the State Dept. and the fact that the President of the University to which it belongs is Milton Eisenhower. So we shall see what can be done.
This recent flap about the Khrushchev interview is a good example of what I talked about once as “total diplomacy”—that the diplomacy of a democracy was not at all restricted to what the government did, including the disorderly performances of the Congress, but included the press, radio and television, the movies, churches, labor unions, business, women’s clubs, etc. Here comes C.B.S. blundering into the picture with three interviewers who act as though they had never finished the sixth grade and give Khrushchev more free propaganda—which he used admirably—than he could have obtained in a year. As I see it, he had only one point to make—which happened to be untrue but which he put over to the Queen’s taste—that the Russians were willing to “ban the bomb”, move out of Europe, get on with mutual travel and cultural exchanges, trade, etc., etc. but that the Americans seemed to be afraid to do so. Communism was, he said, bound to win and we knew it. So we remained frozen like frightened rabbits. All the early part of the interview where he flubbed around with the agricultural situation, about which he clearly knew little, gave the impression—and was intended to—of a simple, honest fellow doing the best he could with great problems. He gets the prize for 1957 and CBS gets the dunce cap—and probably a big boost in income.
I shall, of course, be with you on the sixth of July. Alice says she has “every hope of being with me.” I ask what that means to which she replies with exasperating calm that it is too early for her to say absolutely that she can come. So I shall make a plane reservation for her anyway and, if the temperature is under a hundred I think she’ll go.
I am doing a piece for a European magazine on NATO which I think you will like and will send along soon. Our most affectionate greetings to Mrs. Truman and to you.
As ever,
Dean
P.S. Since writing this the radio has told us that Margaret has given you the only gift remaining to make your happiness complete. Our warmest congratulations and every good wish to Margaret and the grandson. The poor father is always neglected on these occasions, so w
e include him, too. D.
Truman is upset about the impersonal message from Eisenhower which the Administrator of General Services had read during the Truman Library dedication ceremony. It was clear to Truman and others that Eisenhower still bore grudges against Truman, largely because of things said and done during the 1952 campaign. Frank McKinney is a former DNC Chair.
July 10, 1957
Dear Dean:
I’m very much perturbed because I think I treated you and Alice like step children last Saturday. I hope you know that would not happen intentionally. The sun, the day and everything went off much more happily than I hoped it would go.
I hope you were impressed with Ike’s telegram to the peepul! What in hell makes some of us tick? Maybe you and I could find out if they’d let us.
It has rained every day since the dedication. I am as happy as I can be that the sun did shine.
Frank McKinney was here. Dean, he has a boy, named for him, who wants to go to Yale. He’s late starting for entrance. Wish you’d get him in. He has a remarkable scholastic background as well as an acrobatic one—He won some world championships in Australia.
My effort for the study of Presidential papers seems to be working.
My best to Alice and to you.
Harry
Acheson is puzzled why a copy of the Milwaukee Journal for May 3, 1957, carrying an account of the Senate funeral services for Senator Joseph McCarthy, was put in the sealed container that would go in the Truman Library’s cornerstone. “That paper won’t go in the box …,” Truman told the press the day the outrage was discovered. “Someone just didn’t know what he was doing when he put that in there.” Actually, Truman had intended to include a copy of the Journal, a newspaper he admired. The copy the Journal staff sent to Truman for the cornerstone was dated May 3 and happened to carry a headline about Joseph McCarthy, who had died the day before. Truman, meanwhile, had changed his mind at the last minute, deciding to include only local newspapers, but this decision was not conveyed to his assistant, so the Journal stayed on the list of items for the cornerstone. The big problem was not the McCarthy headline, but the fact that the list of items was read aloud to the crowd in front of the library on dedication day, and the Journal was identified as the newspaper “with the headline ‘Senate Prepares Rites for McCarthy.’ ”
July 10, 1957
Dear Mr. President:
My curiosity cannot stand the strain another day. What is the true story of the Milwaukee Sentinel’s [sic] edition on McCarthy appearing on the list of contents for the cornerstone? I felt as I have at some weddings when the minister invites anyone so inclined to louse up the proceedings.
The dedication was a great occasion. I hope it gave you and Mrs. Truman some sense of the respect and affection which is felt for you both.
As ever,
Dean
P.S. Is the Fed. Res. Bank Bldg. address still official? D.
P.P.S. Your note has come since I finished this. Put all those worries about us out of your mind. We wouldn’t have missed the party. It never occurred to us that we were step-children. We are honest-to-God family and don’t have to be fussed over. What luck it was that the rain held off and what further luck to have some now. We are having a bad drought. For gardeners like Alice and me that is real trouble.
Frank spoke to me about his boy who certainly has all the qualifications. He said that he would give me further details. The trouble is that the boy waited until we have accepted a good many more than we can take—some always drop out. But the entrance authorities can’t tell until the returns are in. I shall do what I can. D.
Truman is pleased that legislation authorizing the Library of Congress to arrange and microfilm its large collection of presidential papers has passed in the House of Representatives. He had testified in its favor on June 21. The bill was signed into law on August 16. Truman loved history, studied it all his life, and was grateful for all it had given him. He wrote in his memoirs, “My debt to history is one which cannot be calculated.” He wanted historians to write objective accounts based on careful research in documentary resources, not on political bias. He believed some nineteenth-century historians, especially those from Whig New England, had presented unfairly negative accounts of such Presidents as Jefferson and Jackson.
July 16, 1957
Dear Dean:
You’ll never know how happy you made me feel when you wrote me that you and Alice had not been treated as “step children.”
It was a hell-of-a-day, and the reason for it was that there was an objective. Just had a letter from John McCormack informing me that the legislation authorizing the indexing and microfilming of Presidential papers has past! [sic]
If Hoover, those Republican Congressmen, Knowland and our Democrats had not been asked, it wouldn’t have happened. We’ve accomplished something that should have been done two generations ago.
I’ll send the telegram you suggest. Wish I could tell you all the maneuvers I’ve been making to place the history of the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Departments in a position that young students can understand.
You know I’m no scholar in any line—but I do know that our history and the men who made it have been left in the lurch. The New England historians saw to that. Why so called Puritans find it so hard to stay with truth when it is against them. That is the reason I’m so interested in having all the facts as we know them available. Maybe I am a nut on the subject. If I am I hope you’ll bear with me.
Historians, those who edit news stories and even men who think they know facts, have to be studied and their errors put in the proper light.
I sent the wire day letter.
Sincerely,
Harry Truman
The Western World article Truman refers to was titled “A Vital Necessity for America and Europe.” Western World, which advertised itself as “the first bilingual transatlantic magazine,” was published in Brussels, Belgium, from May 1957 to March 1960. It was absorbed by the European Atlantic Review in January 1961. He actually read a condensed version that ran as a syndicated column, titled, “Is NATO a Lost Cause? Kill NATO and Doom Europe, Ex-Secretary Acheson Says.” Acheson argued against the point of view, recently put forward to former State Department colleague George F. Kennan, famed formulator of the Truman administration’s containment policy, that Germany should be neutralized and unified, and that the United States and the Soviet Union should both withdraw from Europe.
August 5, 1957
Dear Dean:
Your article from The Western World, of which I have just received a transcript, is a great one.
Whenever you put out something of this kind, it is always great, in my book.
Sincerely yours,
Harry S. Truman
Acheson asks Truman to write to certain congressmen in support of President Eisenhower’s budget request for the Development Loan Fund, which was the agency charged with what was called Point Four foreign aid to underdeveloped countries during Truman’s administration. Truman immediately did as Acheson asked. Albert Sidney Johnson Carnahan was a Democratic Representative from Missouri.
August 6, 1957
Dear Mr. President:
We must, I believe, strike another blow to help this incompetent administration by getting some obstreperous Democrats back on the reservation. The enclosed memorandum explains the situation which has arisen in the House concerning the proposed Development Loan Fund in the Mutual Security bill now before the Congress.
It would be most helpful if you would make a statement on the Fund after the Conferees have reported and before the bill comes to the House floor. This probably will be Thursday or Friday of this week. I have attached a draft for you to consider.
The statement might be made in reply to a request made by Speaker Rayburn, John McCormack, or Representative Carnahan, who handled the bill on the floor for the Foreign Affairs Committee and is a member of the Conferees and, presumably, will handle the Conference reports. Carnah
an will give me a specific recommendation tomorrow which I shall pass along to you.
Your generous note about my article has just come. It has given me a real lift.
Sincerely,
Dean
Acheson writes Truman about legislation that became the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil-rights legislation passed since Reconstruction. Congress had refused, despite Truman’s most ardent efforts, to pass civil-rights legislation during his administration. Truman was able to desegregate the armed forces and the government civil service through executive order.
August 14, 1957
Dear Mr. President:
Thank you very much for having sent the letter to Congressman Carnahan, with copies to Sam, Lyndon and John McCormack.
After I wrote you, as a result of Sam’s canvassing the field it was decided to strike out the loan authority altogether, and merely authorize appropriations for two years. All those concerned, therefore, thought that as this rather disappointing compromise would go through Congress without much help, they would not use your support now but would save it for what may be the very tough period when it comes to the actual appropriation itself. When the time comes they are to let me know and I shall get you on the telephone. The same letter can be used with some very minor changes toward the end of making it appropriate to the new situation. Everybody is most grateful for your willingness to help.
I think you will be interested in a copy of a letter to Lyndon which I wrote him today at his request. He and Sam have been having real difficulty with some of the Northern liberals, although I think most of them are now beginning to see the light. He wanted a letter which would express what I had been saying to him the other day, that the bill is not a mere compromise, not a second-rate article which has to be taken in lieu of something better, but is in reality a better bill than the one originally proposed. It will be a tragedy of the greatest order if well meaning but ignorant people are made the dupes of cynical politicians to destroy this really fine effort.
Affection and Trust: The Personal Correspondence of Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson, 1953-1971 Page 21
