Seventy-two years ago today: Harry Truman scores upset victory in 1948 presidential election

(Seventy-two years ago today, Missouri's only president, Lamar native Harry S. Truman pulled off the greatest upset victory in U. S. history defeating New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, as well as third party candidates Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace. The following is reprinted from my book The Buck Starts Here: Harry S. Truman and the City of Lamar.)

The prospect of Truman being elected seemed dim as 1948 arrived. Three years had passed and the glow of the final victory over the Axis powers had dimmed.

Truman’s Democratic Party was fractured by defections of members from the Deep South who were angered by the president’s decision to integrate the armed forces and eliminate discrimination in federal hiring practices and by the decision made following a fiery speech by Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey at the National Convention in Philadelphia to add a civil rights plank to the Democratic Party Platform.

The Dixiecrats, as they called themselves, backed the candidacy of South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond.

Also departing were some in the far left wing of the party, who backed the Progressive Party candidate, Henry Wallace, the vice president who had been jilted four years earlier when Roosevelt added Truman to the ticket.

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The Buck Starts Here: Harry S. Truman and the City of Lamar is available at the Lamar Democrat and the Truman Birthplace in Lamar, Pat's Books in Carthage, and Always Buying Books, Changing Hands Book Shoppe and The Book Guy in Joplin, as well as in paperback and e-book formats from Amazon at the links below.

With the Democrats appearing hopelessly split, the Republican candidate, once again New York Governor Thomas Dewey, seemed destined to be the next president.

Dewey adopted a rocking chair approach to campaigning, trying to avoid making mistakes by holding few campaign events, figuring all he had to do was play it safe and he would be elected.

Truman used the same tactics he used from his earliest days running for office in Jackson County- he took his case to the people.

The only way to ensure Truman could as meet as many people as possible was by train. He decided on a well-publicized campaign tour on a special train, the Ferdinand Magellan, where he would speak at each stop from the rear platform of the observation car.

Truman explained the reasoning for his whistle stop tour to biographer Merle Miller:

I just got on a train and started across the country to tell people what was going on. I wanted to talk them face-to-face.

When you get on the television, you’re wearing a lot of powder and paint that somebody else put on your face and you haven’t even combed your own hair.

But when you’re standing right there in front of them and talking to them and shaking their hands if it’s possible, the people can tell whether you’re telling them the facts or not.

The whistle stop tours covered most of the nation and included a swing through Missouri in late September.

Lamar was not one of the stops. The closest the tour came to Lamar was Neosho about 50 miles away. It also made stops at Monett and Springfield.

Five thousand people greeted Truman when he arrived in Neosho 8 p.m. Wednesday, September 29, about 40 minutes late.

The crowd applauded as a smiling, waving Truman emerged on the platform, accompanied by Bess and Margaret.

“I have spent a lot of time in Neosho,” he said, “but then I didn’t create so much commotion.”

It did not take long for Truman to give the audience what it had been waiting for- a full-throated attack on the Republicans.

“The real issue of this campaign is special privilege against the common people. The good-for-nothing Republican 80th Congress provided this and I am asking you to give me a Democratic Congress so that I can get something done for the people.”

As the train pulled out of Neosho, Truman shouted, “I’ll come back when I can stay longer.”

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When the Chicago Daily Tribune jumped the gun with its infamous “Dewey defeats Truman” headline and Truman held the newspaper aloft at the St. Louis Union Station, it guaranteed Truman’s victory would be recorded in history as one of the great political upsets.

In truth, it was anything but that.

Not only was the election not even close, but the idea that Dewey was an overwhelming favorite to win was created by a number of misconceptions.

Twelve years earlier, a Literary Digest poll famously said Kansas Gov. Alf Landon would defeat Roosevelt by a final margin of 57 percent to 32 percent of the vote and prevent him from earning a second term.

After Roosevelt received just under 61 percent of the vote and received 523 electoral votes to eight for Landon, an examination of the poll showed its fatal flaw- though the magazine took a wide sampling, it consisted of people who subscribed to the magazine, had telephones or owned automobiles. In other words, the people who were surveyed had more money than the average American citizen.

The same flaws existed in 1948, though not quite as pronounced. Not only did the polls still tilt toward the well to do, but they vastly underrepresented minority voters.

Truman’s electoral doom was forecast when the Democratic Party split into three segments with some casting their lot with Strom Thurmond and others with Henry Wallace.

The defections actually served to strengthen Truman’s hand. When the Dixiecrats bolted because of Truman and the Democratic Party platform’s principled stand on civil rights, it greatly increased Truman’s support among the black community, something that went unnoticed in the polls.

Surprisingly, the Wallace wing’s defection harmed Dewey more than it did Truman. Those joining Wallace’s quixotic bid for the presidency, included those who were on the far left wing, including Communist sympathizers, blocking Dewey and the Republicans from making a credible claim that the Democratic Party was the party of communism.

Those factors, combined with Dewey’s decision not to take the battle to Truman and the Democrats and Truman’s aggressive style of campaigning, in retrospect, make it hard to see how the result could have been different.

When the final vote was recorded, Truman was easily elected with 303 electoral votes to 189 for Dewey, 39 for Thurmond and none for Wallace.

Truman won 28 states and 24,179,347 votes to 16 states and 21,991,292 votes for Dewey and four states and 1,175,930 votes for Thurmond.

Unlike in 1944, when even Truman’s vice presidential nomination speech in Lamar was unable to convince Barton County voters to support the Roosevelt-Truman ticket, four years later, the team of Truman and Alben Barkley had no problem capturing the city or county.

In Barton County, Truman received 2,962 votes to 2,554 for Dewey, reversing the result of the 1944 election when Dewey won the county.

Lamar voters chose the Truman-Barkley ticket by a 955-629 margin.

In the pages of the Lamar Democrat, Madeleine Aull VanHafften seemed practically giddy in her description of Democratic victories nationwide, in Missouri and in Lamar and Barton County.

No longer can the Dixiecrats, the crackpot Wallace forces and the various lunatic fringes point to the Democratic Party as decadent and predict the rise of two, possibly three parties from the ashes of its pyre.

And best of all, it seemed to us, was the vote of confidence and pride extended to the native son by the voters of Barton County and the City of Lamar.