President Harry S Truman example essay topic

During the vast presidential history of the United States only few men have brought so much to Americas culture, political beliefs, ideas of foreign policy and respect of the presidency. President Harry S Truman was one of those men. From his humble beginnings in Missouri to the most powerful position in the world Truman left a trail of leadership and strength behind him. During his time in civil service he along with a brilliant staff combated many of the popular evils of his time. In 1884 Harry Truman was born.

He was delivered in a room where there was barely any space for a bed. The attending physician, Dr. W.L. Griffin, received a fee of $15, and to celebrate the occasion the new father planted a seedling pine in the front yard. It wasn't for another month that the doctor registered the child into the clerk's office up the street, and even when he did the baby remained nameless. The problem was the middle name hey didn't know whether to honor her father or his.

Finally they came to a compromise and chose S. This could stand for either Solomon or Shipp. His first name would be Harry after his Uncle Harrison. Harry S Truman would finally be. Harry Truman liked to say in later years that he had the happiest childhood imaginable.

Most of his childhood included his grandfather taking him riding side in a horse drawn cart, and hunting for bird nests while gathering wild strawberries. While in school kids made fun of his glasses as most kids do. These occurrences probably didn't have a lot to do with him becoming president but it is important to see that he had a normal life as a child. His family wasn't rich, he didn't receive the best schooling, but he had love from his family and siblings and that might have been a important factor. As a boy the first and most memorable political event for young Harry was the day of Grover Cleveland's second victory, in 1892. As Truman grew older his father john decided that it was about time Harry started to concentrate on his studies.

He grew dutifully, conspicuously studious, spending long afternoons in the town library watched over by a white plaster bust of Ben Franklin... The library contained two thousand volumes, Harry and his friend Charlie Ross vowed to read all of them. The influence of his teachers on his life, Harry later said was second only to that of his mother. Unlike Harry Vivian Harry's brother was a strong ox of a boy with a good sense of selling cattle, and therefore John Truman made him a partner.

Where Harry and his father did find common ground was in the sociability and excitement of politics. Some of the happiest of Harry's memories was when he and his father attended the big democratic picnics. Harry's life was well on its way to college until tragedy struck. John Truman's run of luck on wheat futures had ended, and began to loose heavily that same summer of 1901.

To recover his losses he kept risking more money until they had lost 40,000 dollars in cash, stocks, and personal property. At age 51 John Truman was wiped out. And so weren't Harry's chances of going to college. The Truman's never gave up though, Harry realized that he wouldn't go to college at this time so he went to work.

He did everything from a mail clerk to a bank vault clerk. Until 1905 when he joined the National Guard. This was Truman's break he had always wanted to join the military and he was moving quickly in the ranks. Soon he was named corporal", the biggest promotion I had ever received". While in the National Guard He learned to be a leader and allocate responsibility. After his stint in the National guard he went back to work on the farm where he met an intriguing young women that shared many of Harry's interests.

After countless love letters and many trips to the theatre Bess finally said yes. They were engaged in 1913. The year is now 1917 and the Wilson had asked congress to declare war. It was a decision that would affect Harry Truman's life forever. He had been out of the National Guard for 6 years now and his eyesight was anything but keen, but he still believed that it was " a job somebody had to do.

Harry was stepping onto a battlefield with the machine gun, automatic rifles, tanks, poison gas and flame-throwers. He had little trouble rejoining the National Guard and went immediately to work organizing a new artillery battery. He expected to be made a sergeant, instead he was elected first lieutenant. He was never elected anything until now. Later he was sent over sees and wrote to bess, his mother and sister religiously. He quieted their fears and told them he was happy wherever he was.

He soon made captain and was becoming quite proud of his work with the soldiers. In the time allotted, captain Truman had transformed what had been generally considered the worst battery in the regiment to what was clearly one of the best. When he returned home from the war he and Bess finally got married and the first chapter of his great adventure was over. On the trip home from France Harry wrote to bess...

Well be married anywhere you say at any time you mention... and if you want only one person or the whole town I don't care as long as you make it quickly after my arrival. After the war and the marriage Harry went into business with Eddie Jacobson. They set up a men's clothing shop that would fail miserably. Harry blamed the republicans in Washington.

During the war Harry made many acquaintances one of them was a young man named Jimmy Pendergast. Jim Pendergast was a part of the huge Pendergast political machine. The family offered Harry a run at his first political job. The job was a judges position in Jackson county. Harry accepted without hesitation. Truman won the office convincingly.

The victory was overshadowed by the influence of the Ku Klux Clan. The group was growing and it was in the best interests if Harry join. At first Truman accepted the advice and gave the membership fee of ten dollars. In a meeting with the clan organ iz re Truman learned that he would never be allowed to hire Catholics. Truman cut the meeting short stating that he commanded a mostly Catholic battery, and he would give jobs to who ever he believed deserved them. Truman was then ten dollars richer.

This just comes to show how ethically bound Truman was and that he would never allow politics and the power it brought get in the way of his own values. Harry won the position without having support of the Ku Klux Clan. In 1924 Harry faced his first defeat and then one of his greatest victories. When Harry Truman ran for reelection it was a dismal time for democrats, and especially for the pendergast machine. Truman ran up against a republican named Henry Rummel, an old harness maker. While the two factions of the democratic party were fighting with each other rather than trying to win the election, the republicans took the office without a problem.

The second greatest day of Truman's life was the arrival of his daughter in the midst of a snowstorm on February 17, 1924. The first being his wedding day. In 1926 he ran for presiding judge, and since pendegrast and Shannon had patched up their differences Harry one by a huge margin, 16 thousand votes to be exact. And in 1930 he ran again and won by 58 thousand votes. Harry Truman was on his way. During his years of service to Jackson County Harry Truman was partly responsible for many big events in his county.

A hospital was built for the aged and infirm, a girls home for Negroes, a new Kansas City courthouse, and a new Independence Courthouse. After his long reign of public service in Jackson county ran out there was little Truman could do other than go into another business. One option was to find another political office one that was preferably higher. Fortunately a very large opportunity opened up for Truman, a seat in the U.S. Senate. The Republican incumbent Roscoe Patterson, was up for reelection. With the Roosevelt tide running so strongly across the nation there was not likely to be much difficulty about beating him.

Truman campaigned hard despite running out of money and being attacked because of his ties with Pendergast. The head of the Missouri farmer's organization called him a bellhop. With the help of the Pendergast machine once again the election was easy. On January 2nd, 1935 Vice president Garner swore him into the senate. He was one of 96 members of one of the most powerful institutions in the world.

The first year of Trumans time in the senate was a rocky one. He had a reputation for being a puppet to Pendergast, he couldn't afford to bring his wife and child into Washington, and he himself could hardly live there. Unlike his coworkers he had no job which to fall back on. He spent many nights in hotels where he did most of his work.

He fell ill and spent many days in a hospital. It wasn't till his second year that he began to make a name for himself in the senate. There were two main reasons for his improvement in the Senate. First his committee work became more purposeful and began to bear some fruit.

He used his qualities of straight dealing, willingness to work to become somewhat of a junior member of the core of the Senate. In 1936 a weight was lifted off Trumans shoulders as the pendergast were convicted of fraud within the 1936 elections. Four years later Truman faced one of his greatest challenges in Politics. He was up fro reelection and he had no machine to back him. I realized that if I was going to win, I had to go out and beat the bushes, which I did. A great help that aided Truman to win the second term in the Senate was his position of Grand Master of the masons.

Truman's work, during the three and a half years which he served as a second term senator, was almost wholly concentrated upon his chairmanship of the special committee to investigate the National Defense Program. Mostly it was known as the Truman Committee. In consequence it gave him a national reputation and for the first time made his name known outside Missouri and the Senate. Many highly respected periodicals were mentioning his name as a important individual to not only to America but also to the war effort. Some of those magazines include Time and Look. It was estimated that the committee saved the nation 15 billion dollars.

Without the Committee he would have never been a possibility for the Vice presidential nomination in 1944. As Truman eased his way into the Vice Presidency he found himself more board than he's ever been. He was vicariously victorious, highly likely to be Presedint within a year or two, un briefed but untroubled by any attempt to brief him, and probably less occupied than he had been at any time in the previous 5 years. So ended an era and so began another.

-Allen Drury In minutes the bulletin had reached every part of the country and much of the world. Franklin Roosevelt had died of a cerebral hemorrhage in warm Springs, Georgia. Truman was sworn in 2 hours later. With the war in its soon to be final stages Truman gave the go to end the war by using the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, August 6th 1945 and then 3 days later after not hearing any word of surrender dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki.

He justified these killing machines by saying many more men would have been lost in a invasion of Japan. Truman wanted to end the war and bring the boys home. Once the boys were home the Truman Presidency faced its first potential problem. President Truman was Sensitive to the fact that the war had interrupted the struggle in the United States to decide how the New Deal initiatives would be worked out. With the help of Chairman Julius A. Krug of the War Production Board there was an increase in the production of selected civilian goods.

Krug not only encouraged production for peacetime uses; he also removed more than one- third of the War Productions Board's governing industry. On September 6th the President made a larger step at reconversion by setting forth a program of twenty one points in that he includes better unemployment compensation, increasing minimum wage, tax reductions, regulation of atomic energy, and a increase in public works. Not all of these went through but these ideals are a component that vaulted him into his second term as president. In 1948 he won his second term and now with the coming of the Cold War he had to focus on foreign lands instead of at home.

Truman needed some good players in the game against Communism so he went scouting. Trumans choice to implement foreign policy was the illustrious World War 2 army chief of staff, George C. Marshall, who had rendered valiant if unsuccessful service in 1946 in negotiating between Nationalist and Communist forces in China. Another major player in the foreign policy of The United States was George Kennan his idea of containment iced the way things were going to happen for the decades to come. Its first test came when Russia was on the verge of taking Turkey and Greece. Under secretary Dean Acheson and others in the State Department moved rapidly in urging action. On March 12th The president gave a speech and emphasized that Greece and Turkey were in danger of having totalitarian regime's imposed on them.

Therefor, it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted by armed minorities or by outside pressure. The plan Truman implemented called for 400 million dollars and a United States civilian army to conduct supervisory, training, and reconstruction tasks. This program was popularly called the Truman Doctrine. What it meant was the United States would become a world savior to all those being subjugated to any totalitarian government or oppression.

George C Marshall would inmate the sequel to the Truman Doctrine, it was called the Marshall Plan. It said America would give foreign aid to Europe to help with reconstruction. There is no doubt that, however, that during the life span of the Economic Cooperation Administration-from 1948 to 1951-the more than 13 billion spent by the United States (as well as American advice and pressure) had a substantial impact. Foreign Policy was not the only thing on Truman's plate. In 1949 and 1950 Truman's fair deal was the center of attention.

It ini ated a stron civil rights argument and Truman wrote" We shall win the civil rights battle just as we one the election". Truman stepped up the appointment of blacks to significant federal positions. In October 1949 the president signed a bill providing for construction of a hospital in Albuquerque that would integrate medical facilities for Indians and non-Indians. Other impressive triumphs in civil rates came from the establishment of the (FEB) or, which gave minorities equal treatment in federal hiring. It could be said Truman was the father of the civil rights movement. While the chinese Communists were entering the final stages of conquering the nationalists the policy of containment increased.

In 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was born. It was an alliance of the "free countries" of the war against any aggression. If any country acted against NATO they would have to deal with the entire alliance. Russia countered with the implication of the Warsaw Pact.

The cold war was heating up once again. With the loss of China to Communism the United States would for the last time under Truman become the policeman. The National Security Council advised the president that the United States should meet apparent communist threats in Asia. A major effect of this document was the Korean War. On July 7th the security Council voted to designate a commander for UN forces in Korea under the UN flag.

Truman named General Macarthur to be commander of the campaign. The Korean War had a great and lasting impact on the Global Cold war. Beyond the fact that the war was fought to a standstill in Korea. The most lasting impression was the relationship between China and the U.S. After it was all said and done the border between North Korea and South Korea stayed the same and therefore many saw it as a bittersweet war. On January 15th 1953 there were many farewells.

The most touching was the broadcast to the American People that included wishes for the success of President Eisenhower and a plea to support the new president. What Truman has done in his time is use his values and decision making around the world to try and make it better. With foreign policy initiatives such as the Marshall plan, Truman Doctrine and NSC 68, his presidency touched the globe. On domestic issues with the Fair Deal he took a hard stand at creating a more equal society, racially and economically. Truman should be known as a great President, a loving Husband and father and a dedicated American.