Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) - $375.00

Harry S. Truman
33th President of the United States
Typed Letter Signed as President

HARRY S. TRUMAN (1884-1972). 33rd President of the U.S. was born into a farmer’s family in MO. Truman served in the Missouri National Guard in 1915. He later was called into Federal service and sent to France where he was promoted to Captain and given command of the regiment’s Battery D. He and his unit saw action in the Vosges, Saint Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne campaigns. Truman joined the reserves after the war, rising eventually to the rank of colonel.

He sought to return to active duty at the outbreak of World War II, but Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall declined his offer to serve. Truman was elected in 1922, to be a judge of the Jackson County Court. His duties were administrative rather than judicial. Truman built a reputation for honesty and efficiency in the management of county affairs. He was defeated for reelection in 1924, but won election as presiding judge in the Jackson County Court in 1926. He won reelection in 1930. In 1934, Truman was elected to the United States Senate. He had significant roles in the passage into law of the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 and the Transportation Act of 1940. After being reelected in 1940, Truman gained national prominence as chairman of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. This committee, which came to be called the Truman Committee, sought with considerable success to ensure that defense contractors delivered to the nation quality goods at fair prices.

In July 1944, Truman was nominated to run for Vice President with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. On January 20, 1945, he took the vice-presidential oath, and after President Roosevelt’s unexpected death only eighty-two days later on April 12, 1945, he was sworn in as the nations’ thirty-third President.

During his few weeks as Vice President, Harry S Truman scarcely saw President Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman’s to solve when, on April 12, 1945, he became President. He told reporters, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.
1947 as the Soviet Union pressured Turkey and, through guerrillas, threatened to take over Greece, he asked Congress to aid the two countries, enunciating the program that bears his name–the Truman Doctrine. The Marshall Plan, named for his Secretary of State, stimulated spectacular economic recovery in war-torn western Europe.
When the Russians blockaded the western sectors of Berlin in 1948, Truman created a massive airlift to supply Berliners until the Russians backed down. Meanwhile, he was negotiating a military alliance to protect Western nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, established in 1949. In June 1950, when the Communist government of North Korea attacked South Korea, Truman conferred promptly with his military advisers. There was, he wrote, “complete, almost unspoken acceptance on the part of everyone that whatever had to be done to meet this aggression had to be done. There was no suggestion from anyone that either the United Nations or the United States could back away from it.”
A one page, Typed Letter Signed on THE WHITE HOUSE Stationery, May 12, 1948, President Harry S. Truman sends a thank you to the Smiths of Vienna, VA, for their friendly birthday wishes. The page is fully intact. There is SLIGHT age discoloration of roughly 1/8 th of an inch on the edges & the middle fold. None affecting the letter’s content nor the President’s large signature in black ink. $375.00

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