Years later, President Truman wrote in a letter to his
daughter, Margaret:
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"Sunday I went to up Gettysburg and went all over the battlefield. You know it is one of the great military contests of history. I stood on the spot where General Robert E. Lee stood while the famous and immortal Pickett made his charge. The charge that was to win or lose the third days' battle. It lost, and I wondered what "Marse Robert" thought when the remnants of those battalions came straggling back across the field. |
I picked two little flowers from the foot of the Virginia Monument which stands on the spot where Lee stood and I am sending them to you. They will remind you of how a great man takes a terrible defeat. Lee didn't blame anybody. He accepted the responsibility and stated that if there was any fault it was his, although two of his principal leaders had been remiss in their duties. Longstreet did not come up, and Ewell wouldn't move forward. Yet Lee blamed no one."
Harry Truman believed, like Lee, that a great leader accepts responsibility for his actions and decisions, and stands by them. He even had a plaque on his desk that said, "The Buck Stops Here."
As president, he remained his own man, and did not let the influence of powerful politicians sway his resolve. The knowledge and influence of his favorite leaders and the history he read was evident in his life. He found inspiration in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, and Plutarch's Lives, and never made difficult decisions until he had collected books and papers to analyze historical events that may have related to the situation.
He experienced many "firsts" that presidents now take for granted as "just part of the job." Harry was the first president to appear on television, invented in 1947. He remodeled the White House for the first time since it had been rebuilt by President Madison after the War of 1812. (See White House Renovation) He even added a balcony to the White House which future presidents have enjoyed.
He created NATO, the first multi-national alliance with Europe, Canada, and the U.S. and chartered the United Nations. He was the first U.S. president to recognize Israel as a sovereign state, and the first to offer financial aid and protection against communist intervention to war-torn countries of Europe after WWII with the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine. He made the executive decision to drop the first atomic bomb to end the War with Japan in 1945, and many other very difficult decisions as president.
Letters he wrote during his presidency show clearly how much he was influenced by his boyhood reading, and he often relied on the knowledge of history and the great men's lives he'd read about to help him think things through. Just before his retirement in January 1953, he wrote to his cousin, Mary Ethel Noland.
"No one knows what responsibility the Presidency puts on a man. He is the chief executive, commander in chief of the armed forces, the top man of his party, the social head of state, and the President of the United States. Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, Ghengis Khan, Louis IV, Napoleon, nor any other of the great historical figures had the power or the world influence of the President of the U.S.A. It bears down on a country boy. But I'm coming home Jan. 20th, 1953, and I hope to pull a Cincinnatus who was old George Washington's ideal." See resource page for other letters and articles about Harry's favorite books and heroes.
Harry Truman worked hard all his life to become the man he was. His strong work ethic and integrity served him well. His grandson, Clifton Truman Daniel said, "He learned from his experience falling off a rocking horse, when his father said, 'pick up that horse and get back on it again', rather than sympathize with him. My grandfather Harry would say, 'never give up, you can be whatever you want to be as long as you work hard, stay honest, and keep your dreams alive'."
