THE PRESIDENCY: The Most Wonderful Thing

At 7:40 a.m., Harry, Bess and Margaret Truman drove down to the station through the quiet streets of Independence. Most of the neighbors were still sleeping late after a hard night’s celebration. But Harry Truman was ruddy-faced, fresh and rested.

He joked and chatted with some 150 friends who turned out to cheer at the station. Then the “Truman Victory Special” chuffed away through the President’s native Missouri on its last triumphant ride. Small towns flashed by in a blur of smiling faces and waving handkerchiefs; farmers saluted from the fields.

“Open the Gates.” In victory, Harry Truman was happy and humble. He visited reporters in the press car, laughingly chided them for their bum guesses. At Missouri’s drab state capital, Jefferson City, he quieted the cheers of several thousand well-wishers. “After the election’s over,” he said, “I bear no malice or feel badly toward anyone, because the fellow who lost feels badly enough without being crowed over . . . This is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to a man. But this is a terrible responsibility and you must stand behind me.”

At St. Louis’ gloomy, cavernous Union Station, 10,000 people pushed and shouted for a look at him, but many were blocked in the concourse by glass doors. Through a microphone on the rear platform, Harry Truman shouted: “Let the people behind those bars get in if they want to. Open the gates! Open the gates!”

The gates were opened and the crowd swirled around the train. Someone handed the President a copy of an early election-night edition of the Truman-hating Chicago Tribune with a banner line: DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN, and he held up the paper to the crowd, grinning.

On Every Perch. Washington, which months ago had abandoned Harry Truman to the Dewey landslide, now pulled itself together fast. It was set to stage one of the biggest of its conquering heroes’ welcomes. Government workers and schoolchildren were let out for the event; hours before the President’s train arrived, every perch and post on the hero’s highway of Pennsylvania Avenue was taken. Police estimated the crowd at 750,000.

Ranking Government officials, who had left Harry Truman to mourn alone at what they thought would be his own wake, now scrambled for places at the trainside. Outwardly, at least, the President was forgiving & forgetting. He even had a smile for South Carolina’s Senator Olin D. Johnston, a pioneer of the Southern civil rights revolt, who said he voted for the President.

Then Harry Truman rode in glory through the thunder of applause to the White House.* From the north portico, he told the cheering crowd: “It is overwhelming. It makes a man study and wonder whether he is worthy of the confidence, worthy of the responsibility which has been thrust upon him.”

* Last week, the White House was closed to all sightseeing tours and big social events. Reason: repairs. The great marble staircase, supported by crumbling bricks, is unsafe. Officials say the third floor is a firetrap. Later, the Trumans probably will move across the street to Blair House while repairs are completed.