Dean Acheson
TrumanDean Acheson was Harry S. Truman’s most influential foreign-policy adviser and, from the beginning of the second term, Secretary of State. He helped frame decisions on aid to Europe, the hydrogen bomb, and Korea, while serving as Truman’s interpreter of world events and chief negotiator. Their working relationship grew into a close friendship that survived the presidency, shaped Truman’s post-presidential writing, and lasted until Acheson’s death.
Appointment and place in the administration
When George C. Marshall wished to retire, Truman chose Acheson to succeed him as Secretary of State. Truman made the offer privately at Blair House shortly after Thanksgiving. Acheson was initially speechless and said he was not qualified for the office. Truman answered that he could say the same of himself—or of any man—and made the question whether Acheson would do the job. The exchange captured the directness of their relationship: Truman did not pretend the task was easy, but asked for service rather than a claim of expertise.
Acheson’s place in the Cabinet was unusually prominent. He ran the Department of State and its twenty-two thousand employees, but his role extended well beyond administration. He was Truman’s continuous contact with the world: reporting and interpreting events, negotiating for the United States, and speaking for the President on foreign policy. Truman had no equivalent of Woodrow Wilson’s Colonel Edward House or Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Harry Hopkins as a separate inside adviser or international troubleshooter. Instead, he wanted a clear, direct connection with Acheson. Their relationship, the account emphasizes, was unimpeded.
Acheson’s influence rested in part on his ability to turn a broad emergency into a policy case that could be presented to the President and Congress. In February 1947, Truman asked him for a report by the following Monday. Acheson, Charles Bohlen, and others worked through the weekend in the old State Department, amid packing boxes for the department’s move to Foggy Bottom. Marshall and Acheson then urged immediate aid for Greece and, to a lesser degree, Turkey. The requested assistance for Greece alone amounted to a quarter of a billion dollars for the remainder of 1947.
Early that May, Truman sent Acheson to speak in his place at Delta State Teachers’ College in Cleveland, Mississippi. Acheson delivered the alarm Truman wanted sounded: Europe needed financial assistance, but the aim was not merely relief. Recovery required the revival of industry, agriculture, and trade. The preceding winter had brought Europe close to disaster, and the margin for survival was narrow. The plan that emerged could not be credited to one author. George F. Kennan, Bohlen, Acheson, Will Clayton, and others had contributed; Marshall praised Kennan’s work, while Clark Clifford emphasized Acheson’s. Clifford himself had been involved throughout, making the familiar shorthand of a Marshall Plan less adequate than the collaborative history behind it. Acheson later described the work as a moment when they had been “present at the creation.”
Policy work and institutional judgment
Acheson’s influence did not mean that advice was automatic or that policy emerged from a single office. The account presents major decisions as products of consultation among officials with different responsibilities. The Interim Committee on S-1, for example, was an entirely civilian, highly secret advisory body chaired by Henry L. Stimson. Its membership included scientists and officials with experience in defense research, the Navy, international trade, and finance. Stimson stressed that the committee could advise but could not decide: the responsibility for recommending a course to the President remained his alone.
The debate over the hydrogen bomb shows Acheson’s role changing as the issue moved between bodies and stages. On November 9, an advisory committee delivered a unanimous recommendation against developing the superbomb, alongside a concurring recommendation from the Atomic Energy Commission, whose vote had been three to two. The next day, Truman appointed Acheson, Louis A. Johnson, and David Lilienthal to a special National Security Council committee, later called the Z Committee, to advise whether to proceed and whether the matter should be publicized. At its final session, on January 31, 1950, in Room 216 of the Old State Department Building, Acheson took charge. Having concluded that work should proceed, he presented a draft statement for the President. The sequence reveals not a simple continuation of the first committee’s advice, but a further deliberation in which Acheson helped formulate a different recommendation.
Acheson’s political judgment also had a personal dimension. When reporters asked about Alger Hiss after Hiss’s conviction, Acheson did not withdraw his friendship. He had already acknowledged at his confirmation hearings that Hiss was his friend and that friendship was not easily given or withdrawn. Acheson stated publicly that he would not turn his back on Hiss whatever the outcome of an appeal. That declaration exposed him to political controversy, particularly as suspicion and accusation intensified in Washington.
Korea and conflict over military authority
When North Korea invaded South Korea, Acheson helped lead the administration’s first decisions. Truman later determined that Acheson would guide the meeting at which the immediate response was set out: Douglas MacArthur was to send arms and supplies to South Korea as quickly as possible, American civilians were to be evacuated under air cover, and the Seventh Fleet was to move from the Philippines to guard the Formosa Strait. Acheson’s part was not merely to relay military proposals; he helped organize the policy choices presented to the President.
He also opposed a call for a congressional war resolution. Averell Harriman urged Truman to seek one while public support remained strong. Acheson argued that it was unnecessary and unwise, and that the President should rely on his constitutional authority as Commander in Chief. He acknowledged that congressional approval would not itself be harmful, but feared that the process of obtaining it could do damage. The disagreement made visible the tension between strengthening political support and preserving the President’s ability to act promptly.
As the war became more dangerous, Acheson joined consultations over how to handle Douglas MacArthur. On April 6, 1951, Truman met with Marshall, Omar Bradley, Acheson, and Harriman. He asked what should be done without first stating his own view. Marshall urged caution, and Acheson agreed that the question was not only what to do but how to do it. At a subsequent meeting at Blair House, Acheson, Marshall, Bradley, and Harriman all agreed that MacArthur should be relieved. Truman spoke only after hearing each of them, then told Bradley to prepare the necessary papers. Earlier, despite anger over MacArthur’s conduct, Truman had chosen a restrained reprimand rather than dismissal. The message Acheson supported reminded MacArthur of the December 6 order requiring public statements to be cleared with Washington. Their counsel thus accompanied a gradual movement from restraint to a decisive assertion of civilian authority.
Acheson himself became a target of Joseph McCarthy. In a Senate speech lasting nearly three hours, McCarthy accused Acheson and Marshall of belonging to a Communist conspiracy and blamed them for China policy and the Korean War. The speech continued before an almost empty chamber, but its accusations contributed to what the book describes as a poisoned political atmosphere. Acheson’s prominence made him both a central architect of policy and a conspicuous object of attack.
Friendship, counsel, and legacy
Acheson understood the political moment surrounding Truman as well as the policy details. Before the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in March 1952, Alice Acheson asked whether the President might reveal his plans in his speech. Acheson judged that it was too early for Truman to announce he would not run again, while an announcement that he would run would disappoint many at the dinner. His forecast shows him attending not only to questions of government but also to timing, expectation, and the political meaning of a public appearance.
When Truman left office, the farewell luncheon for the Trumans was held at the Achesons’ home. Several hundred people gathered outside the red-brick house and cheered as Truman arrived. Friends, senators, Cabinet members, justices, generals, and ambassadors later crowded aboard the train to shake his hand. Asked about Truman, Acheson called him the best friend in the world and said there was nothing like him. Truman, in turn, praised Acheson’s role in uniting the free world and strengthening its resolve, placing him among the country’s greatest Secretaries of State and commending his cool courage and steady judgment.
Their connection deepened after Truman returned to Independence. He missed the company and intellectual stimulation of Acheson, and their letters became more frequent. Truman wrote from the heart and admitted that he sometimes wrote simply to receive a letter in return. Acheson also became an exacting reader of Truman’s memoirs. He advised him to emphasize his own life and ideas rather than lists of callers and activities that revealed little about him, and urged him to replace a dismissive phrase about State Department officials with wording that better represented Truman’s support for the career service. The criticism was practical and personal: Acheson wanted the book to show Truman more accurately, not merely to polish its phrasing.
Acheson continued to advise Truman directly. In a letter concerning the weeks ahead, he set out specific cautions, relying on the confidence their friendship allowed. Truman replied that he had tried to profit from the call and letter and thanked Acheson as a real friend and standby. Acheson also helped arrange Truman’s Oxford visit through his position on the Yale Corporation and wrote to Truman’s prospective host with a perceptive description of the former President. Their bond therefore endured as an exchange of political judgment, literary counsel, and affection after the formal authority of the White House had passed to someone else.
Acheson died of a heart attack at his farm in Sandy Spring, Maryland, on October 12, at the age of seventy-eight. When Bess Truman was informed, she said Truman would be deeply disturbed. The response confirmed how far their connection had outlasted official partnership: Acheson had become not simply the Secretary who helped Truman navigate crises, but one of the friends whose absence would be felt in his private life.
