The Elms Hotel, a secluded resort in Excelsior Springs, offered Harry S. Truman a place to disappear from the crowds and press on election night in 1948. The hotel also carried a personal history: sixteen years earlier, Truman had gone there crushed by the news that Tom Pendergast had not chosen him for governor. On the night of his presidential campaign, the same retreat became a quiet vantage point from which to follow a contest that commentators still expected him to lose.

Setting and Reputation

The three-story hotel, built of stone and timber, occupied a site where mineral springs had been discovered in the 1880s. Several hotels had stood there over time; seclusion, peace, and quiet were its chief attractions. Franklin D. Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller, and Al Capone were among those known to have used the Elms to escape public view. On Truman’s November election night, the hotel was nearly deserted, making it well suited to a President trying to avoid notice.

A Retreat with a Political Past

Truman’s return to the hotel echoed an earlier moment of political defeat. Sixteen years before the election-night visit, he had sought refuge there after learning that Pendergast had not selected him as his choice for governor. The book places the two visits in deliberate contrast: the earlier retreat followed a disappointment within Missouri politics; the later one came as Truman awaited returns in a national contest whose outcome remained uncertain.

Election Night at the Hotel

Truman left his home through the kitchen door and rode away in a black Secret Service Ford without attracting attention. The agents took him to Excelsior Springs and selected rooms on the third floor at the end of a rear corridor. He had left without luggage, so the hotel manager lent him a bathrobe and slippers. After a steam bath and rubdown, Truman had a ham-and-cheese sandwich and a glass of buttermilk sent to his room, then turned on the bedside radio.

The returns offered no immediate reassurance. Near midnight, Truman heard NBC commentator H. V. Kaltenborn acknowledge that the President was ahead by 1.2 million votes but declare that he was still undoubtedly beaten. Truman switched off the radio and went back to sleep. Around four in the morning, Secret Service agent Jim Rowley woke him with word that the tide had changed. Truman turned on the radio again as reports put him two million votes ahead, though Kaltenborn continued to doubt that the remaining state returns could carry him to victory.

Narrative Significance

The Elms Hotel’s role in the account rests on its contrast between privacy and national attention. In the empty resort, Truman could sleep while the returns accumulated and the radio’s confident predictions lagged behind the vote. The setting also connects the election-night suspense to an earlier low point in his political career: a place once associated with the disappointment of not being chosen for governor became the refuge from which he received news that his presidential campaign was turning in his favor.