Margaret Truman Daniel

Margaret Truman Daniel, the only child of Harry S. Truman and Bess Wallace Truman, occupied a distinctive place between her father’s public career and the Trumans’ carefully guarded private life. Her story in the book is told through family moments rather than a separate public career: a young woman studying while her father became President, an engagement she managed to keep secret, the arrival of her son, and her return to her father’s side in moments of illness and national mourning. Those episodes show both the intimacy of the family and the boundaries around it.

Family and White House Life

Harry S. Truman had wanted a son, but he made clear that he would not exchange Margaret for a houseful of boys. As she grew up, he called her “Skinny”—a family nickname he later explained in a letter to Dean Acheson. The affectionate name sat alongside an enduring parental investment in her life: he advised her about her singing and, years later, described himself as satisfied with her choice of husband so long as she wanted him.

When the Trumans moved into the White House, Margaret became its first young resident since the Wilson years. Her immediate concerns were those of a university student: she was attending George Washington University and was occupied with final exams. Her rooms were across the hall from Bess Wallace Truman’s, in a corner overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue. In her diary she recorded their pink walls, antique-white furniture, fireplace, mirror, and high ceilings. The domestic detail places her within the presidency’s household without making her a political actor in her own right.

The family’s routines remained modest and close-knit. In the evenings, Margaret’s parents relaxed together before dinner in the sitting hall, while Margaret occupied her own room across the hall. The book’s glimpses of her at home are brief, but they establish the family setting in which she remained a daughter rather than a public appendage to her father’s office.

Engagement and Marriage

In mid-March 1956, Margaret announced her engagement to Elbert Clifton Daniel Jr. at a press conference at the Carlyle Hotel in New York. Daniel, an assistant foreign news editor at The New York Times, was forty-two, ten years older than his fiancée. They had known each other for more than a year, but Margaret had kept the romance private. Her parents had known for several weeks before the announcement.

The secrecy became part of the family story. Margaret told her parents shortly before the press conference and swore them to silence; she even had her father hang up while she told her mother. She forbade him to tell his brother and sister. Her parents went to North Carolina to meet Daniel’s parents and had dinner with Jonathan Daniels, all while trying to keep the engagement confidential. The next morning, after the announcement, Harry S. Truman found himself announcing the news to his own friends without having had the chance to prepare them.

His letter to Acheson captures the mixture of amusement and paternal unease. He regarded Daniel as a suitable, well-regarded man and said he would be satisfied if Margaret wanted him, but he also admitted to worrying, as a father of a daughter might. The news brought a flood of public attention: the Trumans received at least two thousand letters and telegrams, while Margaret received twice as many. Her private decision had abruptly become a national story, though the book presents her own actions—choosing when to disclose the relationship and controlling the announcement—as central to how that transition unfolded.

Becoming a Mother

On June 5, 1957, Margaret gave birth to a son, Clifton Truman Daniel, in New York. Her parents were already traveling east by train the following day. A photograph published in The New York Times showed the proud grandparents looking through a hospital window at the baby.

When Margaret and her newborn returned to their apartment, Harry S. Truman asked whether he could hold the child. Margaret told him first to remove his jacket and sit down. He did so, and rocked his grandson for a long time. The scene gives the family’s change in scale a physical form: the former President, who had wanted to become a grandfather, was now seated and holding the baby, under his daughter’s practical instructions. By 1957, the two things he had most wanted after leaving office—to become a grandfather and to see his library established—had both come to pass.

Presence in Times of Crisis

Margaret remained close to her parents in later years. After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Bess Wallace Truman was too ill to travel to Washington. Margaret and Elbert Clifton Daniel Jr. came down from New York to stay with her father at Blair House. Seeing him, Margaret became concerned by how dreadful he looked, and a doctor was called. Harry S. Truman went upstairs and ate dinner in bed, but was back on his feet the next day to attend the funeral and graveside services. Margaret’s presence in the house made her part of the family’s response to the national tragedy, even as the account centers on her father’s meeting with the bereaved First Lady and his return to Missouri.

In December 1972, Margaret was in Washington for a reception celebrating her new book about her father when his condition worsened. President Richard Nixon provided a White House jet, and she flew immediately to Kansas City. The episode echoes her earlier return for the birth of her son: at two consequential turns in the family’s life, she traveled quickly to be with her father. The surviving account does not make her a public political figure; instead, it presents her as a daughter whose private bonds repeatedly brought her into the frame of presidential history.