Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon’s role in Harry S. Truman’s story is defined by a striking change of position: first, as a Republican congressman who helped turn the Alger Hiss case into an attack on Truman’s administration; later, as a presidential candidate whom Truman regarded as the worse of two alternatives; and finally, as the President who visited Truman and honored him after his death. The book offers little private portrait of Nixon. Instead, it shows him through political contests, a wary personal judgment, and two scenes of public respect.

The Hiss Case and the Administration

Nixon entered this account at a moment when Republicans were already pressing Truman to dismiss Secretary of State Dean Acheson, amid anger over the loss of China and claims of Communist infiltration. The trial of Alger Hiss gave those attacks a new focus. After Hiss was found guilty of perjury for lying about passing secret documents, Nixon, then a Republican congressman and the only lawyer on the House Un-American Activities Committee, went on the radio. He accused the administration of a deliberate effort to conceal the Hiss conspiracy. The episode placed Nixon at the center of a political struggle over what the government knew, whom it trusted, and whether officials could be held responsible for alleged Communist activity.

Acheson’s response to the case became a further point of political contention. Asked about Hiss, he said he would not turn his back on his friend, whatever the outcome of an appeal. Nixon’s radio accusation that same night helped frame Acheson’s statement as evidence of a broader administrative failure. The account does not present Nixon’s intervention as an isolated comment: it falls within a campaign in both houses of Congress to make Hiss a test of the administration’s credibility. Joseph McCarthy soon amplified the attack by asking whether Acheson’s words meant that he would not turn his back on other Communists in the State Department. Nixon and McCarthy are shown participating in the same charged political moment, though the narrative does not claim that one directed or caused the other’s intervention.

Acheson offered to resign after the backlash. Truman refused to treat the offer as a reason to abandon him, understanding Acheson’s loyalty in light of his own decision to attend the funeral of Tom Pendergast, an old political associate who had died after leaving prison. That response makes the Hiss controversy more than a dispute over one official’s words: it reveals the competing standards of loyalty and suspicion through which Nixon’s accusation acquired its force. The account records Nixon’s charge and its political consequences, but does not settle the underlying allegation of a deliberate cover-up.

Rivalry in the 1960 Succession

As the next presidential contest approached, Nixon became the probable Republican nominee with Eisenhower retiring from office. Truman’s preferred Democratic possibilities were Stuart Symington and Lyndon Johnson, neither of whom seemed likely to win. He rejected Adlai Stevenson for a third attempt and had serious reservations about John F. Kennedy, whom he considered too young and inexperienced. Truman also doubted that a Catholic could be elected, recalling Al Smith’s earlier defeat, and disliked Kennedy’s father. Against that background, Nixon represented not a candidate Truman favored but one side of a choice he considered bleak.

After the Democratic convention selected Kennedy, Truman put aside his disappointment and anger at the outcome. In a letter to Acheson that he decided not to send, he described the choice between Kennedy and Nixon as a choice between two evils, but concluded that the less objectionable option was the inexperienced Democrat; Nixon, in his view, was impossible. This judgment registered both a personal political assessment and the limits of Truman’s influence over his party’s choice. He had opposed Kennedy’s nomination, yet once the contest was set, he was prepared to support Kennedy rather than Nixon.

The campaign’s conclusion altered one part of Truman’s earlier objection. After Kennedy became President, Truman wrote that a man’s church did not matter if he believed in the oath to support and defend the Constitution. His remark addressed Kennedy’s Catholicism, not Nixon’s record, but it shows how the eventual outcome displaced the religious electability question that had shaped Truman’s doubts. Nixon remains present in this passage as the rejected alternative: the candidate Truman could not accept, even while he had reservations about the Democrat who prevailed.

A Visit in Truman’s Final Years

In 1969, Nixon, now President, and the First Lady visited Harry S. Truman and Bess at their home on North Delaware Street. They spent half an hour with the couple before going to the Truman Library. There, outside Truman’s office, Nixon played The Missouri Waltz on a concert grand piano. The choice made for an uneasy moment among those present, who knew Truman disliked the song. When Nixon finished, Truman turned to Bess and asked what he had played. The account gives no explanation for Nixon’s choice or for Truman’s question; the scene’s significance lies in the contrast between a public gesture of courtesy and the private discomfort it carried for those who understood the song’s associations for Truman.

The visit also placed Nixon in a different relation to Truman from the one created by the Hiss controversy and the 1960 election. He was no longer merely the congressman whose accusation had intensified pressure on the Truman administration, or the presidential candidate Truman had rejected. As President, he came to Truman’s home and library, in an encounter shaped by age, political succession, and Truman’s diminished health. The scene does not suggest that their earlier political differences had been resolved; rather, it shows that formal respect could coexist with an unresolved personal and political past.

Funeral Tribute and Narrative Role

When Truman died, President and Mrs. Nixon came to pay their respects and placed a wreath of red, white, and blue carnations on the casket. Their presence formed part of a national and local farewell in Independence, where thousands of people passed the closed casket at the Truman Library. Nixon’s appearance at the funeral completed the account’s sequence of encounters: the opponent who had attacked the administration, the rival Truman found unacceptable in the 1960 contest, and the sitting President who joined the public commemoration of Truman’s life.

Nixon is therefore a recurring figure at political turning points rather than the subject of an independent personal arc. The narrative first presents him through accusation and partisan conflict, then through Truman’s private calculations about a presidential choice, and finally through ceremonial gestures at Truman’s home and funeral. Those changes do not erase the earlier conflict. They show instead how the relationship between two political figures could move from public opposition to the forms of recognition attached to office and succession, while leaving the book’s evidence about Nixon’s private motives largely unstated.