United Nations General Assembly

The United Nations General Assembly enters the account as the international forum before which Harry S. Truman spoke on October 23 at Flushing Meadows. His address linked the United States’ strength to a duty to use it responsibly in an interdependent world, and even the Russians complimented his speech.

Setting and Address

Truman flew to New York to address the General Assembly. He argued that the course of history had made the United States one of the world’s stronger nations and therefore placed special responsibilities on it: to conserve its strength and use it rightly. The speech framed national power not simply as an advantage, but as an obligation in a connected world.

Reception in New York

After the address, Truman and Bess Wallace Truman went to the Waldorf-Astoria for a reception in the ballroom. Truman later wrote to his daughter that they shook hands with 835 people in one hour. The crowded reception offered a contrasting, public measure of the occasion: alongside the speech’s appeal to international responsibility came the formal work of meeting those gathered in New York.