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[Notices and Restrictions | Interview Transcript | List of Subjects Discussed]
NOTICE As an electronic publication of the Truman Library, users should note that features of the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview, such as pagination and indexing, could not be replicated for this online version of the Jonathan Daniels transcript. RESTRICTIONS Opened November, 1964
[Top of the Page | Notices and Restrictions | Interview Transcript | List of Subjects Discussed]
Oral History Interview with
October 4, 1963 James R. Fuchs
FUCHS: Well, first of all, I'd like to take up a few things concerning your book The Man of Independence, (Jonathan Daniels, New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1950) One thing, you said that Mr. Truman cautioned you not to trust his memory but to check the facts where they were recorded. How did you find the facts checked with his memory, Mr. Daniels, and what did you do to go about finding these facts? DANIELS: Well, I found the facts checked very well with his memory, but I was not willing, when I was first approached by Lippincott to write this book, to merely write the book that was Truman's recollection. So, while the President was good enough to give me a number of hour-long, two-hour long interviews, in which he told me about his life and various aspects of it, I didn't want to depend on that. So, being particularly interested and also most unfamiliar with his background in Missouri, I went back to Missouri and did -- the first thing I did, I went to St. Louis and spent two or three days in the morgue of the Post-Dispatch and talked to newspaper men there who had known Truman. Then I went on out to Kansas City and interviewed friends, enemies, relatives, all kinds of people who had known Truman. I also worked long in the morgue of the Kansas City Star. Through a friend of mine in Kansas City, Jerome Walsh, I got in touch with Thomas H. Madden, of the Kansas City Title Insurance Company, who specialized in land-title law. He did for me a complete record of the purchases, sales, mortgages, and so forth, on the Truman lands. Then I spent a great deal of time in Independence interviewing a great variety of people who had known Truman, such as friends or political associates, or political opponents, business associates, and got their story of Truman and his background. I was very much surprised when I went to Kansas City. I knew most of the newspapermen who were covering the President. Many of them had been covering Roosevelt when I was press secretary at the White House. I was surprised to be able to find material which was not even remembered by newspapermen in Kansas City. For instance, while everybody knew that he'd been Jacobson's partner in the haberdashery store, apparently it was completely forgotten that he'd been in the building and loan business, in the oil stock business, in lead mine speculation, in purchase of a bank which almost failed while he was involved. All these things were so little remembered that -- I've forgotten the name of the man, I think his name was Shoop, who was Washington correspondent of the Kansas City Star, who when the book came out, called me up from Washington and he said, "My God, you've got this stuff right under our noses that we didn't get." I was shocked at newspapermen covering a President, going to his press conferences, getting his handouts, the day-to-day news, but while they were waiting around him in his hotel, they didn't do any of the type of research which should be done about any President. I have the feeling that when any man becomes President, the Associated Press, the New York Times, such news agencies ought to put trained research men on his story, and as you are doing now for history, they ought to bring up all the raw material of research for current news background material. That had not been done about Truman. I doubt that up to that time it had been done on any President, and I am proud that I had enough of the historian and the newspaperman in me to want to go and find out from the source, and that's what I did. FUCHS: You did this while Mr. Truman was yet President and being a former employee of the White House, both under Franklin D. and Mr. Truman, how did he feel about you writing a biography? DANIELS: I had never known Mr. Truman well at all until the day he came down to the White House to be President. I had met him. FUCHS: Do you recall where? DANIELS: In Washington around the Senate, and at Chicago. I remember the day or so before he was nominated, he came into the lobby of the Stevens Hotel and seemed to me a little more than just another senator. And he stopped and we had a long conversation as he was coming in to register, very pleasant. Lucy, my wife, was with me, and we saw him at that convention. But as to my writing the Truman biography: I did a review in the Saturday Review of Literature about some book connected with the death of Roosevelt in which I described the people on the funeral train coming back, the movement in of the new politicians into the new President's car, and so forth. And a friend of mine, George Stevens, who was then and is now, editor of Lippincott, wrote me and asked me if I would do a book about Truman. Well, I was rather uncertain in my own mind as to whether I wanted to do a book about Truman. I had not only stayed with Truman for a brief period after the death of Roosevelt, but he also had asked me to become Director of the Rural Electrification Authority at that time. I didn't want to stay in the Government; I wanted to get out of it; I'd only come into it for the war, but when the campaign of 1948 began, I had been a delegate from North Carolina to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and I had seen Truman there. And then, rather suddenly, he invited me to come to the White House and asked me would I travel with him in the 1948 campaign. I did travel with him on practically all those presidential treks around the country. FUCHS: Do you remember just when it was he asked you, the month possibly? DANIELS: Well, it was between the convention and the beginning of the first trip. Now I can't fix that, but in the Truman papers you'll probably find that I was set up as a W.O.C. consultant to the President and so I traveled with him. Then after this, I was asked to write this biography and I went to see the President about it. He said he would be glad to talk to me and give me such assistance as he could, but I wanted to make it clear to him that I didn't want to write a campaign biography; the campaign was over. I wanted to write a biography of an American President and politician. I went out to do it. He helped me tremendously, and he read my manuscript. The corrections he made were insignificant. One or two were amusing. You'll find most of his comments on the margin of the manuscript at Chapel Hill, and I got a lot of satisfaction out of doing the book. FUCHS: Do you think the fact that he was still President vitiated any of the stories, especially stories by those who might have had unsympathetic feelings about Mr. Truman, here in Kansas City I'm thinking of particularly? DANIELS: No, I think that the Kansas City people were very willing to talk very frankly. I remember some who were willing to talk more than frankly. FUCHS: Could you tell me who? DANIELS: Spencer Salisbury, for instance, and he just let go at what a "lucky son-of-a-bitch" (with the emphasis on son-of-a-bitch) he thought Harry Truman was. I didn't undertake in interviewing a person like Salisbury to go to him as Truman's emissary. I let Salisbury "spill" to use the word. I also found that people like the editor of the paper there... FUCHS: William Southern in Independence? DANIELS: Yes, old man Southern was very willing to talk, quite frankly, particularly about Truman's background. Some of the material he gave me I didn't use, about the suicide of Mrs. Truman's father; the rather roughneck fighting of some of Truman's people around the -- I don't know whether you call it the courthouse square or what it would be -- in Independence. FUCHS: Could you elaborate on any of this beyond what is in your notes? DANIELS: No, I wouldn't dare to, because in my notes I put down what they told me. And I don't remember as well now as I did then, but Sermon -- a good many of Truman's friends -- you suggest that people might speak only piously about a President. A good many of Truman's friends had a certain sense that they were just as good as Truman and they were perfectly willing to say so and claim so. I didn't approach these people as any emissary from Truman and they talked quite frankly to me. I then assessed what they said about what others said. Now, Bundschu, for instance, is a Republican. He was very helpful in getting me in touch with Salisbury. In the old history of Independence, apparently at one time, it was a community with some very rich people in it and then some people who were much plainer. And while the Trumans were never plain in the sense of the log cabin-to-President tradition, they were people in moderate circumstances compared to some of those who occupied estates in the town. It wasn't the wrong side of the railroad tracks but it was simplicity compared to the wealth on the other side of the railroad tracks. FUCHS: Did you have any feeling about the validity of one statement as compared to another? For instance, I have in mind Spencer Salisbury's story about Mr. Truman's entrance or non-entrance into the Ku Klux Klan and there are, as you know, several versions of that. Did you feel that one was more accurate than the other? DANIELS: At this point I can't be sure. I believe now, and as a writer I don't try to remember forever, that there were some good reasons to suppose that the faction that Truman was connected with was in fact anti-Klan, but I wouldn't have any doubt of the possibility that in those days, when the Klan seemed to be just sort of a slightly more militant Junior Order that Truman as a local politician might have joined it. I haven't investigated this; I put it down in terms of, as I remember it, in terms of the different versions: that some said he did, some said he didn't; and I don't think anybody could prove the fact about that, but I would rather depend upon what I said in The Man of Independence than what I remember now. FUCHS: Yes, I can understand that. Well, I don't want to ask you to be a psychiatrist, but I thought that, of course, there would be certain things you couldn't put in The Man of Independence... DANIELS: I did not really suppress anything, but I have the feeling that Harry Truman as a politician in Jackson County -- with my memory of the kind of people who went into the Ku Klux Klan down in this part of the world in its early days when it had not become nearly disreputable -- that there was nothing about Harry Truman that made me feel he wouldn't have been willing to join it in the circumstances of the time. FUCHS: Well, I didn't have the thought that you might be suppressing something but that you wouldn't have put in, "Well, I felt Spencer Salisbury was not necessarily telling the truth at this one time," and I just wondered if you did have some thought about Spencer Salisbury, because, as you know, he is a subject of discussion as far as Harry Truman... DANIELS: I have the feeling that Spencer Salisbury's people were more socially prominent than the Trumans were and that Salisbury had that feeling of superiority. He was, as I remember it, and once again I want to say that the best dependence is what I put in my notebooks at the time, is that Spencer Salisbury was a very dashing young man who rode with a black coat on a motorcycle, but that Truman and he were unquestionably very close in business operations in their youth. And by youth, I don't mean childhood; I mean they were people around thirty. It happened at the time I had a friend who was, at that time, an official of the Federal agency which dealt with building and loan, banks and so forth; and from him I got copies of the correspondence when Truman in anger at Salisbury wired back to slap him down. Salisbury says Truman was just lucky to get out; he persuaded him to get out. Truman thinks Salisbury was just a crook. Well, Salisbury became the operator of a drinking club and Truman became President of the United States. So it's very easy to say, "Well, we'll take the word of the President of the United States against the word of the president of a drinking club." But there was a time when they were very close and not dissimilar young men. Obviously Truman had some of the characteristics of the gambler in him. If he hadn't, he wouldn't have been in the oil stock business, the speculation in lead mines. When he ran for the Senate it was a great, wild speculation that he could be elected to the Senate of the United States. Now, it seems in hindsight to him, very simple. He was a close friend of all the county commissioners in Missouri, he was a big Mason in Missouri; therefore he had, as he felt, friends in every county seat. But still, it was a great speculation for him to run for the United States Senate from his position as county judge of Jackson County. There is the element of the gambler in the President, as I think there has been and probably always will be in anybody who runs for public office of that sort. FUCHS: How do you weigh this as a speculation as against his being supported by the Pendergast faction? DANIELS: Well, the Pendergast faction didn't control Missouri. There were tremendous factions in St. Louis at that time. I will not try to say to you the details of that political situation though they are in my book. It's been a number of years -- I don't remember -- but I tried to set down the imponderables in that thing. The notebooks contain all the material, with the exception of stuff that came out of books of history and so forth; and the things I left out that are in the notebooks, were some few vulgar remarks by Spencer Salisbury about Truman. Sometimes I had to assess differences of statement between one man and another, but all that will be clear in the notebooks. When the President read the first draft, there was one little thing I remember, I had said something about the fact that the Trumans were perhaps more prominent than the Wallaces. And his idea was, "Oh God, Jonathan, don't put that in; you'll get me into all kinds of trouble," which was a trivial, personal thing and had no relationship to history, and I was glad to do it. FUCHS: I'd like to ask you about one hiatus I noticed and see if you do remember anything. There seems to be -- well, Mr. Truman in his Memoirs, of course, said that he worked for the railroad company in 1901 and you indicated that this was 1902. Do you recall the source of that information regarding the railroad company? DANIELS: I can't be sure, but I think I got it from the railroad. Now, I know, for instance, that when he told me he worked in some minor capacity for the Kansas City Star, Roy Roberts went back into their corporate records and found out for me the exact dates when he was employed by the Kansas City Star. I'm not sure that I got anything as specific as that from the railroad, but wherever possible I did not depend upon the President's recollection as to dates and so forth. But if it was at all possible I checked it from the source where he was employed. FUCHS: Yes, I noticed that you checked the Star records and showed that he actually only worked there for several weeks, I believe two, in August of 1902. And then there's just sort of a lapse as to what he was doing between the time he worked for the Star and the time he worked for the bank which, according to the directories, may have been from late 1903, and then, of course, from 1904 on, but there is sort of a gap for 1903. Now did you notice that? DANIELS: I can't say at this point that I did, but of course, the only records about his employment at the bank -- the bank, as I understand it -- when I went out there, had ceased to be a bank. I think it had failed. I'm not sure, but I believe so. The only thing that I could depend on was the city directory and his recollection, and also I checked his banking work with one of the Eisenhower brothers. You will know who he was. FUCHS: Is that Arthur? DANIELS: He was also employed in the bank. I checked with him. Wherever there was a date or a fact about the President's young manhood that I could check from any source, I didn't depend upon his recollection. I tried to pin it down, but a city directory, you don't know whether he went to work in August, September, or when. You know that in this period.... FUCHS: The time lag there would be a factor. DANIELS: Time lag there -- and I checked his oil business with a man whose name you recalled the other day and I've forgotten at the moment. FUCHS: David Morgan? DANIELS: He wrote me letters which ought to be in my papers all about his memories of their association. FUCHS: What about Jerry Culbertson, was he still living then? I don't know -- he may still be living? He was connected with Mr. Truman in the zinc enterprise and then also in the oil enterprise with Morgan? DANIELS: I just don't remember at this moment, but my papers ought to show it. FUCHS: Well, we'll get into that. Another point was that you stated Mr. Truman got himself excused from service on the Mexican border and I was wondering the source of that because, as I understand, he had been honorably discharged from the National Guard in 1911 after serving two hitches. Would he have had any obligation to serve on the Mexican border? DANIELS: I don't remember that statement, although some of his associates in Battery D may have told me this. It would show up in my notes if it's there. I don't see where I say, "got himself excused from service on the Mexican border" [Daniels at this point referred to the text of The Man of Independence] -- wait a minute, I think that relates to the fact that he was having difficulty on the farm, wasn't he, at that time? FUCHS: Well, I don't know. That would have been, what, 1916, that they went to the border? DANIELS: Well, "the mortgage on Martha Ellen's land was rearranged at $25,000 at the Bank of Belton in February, 1917."*[Daniels read this from The Man of Independence, p. 86] He got excused in April, 1917. My knowledge about the mortgage comes from Madden's study of the lands. I'm sure Truman must have told me that, but that will show up also in the interviews with Truman. FUCHS: Did Mr. Truman ever indicate why his father and his bride might have gone to Lamar to live? DANIELS: Yes, as I understand, the old man was a cattle dealer and I think he just figured that his chances of cattle trading were better there. That's my memory now. FUCHS: Well, that's what we want, as you remember it. DANIELS: Once again, that could have come from nobody, except Truman, and if he did tell me that, it will be in the interview with Truman in my notebook. FUCHS: What about the statement that John Truman was called "Peanuts?" Do you recall the source of that? As you say, it may be in the notebooks when I have access to them? DANIELS: I don't recall the source of that right offhand, no. But I'm sure it's correct. FUCHS: Do you recall a man named William P. Harvey who was supposed to have been associated with Mr. Truman? Now this may not be in your book, but I wanted to bring it in here; he was supposed to have been the publicity manager in the 1934 campaign for Mr. Truman and I wondered if perhaps you talked about it? DANIELS: I don't remember him. FUCHS: Do you know who wrote Mr. Truman's speeches in his senatorial -- and judge campaigns, as far as that goes? DANIELS: Now judge, I don't know about but I do know that -- who was the man, a very well to do, prominent Jew, very attractive man, and a great liberal -- Lucy will know his name -- wrote a good many of his senatorial speeches -- in the railroad business.... FUCHS: The gentleman was in the railroad business? DANIELS: No, Truman's speeches in that early railroad business...this man I'm talking about later wrote a book on the FBI which.... FUCHS: Was this Max Lowenthal? DANIELS: Max Lowenthal wrote a lot of his Senate speeches. FUCHS: Do you have any idea who wrote them when he was campaigning for senator the first time? DANIELS: I doubt if there was much speech writing. I think it was mostly -- I don't think there was much oratory. I got the impression that it was pretty much county judge oratory in Missouri without any -- none of the polished speeches that a President is supposed to make. But he did make a speech at the dedication of the courthouse which must have been in some sense a literary job. Who wrote that or whether he wrote it, I don't know. FUCHS: You referred to the fact that in the 1940 campaign for senator, that the wife of one of Mr. Truman's friends refused to allow her house to be used for a Truman function. The husband was later richly rewarded, you said, by President Truman, I assume. Do you recall who that was? DANIELS: Not at the moment, but it ought to show up in my notes. That's the sort of thing that unless the man was a figure in Truman's career, I might just have used, "a man," but I think that in my notes it would say "so-and-so did this." In other words, my notes ought to constitute -- the notebook ought to constitute elaborate footnoting of every statement in this book. FUCHS: I'm sure it will and we'll be delighted to have that. This may also come under the same category, but I thought you might remember the source for the story that Roosevelt offered to appoint Truman to the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1940. DANIELS: I'm sure that's Truman. That was when Roosevelt wanted Stark to be reelected. I'm sure that came straight from Truman. FUCHS: On Mr. Truman's creation of the Senate investigating committee to investigate the national defense, you made a statement that Byrnes held up until he could determine that Senator Truman could be trusted with a senatorial investigating committee. I wonder how he could determine that he could be trusted? DANIELS: I think that also is in one of the Truman interviews. FUCHS: Very good. Would you, for the record, give a little background, biographical information on your birth and education and prior career before your Government service. DANIELS: I can give you that or I can give you a mimeographed sheet telling all this. I was born in Raleigh, April 26, 1902. My father, Josephus Daniels, was, at that time, the editor of the News and Observer here and also Democratic National Committeeman from North Carolina. My father had been one of the original Bryan men in the campaign of 1896. Old William Allen White afterwards in some levity referred to him as the "Secretary of War in the first Bryan administration." But my father was in politics all his life, and I was born here in Raleigh in an old section of town which, when I was born -- my grandfather built the house down there, but at that time all the white people had moved away. All our neighbors were Negroes and I grew up as a boy in a small Southern town. My father's people -- his father had been a ship carpenter who had not approved of slavery. Before the Civil War he had said that there was no place in the South for a white man who worked with his hands. He had gone to Rhode Island, but he had fallen in love with a girl in North Carolina; so he came back in time to be here during the war. During my father's young manhood as a politician, some tried to make out that my grandfather was not true to the South. Well, I think my grandfather was a very simple man who was certainly not interested in the maintenance of slavery, but we understand that he helped build the Merrimac, that he was a ship builder in Confederate navy yards. On the other side of the family, my mother's side, my great-grandfather for whom I am named, was
a Quaker who after the Civil War was elected governor by the conservatives, which is to say the white Democrats in North Carolina, and was kicked out of office by the Reconstruction government. He was elected as governor by the people but when Congressional reconstruction was instituted, he was kicked out. Well, I grew up here in Raleigh, went to public school here, then when my father in 1913 became Secretary of the Navy, I went to Washington and lived there. And that was a period about which I've written, in which my father as Secretary of the Navy brought Franklin Roosevelt to Washington as his assistant. I've written a good deal about this period in a book I wrote called The End of Innocence. As a small boy, Claude Kitchen, who was then the -- I've forgotten whether he was the Democratic majority leader of the House or chairman of the Ways and Means Committee -- got me smuggled into the House of Representatives on the occasion when Woodrow Wilson made his speech calling for the declaration of war on Germany. I came back to North Carolina to the University to college, got my A.B. and my M.A. at Chapel Hill, studied law at Columbia, took no degree, got my license to practice law, went to
work as a reporter on the News and Observer. First, briefly, I had worked on the Louisville Courier-Journal. Then here and as Washington correspondent, then I went to New York in 1929 to work on the staff of Fortune magazine, after the publication of a first novel that I had written, on the basis of which I got a Guggenheim Fellowship and went abroad for a year of study and writing. FUCHS: That was about the angels... DANIELS: The Clash of Angels, yes. I came back to Fortune and then after Mrs. Daniels and myself were married I came back down here. FUCHS: What year were you married? DANIELS: 1932. FUCHS: What was Mrs. Daniels' maiden name? DANIELS: Lucy Cathcart. I say she is the most Southern woman in the world; she was born in New York City, raised in Hackensack, New Jersey, and educated at Northampton, Massachusetts. And then when my father went to Mexico, I became editor of the News and Observer.
I began to write books, beginning with A Southerner Discovers the South. Then when the war came on, I went to Washington, first, as assistant director of the Office of Civilian Defense, succeeding Mrs. Roosevelt, and, then, moved over as administrative assistant and, then at last, press secretary to Roosevelt. FUCHS: What year did you go to the Office of Civil Defense? Who was your superior there? DANIELS: James M. Landis was my superior. He had foxes in his vitals, then, and I'm saddened to see about Jim's troubles now. FUCHS: Can you give any observations on his troubles now? DANIELS: No, the best I can give is "foxes in his vitals." He was a very intense man. I had known Jim before when I was in New England writing a book on New England and he was dean of the Harvard Law School. We didn't get along too well, and I was very glad to become an administrative assistant at the White House and then press secretary. As soon as the war was over I was happy to come home, go back to writing in the newspaper
business. Then I became Democratic National Committee man myself -- traveled with Truman. Truman, in 1949, offered me the position of Secretary of the Navy, but there was a good deal of confusion there between myself and Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, who had a fellow he wanted to appoint and I didn't very much want to get into the in-fighting and so that job was not for me; but the President later appointed me to a number of other positions, on the ECA Board, the National Hospital Council and the United Nations Subcommittee. Now I am only active as a newspaper editor and a writer of books. FUCHS: Very good. How did you happen to go to work for OCD? DANIELS: Well, it was just a matter of when the war broke out I wanted to be in the war effort and.... FUCHS: What year was that? DANIELS: It was January after Pearl Harbor, January of '42. I suppose Landis just called me up and asked me if I could come to Washington. Then soon after I had become assistant director, succeeding Mrs.
Roosevelt, Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles called me down to the State Department and wanted me to go to India in connection with the work being done by a gentleman who was the president of Dollar Lines. It was the first preliminary effort of America to get into India after our entrance into the war. Anyhow, we were to go over there as the American mission to India. My wife had our furniture all in a van in Raleigh and I said, "Hold up." And then I went to see Landis, who at that point was very insistent that I could not run out on him. Civilian defense at that moment had not begun to disintegrate, as it did, not long afterwards when no bombs fell, so I agreed to stay in Washington with Jim Landis and remained with him, oh, I suppose six months or more before I went to the White House. FUCHS: Why did you leave Civilian Defense? DANIELS: Well, Landis and I didn't get along very well. I don't think that that was my fault or his, but Civilian Defense, in the absence of any civilian emergency, began to disintegrate. LaGuardia had been in there and tried to make it a circus of national
morale. Mrs. Roosevelt had been in the position which occupied, and the day I arrived I found out that the Chicago Tribune was sitting on my step because Mrs. Roosevelt had appointed a number of people as coordinators of athletics; and she'd named a girl named Maris Chaney, who was a dancer, as a girl who was to go and build the morale of people in fallout shelters (if that were the name at the time -- I don't know). There was a great deal of, not scandal, but seeming boondoggling which caused a lot of confusion, and Landis, who had given up the deanship of the Harvard Law School, found himself running an agency which increasingly had less and less prestige in Washington. Now in that situation he was a very nervous man, and we disagreed on a number of things and I was very happy to escape. FUCHS: There is a document in your papers which indicates that you were borrowed by the White House from OCD for a time, starting in September of '42. DANIELS: That's right. There was a considerable period there when I was borrowed, theoretically, by the White House and was on the payroll of Paul McNutt's
Manpower Commission, during which period I was making investigations for the President. FUCHS: What type of investigations? DANIELS: Oh, he had an insatiable curiosity on all sorts of things. One thing he was worried about was that Washington might become in World War II, as he had a feeling it had become in World War I, a sort of a hideout for those who wanted to avoid military service by being in the military effort. And then there were a number of things like sports in wartime, problems of race in wartime, and a number of various chores that I did for him. FUCHS: Is there anything that stands out in your memory about any or all these investigations that we might be interested in? DANIELS: No, but very quickly, there was a situation which had to be dealt with and nobody was dealing with it. There was the increasing danger of racial difficulties in the war effort, and, without ever being set up as such, I became the focal point to try to prevent racial conflicts and racial difficulties
in the war effort. I had two men assigned to me from OWI. FUCHS: Do you recall their names? DANIELS: Yes, one of them is a very able colored man named Ted Poston, who is now a member of the staff of the New York Post; and the other was a man named Philleo Nash, who is now Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Though they worked for OWI, we really made a sort of a White House team to contact with the military, the FBI, and Manpower to try to work out and prevent any kind of racial things which might impede the war effort. I had heard about atomic energy when my friend David Lilienthal came up to Washington and told me that he was in a hell of a fix; that he had received direct orders from -- I don't know whether it would be called the Manhattan Project or what -- to be prepared to produce at Oak Ridge so much power, and he had received from the War Production Board orders that he could not have the materials with which to produce that power. Then I came into the atomic business again, when at Hanford, Washington, (this would be the type
of racial thing we ran into) they had separate barracks for whites and Negroes, but they didn't have separate barracks for Mexicans, and they were about to have an explosion there on race things. Well, we tried to work these things out in various ways before they blew up. It was a very -- well, I would say, a very undercover operation, not in any sense of secrecy, but we just didn't want to have high visibility for purposes of attracting the lightning. But I think we did a very useful job in minimizing problems of race which might have impeded the war effort. She [This refers to Mr. Daniels' wife who was present during this interview and from time to time prompted her husband's memory. J. R. Fuchs] was just saying that a lot of your work there at the White House was with people who came at night to wring their hands and express their frustrations and hope that some lines could be worked out in the confusion of Washington that would help them, and work things out. Well, that of course was not anything direct and official. FUCHS: I had a question about atomic energy. Did Lilienthal know -- did he actually use the term atomic energy, or did he just know that it was a big project? Did you know of the term atomic energy in this? DANIELS: Whether the term was used or not, we knew that
it was the big push to some tremendous power. Whether the term "atomic energy" or "nuclear fission" or what was used, I don't know, but I remember both Lilienthal and Bob Patterson talking to me about this tremendous hush-hush business. FUCHS: In other words, you thought of it as a secret weapon at the time? DANIELS: Yes, it was the great, coming, secret weapon. Now I'm no physicist and at that time I don't even know what the language of people was about it, but both the conflict -- you see, that conflict between materials and the demand for power with Lilienthal, and then Patterson was worried about this blowup in his labor force at Oak Ridge. FUCHS: Were you cautioned specifically to not talk about this? DANIELS: Well, I figured that -- I didn't talk about anything, I mean, at the White House -- yes, I'm sure that I was told, "You know this is our..." I knew it just by instinct that what you learn at the White
House, unless it's just chit-chat, that's there and no where else. FUCHS: Yes, that's natural. I just thought because of the supreme importance of this that they might have gone to greater lengths to re advise you about the security precautions. Well, what about -- how did you resolve this Mexican labor -- colored help problem at Hanford? DANIELS: Well, now, I won't be sure, but I think what we finally had to do was to provide three sets of barracks. FUCHS: Where were your offices after you were borrowed by the White House? DANIELS: In the old State Department. FUCHS: How long did you stay there? DANIELS: Well, I stayed there from that September -- when I first went over there, I was working in a room in the basement with one secretary. Then I moved up onto the second floor where there was a whole battery of offices of administrative assistants to the President.
FUCHS: This is in the old State Department? DANIELS: In the old State Department. At that time, the President only had one hall there, and only part of that, of his overflow from the White House. The staff today must be ten times as much as it was then. FUCHS: Did your office remain there as long as you worked for the White House? DANIELS: No, I stayed there until Roosevelt was inaugurated in January, '45 and then Early, who had been press secretary, got a job with the Pullman Company, and I was asked to come over and become press secretary. And I went over in January and was press secretary from that time until Roosevelt's death, though actually I was only sworn in after Roosevelt got back from Yalta. FUCHS: Well, Early went to Yalta with Roosevelt. He went to Europe. DANIELS: He went to Europe and then -- but he had already resigned -- whether his resignation in effect had gone
through? -- he was out. He'd taken his job with the Pullman Company but he wanted a last trip before he left the Government. FUCHS: What was the purpose of the trip? DANIELS: Well, frankly, I think it was just a last trip before he left the Government. He did not accompany the President. He went to England and maybe he went to Russia, but I don't think there was any really significant business about the trip. FUCHS: I see. Well, then, you were acting as press secretary but it hadn't been announced or confirmed? DANIELS: It wasn't announced until Roosevelt got back from Yalta? FUCHS: Did you handle some CAB cases -- Civil Aeronautics Board cases while you were working in.... DANIELS: Yes, I did. Under the law the President has to approve, or did at that time, all airline routes that involved routes outside the borders of the United States, and I handled -- well, I say I handled them -- I did the White House work on their approval.
FUCHS: Why did they assign that special subject to you? DANIELS: Well, I don't know. Chores were just passed around. Somebody in the White House had to do this business between the CAB and the President. Occasionally there were questions which he wanted answered. Then there was -- there were a number of cases, but the work at the White House wasn't in those days as carefully compartmented as it is now. The White House staff was relatively small, and we would meet with the President, generally after press conferences, about twice or once a week and something would come up and he would just say, "Jonathan, I wish you'd check on this." Another thing I fooled with was the business of continuation of professional baseball in wartime; I didn't know anything about baseball, but I could work on that. Then there was the business of a man named Harry Slattery, who was the head of the Rural Electrification Administration. They were having a feud inside the agency and I was given the job finally of trying, quietly and carefully, to ease Slattery out of the job. Slattery was a very good man who had had a fine, long liberal record, but confusion
had grown within the agency. He had a number of good friends on the Hill, however, and I was called up before a committee to tell what this business was about between the White House and Slattery; and I declined to testify on the grounds that what I was doing was the business of the Executive about which the Congress had no right to question me. There was quite a moment there when it looked as if I were going to jail for contempt of Congress, but at that time there was some other more important legislative questions in which the White House was concerned, and so I was authorized to tell all; and I went up and told all that I had done and we ended up, the committee and myself, in a very happy frame of mind and I didn't go to jail. FUCHS: Well, what was the crux of this matter and how was President Roosevelt involved in it; what were his feelings that you recall? DANIELS: The crux of the Slattery matter -- and I do not now say that we were completely right -- but there was an impression that Mr. Slattery, after a very useful governmental career (I believe he came into liberal
notice in connection with the Ballinger investigation under the Taft administration) -- the impression, or at least our impression was that he had become erratic and considerably less competent in administration than was needed at that time, and it was desired, in all kindly effort, to get him to resign. We used a familiar Roosevelt mechanism. I was authorized to ask Mr. Slattery if he would go abroad and investigate certain aspects of public power and so forth, but Mr. Slattery was not biting; he was standing firm. It came to a point where we had to push hard. There was quite a cartoon done by Berryman at the time about my trying to cut down a telephone pole and Slattery was up on top of it. But now I wouldn't say that he had become incompetent, but the impression and the feeling was, that he had. FUCHS: Was he quite elderly by then? DANIELS: Well, I couldn't check his age, but he was a rather effusive -- I wouldn't think he was too elderly, but that was the feeling. FUCHS: I see.
DANIELS: In connection with that CAB business, I had a very amusing incident. Without naming names in this case, a very, very prominent American aviation executive had come to see me and sent a very effective public relations man to see me about this or that in connection with airlines. I remember coming home to North Carolina for Christmas one year, and we got here at a time when meat rationing had been very greatly tightened, and they said, "There's a great package for you at your father's house." I went into the pantry where this coffin-sized box was and we opened it; and in it were hams, sides of beef, smoked meats of all sorts, enough to last a family nearly a year and it was a Christmas present to me from this public relations man. So I said, "Nail it up." And we all stood over it drooling and then it was nailed up and sent back to my public relations friend in New York. FUCHS: You said, earlier, you'd been offered a position later in the Rural Electrification Administration. Was that partly because of your work with the Slattery case? DANIELS: I don't know why Truman offered that to me. The
position was vacant at that time and I suppose Slattery had come out of it, and he must have known about it; and I said, "No, Mr. President, I want to go back to writing," and he appointed Claude Wickard with whom I had been working in connection with the Slattery case when Wickard was Secretary of Agriculture. Between the time that I left the OCD and while I was working on chores for President Roosevelt he offered me the ambassadorship to New Zealand; and I was all ready to go. But at that time, Senator Josiah William Bailey from North Carolina was not appreciative of the fact that I had been rather sharply critical of him as a United States Senator who was rather strongly anti-New Deal. I'd written a book about North Carolina in which I had described him as a kind of demagogue who didn't fit strictly into the Southern pattern a la Bilbo and so forth, but was a reactionary demagogue. I had to go to my senators to see if I could be confirmed, and he quite candidly told me that "no" he would oppose my confirmation on grounds that I was personally obnoxious to him. So I did not go to New Zealand. I was disappointed at the time but later very happy because the whole war movement had already moved up
from that part of the Pacific and New Zealand had become a very quiet zone in the war effort. It was after that that the President named me administrative assistant which did not, I'm glad to say, require Senatorial confirmation. FUCHS: Were you offered a job in CAB? DANIELS: No. FUCHS: I saw something in the records there that seemed to indicate that you had declined. DANIELS: I think maybe it was discussed. This will sound silly, but I think maybe it was discussed, but I didn't want to be on the CAB. Did you read my diaries at Chapel Hill of the Roosevelt years? FUCHS: I read as much as I could find time for, yes, sir. DANIELS: Some of those I'm not too eager to turn loose until I've had a chance to go over them myself because I wrote down very frankly -- many things. There are no carbons of them. FUCHS: No, they're in with your regular correspondence series,
usually at the end of the year, but I think that they're very valuable; and I would suggest that you close them until you think they should be opened. But they certainly should be preserved. DANIELS: What I am saying to anybody who wants to look at my papers is that I haven't had a chance to examine them myself, and while I'm glad for any scholar to go into the papers, I do feel that since I haven't had a chance to examine them, that I have a right to ask them to let me know what they do want to quote before any publication. FUCHS: That's very fair. You had the title in the War Manpower Commission of "special assistant?" DANIELS: I think it was "consultant." In that period, the White House staff was relatively small. The President used other agencies and would have somebody set up under another agency although he never saw the other agency. FUCHS: Do you recall a race case involving a Negro, Alton Levy? I think he was in the military and he had made
certain charges against his commanding officer and there seemed to be quite a bit of correspondence about it. DANIELS: I just don't remember the name. FUCHS: How did you come into the St. Lawrence Seaway proposal? Do you have any recollection of that? DANIELS: Well, I was always interested in river development and I don't remember doing too much about the St. Lawrence Seaway thing. FUCHS: When you went to the White House, did President Roosevelt talk to you about your writing and extra curricular activities. Did you have any sort of agreement or discussion on that? DANIELS: I remember one piece I wrote. As a matter of fact, it didn't appear until after he died. That was a piece about -- for a book called While You Were Gone by a man named Jack Goodman who brought out this book to say, presumably to the returning soldier, "While you were gone, this happened in the Executive Department, this happened in the Legislative Department, this happened in sports;" and I wrote the one on the
Executive Department. That and the only other article I wrote after I gave up -- let's see, when I went to Washington, I was doing a page every week for The Nation and I gave that up. Then I wrote a sort of comic piece for the Atlantic Monthly on "I'm a bureaucrat but come the end of this war, I'll be in front of the train going home." I don't think I did any other writing while I was in Washington. FUCHS: You weren't cautioned about writing when you went there, though, or about writing when you left as they now seemed to be concerned about? DANIELS: I don't remember anybody cautioning me because I didn't have time to do any, except those two pieces. FUCHS: Did you attend morning staff meetings with Roosevelt? Did he hold morning staff sessions? DANIELS: At two different periods. The administrative assistants saw him about twice a week. When I became press secretary, and of course, this was a fairly brief period, we would go up every morning before he got out of bed and talk. Nobody would go to those except the three secretaries.
FUCHS: Would that be five days a week or would that include Saturday and Sunday, if he was home? DANIELS: Every day he was in Washington. Now he was generally out of town on weekends, so.... FUCHS: Were these two-day-a-week sessions with the President for the administrative assistants a regular routine thing or was that just...? DANIELS: Following every press conference we remained at his desk and talked to him. FUCHS: Was he holding two press conferences a week? DANIELS: Generally, well, no, it wouldn't come out that way, but the theory was two press conferences a week. FUCHS: So, approximately twice a week.... DANIELS: Unless there was some special chore that he wanted to see you about. That would be relatively rare. FUCHS: Who were the other administrative assistants at the time you went there? DANIELS: Well, David Niles, [William H.] McReynolds,
Lauchlin Currie, James M. Barnes. Then there was a rather queer character who had been set up not as an administrative assistant, but as a sort of a special assistant to the President, who was a little wacky and who was later indicted for tax evasion. FUCHS: What was his name? DANIELS: His name was Eugene Casey. He got involved in all kinds of real estate operations out in Maryland. FUCHS: Could you elaborate on Mr. Casey? DANIELS: Well, Casey seems to have gotten in because he was very active in one of the presidential campaigns in fund raising and once he got in, apparently he had no job, but Roosevelt never fired anybody. I remember that at the White House some of the permanent staff, I think it was Rudolph Forster, referred to Casey as the "washroom rodent." He was really a very strange character. FUCHS: What happened to him? DANIELS: He, I believe, went to prison. I believe Barnes had to handle the business of getting him fired without
being fired. FUCHS: How did they accomplish that? DANIELS: The details I don't remember, but I remember that as he left, Roosevelt gave him a fishing rod. FUCHS: Was Lowell Mellett there at the time when you first went there? DANIELS: No, Lowell had left to become head of the information agency which preceded the Office of War Information. It had an office right across from the Willard Hotel in a little triangle and it was called Mellett's Mad House, and I don't remember the name of the information agency. It was absorbed into the Office of War Information. FUCHS: I can't recall. Was there any one of these administrative assistants with whom you were particularly close? DANIELS: Yes, James M. Barnes was a very close, personal friend of mine. I didn't know him before. We both went there at about the same time. He was a former Congressman from Illinois and his job was largely
Congressional liaison. We had adjoining offices and became very devoted friends, and he died about three or four years ago in Washington. FUCHS: What about Lauchlin Currie? What were his principal duties? DANIELS: That was a tragic situation. Lauchlin had been appointed to do some work in connection with China. He came back and we sometimes referred to this row of offices of the administrative assistants as "Death Row." Lauchlin came back and he was in his office set-up, White House telephone, secretaries, no communication whatever and no job to do. I've often thought that that probably was the basis of the difficulties he later got into in connection with the Chinese situation, which resulted, and I don't know how justly, in his having fingers pointed toward him as possibly connected with the Communists. FUCHS: I'm not sure I follow you. Now why was there no job for him to do after he came back? DANIELS: Because Roosevelt just dropped him. FUCHS: He had been disenchanted of....
DANIELS: That's the way Roosevelt worked. If he got tired of persons, he didn't fire them, he just left them on the vine. Or, as in the case of some other officials, for instance there's a man who is now very prominent in the Roosevelt recollection, lives in Atlanta, a real estate man. He's been president of the Roosevelt Foundation down there. He was the head of housing. Well, Roosevelt became disenchanted with him but it wasn't a matter of firing him. Far otherwise, he was asked to go to England and make for the President an elaborate study of housing in Great Britain. Well, the poor fellow went over there and he came back with trunks full of material and it was received and nobody ever paid any attention to it. FUCHS: Why do you think he no longer cared for Lauchlin Currie? DANIELS: That I don't know enough about. FUCHS: What were your impressions of David K. Niles? DANIELS: Well, I liked Dave. He liked to appear rather, well, the word "devious" is not exactly it. He liked to be a man of mystery with the ties and so forth,
and he dealt with some fairly radical groups; but he was really a very sweet fellow. I liked him and he did a lot of good work for the President in politics. FUCHS: He dealt largely with minority problems. DANIELS: He dealt primarily with minority political problems, but at the same time I was dealing with a minority, too. Dave was the sort of fellow who could go to Dave Dubinsky and get a large contribution or get Dave to help work out some problem in labor. I would say that Dave's work was really with labor, and of course, the Jews, rather than other minorities. FUCHS: What about Bill McReynolds? DANIELS: Well, he was a very excellent administrative man and bureaucrat; but when I got there he had, in large measure, well, I wouldn't say retired, but he was also on the vine. FUCHS: There's a memo in your papers dated May 24, 1943, from President Roosevelt which was addressed to McIntyre, Byrnes, Hopkins and Barnes, in which is mentioned the "General Casey impasse."
DANIELS: General Casey impasse? Well, I don't think that's "General" in a military title. I think that's Eugene Casey. FUCHS: And the impasse was? DANIELS: "How in the hell are we going to get rid of the son-of-a-bitch." FUCHS: What were your reactions to Franklin Roosevelt's running for a fourth term? DANIELS: At the time I was very much in favor of it. I look back with twenty-twenty hindsight and recognize that I should have known that his health was such that he ought not to run again. And yet, I don't see what we would have done changing administrations in the last six months of the war. FUCHS: Did you have any indications from, well, your own observations of his rapidly deteriorating health, or did anyone bring this matter up to you and at what early date might it have been? DANIELS: The date I can't tell you but you can place it. I was terribly disturbed -- I think this was after
Casablanca when he came back to the United States and went down to Baruch's Hobcaw Barony for a rest and he came back; he didn't look well, but the impressive thing was that all those who had gone with him had obviously been out in the sun and had gotten brown and so forth, and it was pretty clear that Roosevelt hadn't been out in the sun. I was disturbed about his health then. But the strange thing is, after I became press secretary, Roscoe Drummond of the Christian Science Monitor (strange place for this inquiry), came to me and said he was going to write -- I believe by that time he'd begun to write for the Herald Tribune as well as the Christian Science Monitor -- a piece on Roosevelt's health. Well, it was a matter then that we were sensitive about and I went to see Admiral McIntyre, and I said, "Now, we've got this inquiry and we've got to give the straight dope...will you see Drummond?" He said he would. He said, "It's all a bunch of crap, the President's in fine shape." And I had no reason to believe that McIntyre was undertaking to delude me, and I'm not sure that he was. I'm not sure that McIntyre himself was not self-deluded. On the other hand, I had been, then, going up to these
morning conferences and noting the regularity with which the electrocardiograph machine was up near the President's quarters, but I, of course, was a part of the protective mechanism. And I remember -- I've been criticized for this -- I remember that when the pictures came back from Yalta, the only photographs there were made by the Signal Corps, and all the pictures from Yalta came back to my desk. And I had to select the pictures to be released. Some of them were appalling. I must admit that as a part of the protective mechanism, I picked only those pictures which seemed to me to be the best ones of Franklin Roosevelt. Now I am subject to criticism for that, but I figured that was my duty at the time. FUCHS: Did Marvin McIntyre... DANIELS: Of course, that was a pretty disturbing time around the White House because one of my closest friends at the White House (I didn't even meet him until I got there) was Pa Watson; and he had died, as you remember, on the way back from Yalta and his death, I think, had disturbed the President a great deal. There was no real sense of impending doom, but now I
would like to tell you something which I would like to bind until I am ready to release it, if I may. I was first shocked and disturbed and greatly worried after Yalta when Anna Roosevelt took me aside and expressed her fears, not of the President's death but of his increasing incapacity. And there was a certain suggestion of something in the nature of a regency in which she and her husband John Boettiger would hold what would be dynastic positions. FUCHS: In what terms did she couch this? DANIELS: Wait a minute. I was to be a sort of front. At that time Early had resigned. Watson was dead. Hopkins was in Mayo's and McIntyre was dead. Strangely enough, I was, with the exception of Bill Hassett, practically senior in the secretariat. Now of course there was Byrnes, who had also gone to South Carolina, and I was to try to get people, for instance, like the head of the CIO, instead of seeing the President, often indirectly, to take the matter up with me and then let us siphon it back. It scared the pants off of me at the time and it scares me in history: It could have been a situation very much like that in which Wilson
was left at the most serious part of his illness. Now, I've often said that for his own sake, that this would never have worked because people not only want to go directly to the President -- a man like Phil Murray -- but it was essential to their prestige that they see not an assistant, but Mr. Big himself. This couldn't have worked without unhappiness, confusion, and danger. But I've often said that Roosevelt was blessed and the country was blessed, by the fact that when he got a cerebral hemorrhage, it was massive. I would like to go on and amplify. There had been a period in which change was clear. Early had been eager to get out and make some money. He was close to a man, a very rich man, named Victor Emmanuel, who he said had helped him in many ways but had never asked him for a favor. He was to become the Washington representative -- that is Early -- of the Pullman Company. Jimmy Byrnes was very, very upset about what he felt was unfairness or ingratitude toward him. And there was much to be said for Byrnes' position. He had given up the position on the United States Supreme Court, but he was bitter then because he wanted to be Secretary of State, and Anna told me that at Yalta, he had --
of course, Byrnes had also become bitter because Truman had been nominated in place of himself -- Anna told me that at Yalta, to which I have the feeling that Roosevelt carried him as a part of that Roosevelt characteristic of protecting or trying to protect the face of people he was not willing to give all his confidence to -- Anna said that at Yalta, Byrnes had behaved dreadfully. Now what she meant by that I don't know. I was not there. Byrnes came back; he gave a press conference which was quite in support of the President's position. Then the whole business broke about giving seats in the United Nations to a couple of extra Russian states and Byrnes went away to South Carolina. The grounds were his health. Sam Rosenman, at that time, was acutely disturbed that he might be put forward in a position where people would shoot at him on the grounds of anti-Semitism; he was unhappy although a very able man. Then suddenly came the death of the President and the incoming of Truman. Early had been very close to George Allen. Allen had been put on the train with Truman as vice-presidential candidate in the 1944 campaign, and I remember when he came back, how he laughed at Truman as a candidate
and a man who faced the people. But as soon as Roosevelt died, Allen was back quickly. Allen's staff undertook to shape the first speeches of Truman. Early, who had gone, came back quickly, too, and he moved in on the announcement of the President's death as the press announcer, which I didn't at the time appreciate, as taking over a position to which I had been appointed. And Byrnes, who had two weeks before retired on the grounds of ill health, quickly, whether he called Forrestal or Forrestal called him, was coming back ready to be the Secretary of State under Truman, which he had not been able to become under Roosevelt. I doubt that there have been few more dramatic, confused moments in American history than the ingress of the people who saw power in their hands under Harry Truman, which had not seemed to them secure under Roosevelt. In some cases it became perfectly comic as in the case of this idiot rug peddler Maragon, who, as I gather, had been nothing but a sort of a flunky in the Capitol. He came down and was going to push out quickly Dewey Long, who was the career transportation man at the White House. And there were weird
[58]/P> people like a fellow named McKim. I, at the time, though I came to have tremendous regard for Truman later, had the feeling that the aristocracy of Democracy had passed away and the Pendergasts of politics were pouring in. Truman himself, of course, pretty quickly recognized the pressures and so forth of some of those who got around him. But it was an amazing day to see the transition from the aristocrat of Hyde Park to what those of us who had been with Roosevelt, at that time thought, was this little guy from Kansas City. Now, I'm happy that I came to know Truman well enough to completely modify my view, because I'm not sure that the politician who succeeded was not in many ways a man of certainly equal rectitude and sometimes of greater courage, than Roosevelt. For instance, just before Roosevelt went to Warm Springs, I was up one night in the family dining room and the question came up about the reappointment of David Lilienthal on the TVA. McKellar who was, as you know, the great patronage guy from Tennessee, had his big knife out for Lilienthal, and McKellar was in a position, I don't remember which chairmanship he held or exactly his position, but he was in a
position where he could facilitate or prevent legislation that Roosevelt felt necessary. Roosevelt told us that he was sorry, but that he was not going to be able to reappoint Lilienthal. Well, one of the first things I talked to Truman about was about Lilienthal. Truman had been in the Senate; he knew McKellar, and he knew that McKellar was a pretty damned vindictive guy and could make him trouble, but Truman had no hesitation about reappointing Lilienthal. The time had come for that period of transition. The amazing thing is how well Truman took it over. He tolerated some people around him in a way hard to understand, but there were some weirdies around Roosevelt, too, although Roosevelt's weirdies were apt to be members of the better clubs and Truman's were apt to be members of the Elk's Club of Kansas City. FUCHS: To go back a bit, Anna Boettiger's proposal, how did you reply to that and just how did she work into this, if you recall? DANIELS: Well, it was one night late in the White House and she began to tell me about the difficulties at Yalta, and she and John were already working on problems before
the President. You see, I had known the young Roosevelts. This is a vulgar way to put it but I was more their kind of people than most of the other people around the shop, and I was in a position, as somebody had to be to handle the front detail. And I suppose they knew me best; I didn't think it would work, and so I told her then, but it would seem to be the only thing that could be done in her view. FUCHS: Did she bring it up again? DANIELS: Well, there wasn't much time to bring it up again. FUCHS: What were some of the difficulties she outlined at Yalta, do you recall? DANIELS: Oh, that Byrnes had been trying to push himself forward and he'd been resentful when he wasn't pushed forward; and I gathered that he had made something approximating a scene with her father. She told me that she had had talks with Dr. Bruin and that Dr. Bruin had, without getting into the mechanics of politics of government, insisted that something be done to reduce the strain of personal contact
dealing and so forth on the President. It was, as she stated, a protective business for the President. FUCHS: Did you have a lot of contact with Jimmy Byrnes when he was there with OWMR? DANIELS: Not a great deal. I worked with him when this business came up about Slattery and what should be done about placating the Senate when they were about to have me up for contempt, but I didn't work much directly with Byrnes. His office was way over on the East Wing and we were on the West Wing. Well, that doesn't seem very far apart, but it was a different set up in a way; two different clubs. FUCHS: You say he was bitter. Did you observe some of this from first hand or from conversations with him or with people who had conversations... DANIELS: Well, the first time I noticed his bitterness was that Lucy and I were at the 1944 convention with Jim Barnes and his wife. We were in a box right next to Byrnes and when the Roosevelt ovation occurred and
acceptance speech, Truman having been nominated, they were very -- I don't think they rose and joined in the shouting at all. Byrnes thought, still believes, that Roosevelt had promised him the nomination. FUCHS: Did you have any inside information about the nomination? DANIELS: No, I did not. The '44 nomination? FUCHS: Yes. DANIELS: No. That was very closely kept. The Cabinet didn't know it; Barnes, who was the Congressional man, was surprised; that whole business of the letter in the railroad yard is still a difficult thing to figure. FUCHS: Who was Carl Hamilton in Agriculture that you seemed to have quite a bit of correspondence with? DANIELS: The name is very familiar. What did I correspond with him about? FUCHS: Well, just various matters which I didn't write down, but I thought you might recall what the relationship -- he seemed to be a fairly good friend; I
gathered that from the volume of letters and "Dear Jonathan" salutation. DANIELS: Well, you know, in the New Deal everybody went by his first name. FUCHS: I thought he must have been an Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. [Carl Hamilton was an Assistant to the Secretary of Agriculture]. DANIELS: Well, it's perfectly possible and I'll probably wake up in the middle of the night tonight and remember that he was one of my dearest friends. FUCHS: What about these later charges against Philleo Nash? They were made by McCarthy, I believe. DANIELS: I just don't believe there's anything to it. I never had any reason to believe it. He was ardent always in his racial views; but of course, he was active in Wisconsin politics and helped get Proxmire elected. He was on the left side of the middle of the road, but I don't think they've ever been able to tag him as having any real fellow traveler tags. I'm sure that Philleo was by no means tied to any red line or anything of the sort.
FUCHS: Did you personally like Philleo Nash? DANIELS: Fine. He was a very close friend of mine and he and Poston and I worked fairly close together and in, I think, great mutual confidence. I think it would be fair to say that in my position I was less militant than either of those two, but it was my business, and this is something that I think has to be understood, that a Presidential assistant has to be concerned with the politics of the Presidency and not merely the philosophy of race or anything else. FUCHS: There was preparation of an executive order to establish an office of Foreign Surplus Disposal and War Claims Liquidation in the Foreign Economic Administration; and you wrote a memo to the President in 1944, in September, that Bill Batt had been suggested for this, and you thought that might not be too good an idea since he had some connection with world-wide cartels, and I was wondering if you recall how Franklin Roosevelt reacted to that? DANIELS: No, I don't. FUCHS: I couldn't find any indication in my hurried study
of the files. Do you remember anything about Bill Batt? DANIELS: Yes, I remember Bill Batt. Washington was filled with a conflict, in the war, of the New Dealer and the business executive who had come in on a -- well, in the First World War, they called them the "Dollar a Year Basis" -- and I was largely associated with the original New Dealer element. And we didn't want the conservative business group, which had been very useful and effective in the war effort, to take over the reconstruction -- what do you call it -- the post-war arrangements. FUCHS: Yes. I assume this is the same Bill Batt that did succeed to various jobs in the State Department, in connection with Foreign aid, if I recall correctly. DANIELS: I'm sure it is; I'm positive it is. A very able man I'm sure; I just didn't share what I thought was his philosophy. I remember very little about this man. FUCHS: As an administrative assistant, did you help Mr.
Roosevelt prepare for his press conferences? DANIELS: No, as press secretary I did. There might be a question that would come up in which case you would -- if I knew of a question that might come up, I probably would have, when I was administrative assistant, said something to Early about, "Look, this may come to the President today, a question on this thing," but I would have gone through the press secretary on that problem. FUCHS: There were prepress conference briefings, but you didn't normally participate in them? DANIELS: Not until I was press secretary. FUCHS: They did have these briefings though? DANIELS: Not to the extent that Truman had. Roosevelt didn't go in for briefings on things like that as much as Truman did. FUCHS: That's interesting. Did you attend press conferences as an administrative assistant? DANIELS: Oh, yes, always. FUCHS: Did you have a particular function there?
DANIELS: No, as I say, following press conferences he met with the administrative assistants. FUCHS: So all the administrative assistants attended them? DANIELS: Generally, yes. FUCHS: Did the press approach you, because of your connections with the press, to get them exclusive information? DANIELS: Well, I had connections with people -- newspapermen who would come and talk to me mostly for background and stuff like that. FUCHS: I'm thinking of when you were an administrative assistant. DANIELS: They would come and talk to me some of them, just because I had many friends in the press. FUCHS: What about pressure for exclusive interviews? DANIELS: I would have had nothing to do with that; that would have been the press secretary's function. FUCHS: What do you know about Steve Early's background and why he was chosen to be press secretary?
DANIELS: Well, Early and Marvin McIntyre were newspapermen who covered the Navy Department, or, rather, Early covered the Navy Department and McIntyre was in the little news bureau back in the Navy Department when my father was Secretary and Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary, and they went out on his vice presidential campaign with him and worked with Howe, and they continued to work with him from the vice presidency up to the '32 presidential campaign. FUCHS: What type of an individual was Marvin McIntyre? DANIELS: He was a very bird-like individual, an attractive fellow. He and Early were bitterly jealous of each other. Each one feeling that he should be the more prominent. I was a much closer friend to McIntyre than I ever was to Early. McIntyre's health had broken down, oh, I would think about 1940, and he was out for a while and he came back. I was fond of him; he was a humorous, attractive fellow. I never thought that he was a man of great ability, but he was a man of great loyalty and a pretty good hard head. FUCHS: What were his principal duties?
DANIELS: Well, when he came back from his sickness, he didn't have very specific duties. He felt that he'd been a little bit put aside because of his health. When I first came to the White House, Hassett was not a secretary. He was an assistant in Early's office, and always claimed that Early was so illiterate that he had to do all the writing. Well, it was true that Hassett had a very fine ability to write a letter or anything of that sort. It's impossible to understand how much in-fighting there can be within a palace guard. It's implicit in a palace guard. Between the two men, you could, in the in-fighting of a palace guard, say that McIntyre worked with a stiletto and that Early worked with a bludgeon. They were very different men but that would be a distinction that you'd make. FUCHS: Did Early have what you would call an assistant press secretary other than Hassett? DANIELS: Yes, when he asked me to take his place, and the President did, he had a man named Eben Ayers who stayed on after I became press secretary. FUCHS: Had he been assistant press secretary long?
DANIELS: I don’t think they ever got that title until the Eisenhower Administration. He was in the press secretary's office, but I don't think they were called the assistant press secretary until recently. FUCHS: Was Ayers a capable person? DANIELS: Well, Ayers had won a Pulitzer Prize; he was a nice, pedantic, dull fellow. I was fond of him. FUCHS: How did you like being a press secretary in comparison with being the administrative assistant? DANIELS: Well, there's a terrific difference in prestige, and also you are much closer to the President as press secretary because you see him every morning. FUCHS: You enjoyed it. DANIELS: I enjoyed it very much. FUCHS: In, I believe it was your book Frontier on the Potomac, you mentioned a presidential assistant who was willing to appear stupid to help the President. Do you recall who that was? DANIELS: "Pa" Watson.
FUCHS: Can you cite a specific example? DANIELS: Well, he just talked like a good old southern gentleman, you know, and all, but he was pretty shrewd. He presided over the appointments -- he was a very shrewd man; I was very fond of him. Frankly, it was a very strange thing, and this may not sound very modest. Pa, whose health was bothering him before he went to Yalta, told me that he had asked the President, or suggested to the President, that he appoint me to his job, just before it was suggested that I take Early's job. I always was very fond of him. His widow left me his watch when he died. FUCHS: Is that right. You also said in Frontier on the Potomac, that an Assistant President is an impossibility. I wonder if you'd elaborate on that and also as to whether there was anyone you thought was close to being Assistant President in the Roosevelt, and in the Truman Administration? DANIELS: Well, I believe I said, that a President can delegate any task, but he cannot divest himself of any responsibility. Any President who too much gives
his power is in for trouble. We have the two perfect examples of our time, one of them in which the Assistant President's vanity destroyed his usefulness, in Colonel House, and the other one in which the .Assistant President's venality destroyed him in the case of Sherman Adams. FUCHS: Was there anyone that thought he was an Assistant President in the Roosevelt Administration? DANIELS: Well, I would say Byrnes, as nearly as anybody else. Maybe Fred Vinson, but I don't think Fred Vinson came on until the Truman Administration. FUCHS: What about Hopkins? DANIELS: Well, Hopkins always had an administrative task of his own. There were periods when he didn't, I believe. But in general, Hopkins was head of WPA, head of the Department of Commerce. Well, anyhow, he usually had a job apart from the White House and was not merely the Assistant President. He was a very close presidential adviser, but he didn't occupy a place in the White House where he was designated number 2.
FUCHS: What about John R. Steelman in the Truman Administration? Did you have relations with him? DANIELS: I knew John very well. I never was impressed by his -- I thought he was a nice, old, country boy, but I never was impressed by his brilliance. FUCHS: What was the leak in March, 1945, on which Drew Pearson based a broadcast regarding peace? Do you recall anything of that incident? DANIELS: Well, aren't you talking about Jack Bell declaring peace on the basis of a leak from Barkley in San Francisco? FUCHS: There's also a statement regarding leaks from the White House in your diary in which you said the strange thing was that Leonard Lyons seemed to get the correct information, and that, of course, Pearson got a lot of information by leaks, but often was incorrect. How do you think Lyons -- did you ever come up with any ideas about that? DANIELS: I know Lyons usually had just little gossipy things and Drew would try to have a big story.
FUCHS: Was there close liaison between the State Department and the White House press secretary? DANIELS: Oh, on important foreign policy matters. In one of my books I told about the last time I saw Roosevelt when Archie [Archibald] MacLeish and I had to go up and see Roosevelt about -- it involved that business of those two extra votes for the Russian states, and MacLeish and I worked out the statement together and we had to go to see the President just before he went off to Warm Springs. And the tragic thing was (and the toughest moment of my life), Roosevelt made a change up here -- we were all of us very concerned about him at that moment -- and we got off the elevator and we realized that the change he'd made up here, made it essential that a change be made down here; but it was a matter of such importance that despite his distressing condition, we felt we had to go back and say, "Mr. President, look." And that was a damn tough walk back when you realized how -- in such a bad state the President was at that moment. FUCHS: This is the instance about which MacLeish later wrote you about the look of death in Roosevelt's eyes?
DANIELS: Yes, and he said it was one of the hardest trips I ever had to go back. You found that letter? Yes, that was the instance. FUCHS: Did you have any particular difficulties working with any government information officers in agencies other than the State Department? DANIELS: Oh, there were always little questions coming up, speech clearances and things like that, but I didn't have many troubles with the State Department. There were questions that would come up and little irritations, but no more than there would be in any job. The danger is, "This is the White House calling." That has a terrific effect on other agencies and sometimes it can be too strong. That's the reason I fear the multiplying secretariat of Presidents, because of the old business, "This is the White House speaking," and now I say, "Well, who in the hell is the White House?" It's not always the President of the United States. FUCHS: Did anyone ever suggest that the Roosevelt press conferences be electrically recorded in some manner
as was done for Truman's? DANIELS: We were just coming, when Roosevelt died, to the possibility of radio and TV broadcasting, but that was just coming on. FUCHS: Did you have anything to do with President Truman's decision to more or less follow President Roosevelt's policies in regard to the press conferences? DANIELS: Well, I wouldn't say that I did, but obviously I was in on the discussions, but Truman took that ball and carried it. The night Roosevelt died, OWI was very eager for a statement to go out to the world that the new President declared that the policies and the fighting of the war and so forth would go forward exactly as they were going. I called up Truman, he'd gone home, and some person, and as I say there was quite a group of persons, answered the phone and I said, "This is Jonathan Daniels at the White House and I want to speak to the President," and he said, "Well, I don't know whether you can or not." "Well," I said, "I insist upon speaking to the President." And I got Truman on the phone and he
said, "Why, of course, Mr. Daniels, that must go out now, and you have my authority to issue it." He picked the ball up -- nobody else had to. His first press conferences were wonderful. I think they made a tremendous impression. Of course, everybody wanted it that way because the conservatives felt that now they were rid of Roosevelt and that Truman was going to be a good old middle westerner who was not a wild liberal. FUCHS: What about the policies as to a press conference itself? Did he more or less follow Mr. Roosevelt's ideas about what might be on the record and off the record DANIELS: There was a little more briefing in the first days, because, naturally, he had to be briefed. He came in like a man on a rocket. He had not been briefed by Roosevelt much, as you know, before he became President. FUCHS: Your reactions to the President's press conferences then, generally, were that he did a good job? DANIELS: Oh, he came in doing a grand job.
FUCHS: Looking back, did you notice any particular change in his press conference over the years of his administration? DANIELS: No, I think he always did a very good job. I had a funny experience with him. One day, I went into see him and told him I was writing an article on -- I've forgotten what it was, but anyhow, he outlined a plan he had in mind, of something to the effect Congressmen should be elected on staggered terms or something -- I've forgotten what it was, but anyhow, he outlined a plan he had in mind, of something to the effect Congressmen should be elected on staggered terms or something -- I've forgotten -- you'll run into this, and I wrote it in an article for Collier's. Well, Collier's put a hell of a big box rather amplifying what I had said, and Truman had Joe Short say that the article was not the President's views at all, because the article got him into trouble up on the Hill. And so newsmen called me up and I said, "Well, if the President says that, I stand by my article and Joe Short can say what he pleases." Then Truman in his book, Mr. President, put exactly the same thing in as I had reported it.
FUCHS: I recall this. He was supposed to have said this to you in a private conversation and they tried to pass it off as just a banality or something. DANIELS: That was not true. No, no, they denied the truth of it. But when I went up to the White House a week later and went on into see the President and the newspapermen saw me going into see the President on a great basis of friendship, it was clearly a denial for the record. FUCHS: I see. You don't have anything to offer about various news leaks of the White House do you during the Roosevelt Administration? DANIELS: Well, I won't say about the White House, but of Washington in general, there are very few leaks in Washington; there are a great many plants. FUCHS: What did you do at the convention in Chicago in 1944? DANIELS: Oh. Lord, I don't know what you'd say I did. I was around trying to be useful and I doubt that I was particularly useful, because I had not been informed
about the finger being placed on Truman. I remember meeting up with Harold Ickes and [Francis] Biddle and they were both just astounded as we all were. FUCHS: Why did Hannegan push Truman so hard? DANIELS: Hannegan was in there and they wanted to get rid of Wallace. Now I quoted Roosevelt as saying, and he said this to me, that he had asked around and that he'd gotten the word from Spellman that while the fact that Byrnes was a renegade Catholic, would not necessarily be dangerous, there would be some Catholics who would give the benefit of doubt against Byrnes because he was. Spellman has denied that he ever said any such thing. But Truman, I'm sure, was sold to Roosevelt as -- he was convinced that Wallace was a danger. Truman, I think, was a pretty logical choice. FUCHS: In other words, it's fair to say you think Hannegan decided that Truman was good vice presidential or presidential timber and he was doing....
DANIELS: I won't say that Hannegan did it alone, but Hannegan was in there pushing. FUCHS: Why do you think Pauley was so much for Truman? DANIELS: Well, Pauley had a lot of money and he was a great money-raiser, and Pauley was a Democrat; he wanted to be in power and he wanted prestige. He was interested in offshore oils and he hoped to be effective -- well, yes, he was an opportunist; a man with much money and he wanted to be a big shot and a richer man. FUCHS: You went to a dinner that was given by Hannegan and Paul Porter for what you, I quote, "presumed to be the brain trust of the administration," and you said Hannegan never got around to letting anyone know why they were there. Did you have any indication at all what he was -- this was in your diary in June -- June 28, 1944 was the date of this. Lauchlin Currie was there, Wayne Coy, Dave Niles, Paul Appleby, "Tommy the Cork" (Corcoran), Ben Cohen, Isador Lubin DANIELS: That's largely the old New Deal crowd. FUCHS: ...Bob Nathan, Mike Straus, Oscar Chapman,
Mordecai Ezekiel, Randolph Paul… DANIELS: I remember that dinner but I don't remember what the purpose of it was. Who had that dinner? FUCHS: It was given by Hannegan and Paul Porter for… DANIELS: I guess they were trying to -- that's a right articulate crowd of people there. FUCHS: You indicated that there were no good ideas advanced and that Hannegan never centered the interest on anything and never let anybody know why he was there. I just wondered if you had any later thoughts about it. DANIELS: He probably had another dinner at which he had all the right wingers. He didn't want anybody to feel left out. FUCHS: You also indicated that Currie was in disagreement often with the other administrative assistants, but he was the only one that felt that Wallace should be renominated? Could you comment on that? DANIELS: No, but I think I would say that is correct, that
Currie seemed to be -- he was sort of apart from us; he was a strange guy. There wasn't much comradeship with him. He was, probably, nearer the left than any of the other administrative assistants at that time, including Niles, although I have no reason in the world to believe that the charges of communism about Lauch Currie were -- I never saw any sign of it. FUCHS: You quoted McIntyre as calling Chapman, "The gutless wonder." What were your thoughts about Oscar Chapman? DANIELS: I was very fond of Oscar. I don't think that he was a fighting man; he was no Harold Ickes, but that's the kind of conversation you would get from McIntyre. I don't know what he'd been trying to get him to do, but apparently he didn't have what McIntyre thought were the guts to do it. McIntyre would say that to me, knowing that he could say it and that I'd known him all my life and he would be explosively frank with me. FUCHS: What did you personally feel about Truman's nomination of Pauley for Under Secretary of the Navy? DANIELS: I never have been impressed with Pauley. I
thought he was a sort of Neanderthal type of person, almost a Democratic Mark Hanna type; he wasn't my "bowl of cherries." FUCHS: Were you or your father consulted about the nomination beforehand? DANIELS: I'm sure he was not, and I was not. FUCHS: Had you come to the conclusion, in regard to Mr. Roosevelt's health, that Truman would be succeeding him shortly, prior to April, '45? DANIELS: No, I say I was disturbed by his pictures; I was particularly disturbed by the shape of his signature on my own commission. You have a sense of the immortality of a man like that when you're working with him. His hand shook but I didn't expect him to die, I know. We were working on his speech at San Francisco, [Robert] Sherwood, MacLeish, myself, and there was a plan that he was going to London that summer, still vague; but the whole world was going forward without interruption. Now in hindsight that's perhaps incredible, but that was the feeling then. FUCHS: You noted in your diary in May, '44, that you had a
hunch or made an observation that you didn't think Roosevelt would run again and Hassett observed that he had the same hunch. DANIELS: Well, around the White House there were questions. How close does that come to the visit to Hobcaw? FUCHS: That was -- I think in the same notes you noted the bad state of his health after he returned from Baruch's place. DANIELS: There was a rumor at the White House, which I don't believe was true, there was a rumor that he had had a secret operation. I've heard nothing ever said about it since. FUCHS: Do you know what type of operation? DANIELS: Just something had happened at Hobcaw. FUCHS: You wrote a memo to President Roosevelt in September -- this would have been during the campaign, September 28th, that you understood the Attorney General was going to prosecute in Alabama on the denial of Negro rights to vote in the Alabama primary, and that you thought it should be delayed for political reasons.
Do you recall any response by President Roosevelt to that? DANIELS: No, but I will say this, that in that campaign there were a number of matters up. There was a case involving Negro firemen, and I had a commission composed of Judge [William H.] Holly of Chicago, Frank Lausche, now the Senator, and [Wallace Parker] Stacy, who was then Chief Justice of North Carolina, working on some kind of a settlement. And it is perfectly true that we, in all these crucial cases, say in September, October, before the presidential election, were very eager to have decisions which might contain dynamite on one side or the other, postponed for settlement until after the election. That related to the danger -- I wouldn't think in September though -- that the reactionaries in Alabama were trying to beat Lister Hill, and that I may have been eager to help him -- Hill was a good liberal supporter of the administration at that time. You have to recognize that in the White House little happens, particularly in election years, which is not colored by presidential politics. FUCHS: There's a memo in there regarding a Gallup Poll
"thing." It was from Paul Porter to you in October and he said that he had got some of the Gallup customers to raise hell and he, I presume he meant Gallup, assured Porter that he wouldn't publicly release this survey, it was only for a few selected clients, and he assumed this included Dewey. Do you recall anything of that? DANIELS: No, but it doesn't surprise me. FUCHS: You don't know just what the survey would have been? DANIELS: No, I don't. FUCHS: Was there a Negro division of the Democratic National Committee in 1944? DANIELS: I'm pretty sure there was, and I suspect (I only suspect), the head of it was Congressman Dawson of Chicago. FUCHS: I think that's right. He refers in a letter to the Negro Division, but I thought maybe that he was just using the term but there wasn't actually a division. DANIELS: I think Dawson was that, yes.
FUCHS: Did you work fairly closely with that division in 1944? DANIELS: No, not really in that, not really. FUCHS: You brought up a matter with the President -- to the President's attention -- about recording the historical activities of the executive office, of the presidency, and he said that there was a young lieutenant keeping a log but it was unimaginative. Do you recall who was keeping that log? Was that similar to those that [William] Rigdon kept? DANIELS: That's what he was talking about, yes; it was Rigdon's log. FUCHS: He was doing that during the time.... DANIELS: Yes, I'm pretty sure. FUCHS: Then he continued those in.... DANIELS: Yes, I was very anxious to go to Yalta, as I remember it, and I tried to put that in as a sort of a way to go and have a job for myself. FUCHS: Well, that was a little bit later, because this
diary entry was in June, '44, and then in '45 you wrote President Roosevelt again, a memo that you had brought this thing up before and that you were sort of sticking your neck out but you thought you were well qualified to keep such a thing at Yalta. Did he respond to that? DANIELS: They said, "No, we have another job for you. You will be press secretary." That was the response then. FUCHS: On April 4, 1945, there was a letter from David Mearns of the Library of Congress reporting on Richard Robert Nacy of Jefferson City, Missouri. Do you recall what occasioned this report? DANIELS: In '44? FUCHS: '45, which was while Roosevelt was still living. DANIELS: No, I do not. I don't remember that at all. Mearns is a great friend of mine. FUCHS: Mr. Truman stated fairly recently that he frequently saw Roosevelt during the war, slipped in the back door unbeknown to anyone. What do you think of that?
DANIELS: I think it's a great exaggeration. I thought I had seen a statement by Truman that after he was Vice President he didn't see him but a couple of times. FUCHS: Did you have any occasion to communicate with Vice President Truman's office? DANIELS: I don't think I had any occasion whatever. FUCHS: Do you recall talking to President Roosevelt about Senator Truman or about the Truman Committee? DANIELS: No, I don't. FUCHS: I believe you were involved with the proposal for a Missouri Valley Authority. DANIELS: I was very much interested in it, but I went out, I remember (and I obviously went out with the administration's approval), and made a speech on the Missouri Valley Authority to the Farmer's Union in Denver. I've always been interested in river development, but I don't think I was handling any aspect of the Missouri Valley Development. FUCHS: Did they ask you to come out or was there an approach to the White House for a speaker?
DANIELS: No, I think the President of the Farmer's Union, James Patton, who was a good friend of mine, invited me. FUCHS: You also spoke, I believe, before the Liberal Forum in St. Louis. Do you recall that? DANIELS: Yes, I recall it, but only vaguely. FUCHS: Well, then why do you think that Truman, who was committed very much to this type of a project, as Vice President sent the proposal to the Senate Commerce Committee which was Bailey's and known to be hostile to the Missouri Valley proposal, when he could have sent it to the Agriculture Committee? DANIELS: I don't know about that. That was before I knew Truman. FUCHS: You never asked him about it? DANIELS: I never did. FUCHS: You knew about it? DANIELS: I've heard about it but I was not involved at the time.
FUCHS: Who do you think inspired Truman to set up his committee? There are several claimants to the honor, as you know. DANIELS: I really am not familiar with that period in the President's life other than just reading it in the newspapers, and I've read something he said about that, that's about all I know. And I think I found out as a historian, rather than as an observer, something about that, but I, at the moment, don't recall. FUCHS: Do you remember anything about President Truman's first meeting with F.D.R.? DANIELS: No, except as a historian I've reported this business about the Stark campaign and so forth, but I didn't know Truman except to meet him at a cocktail party or something like that, until he came to the White House. FUCHS: There's nothing that sticks out in your memory as to conversations.... DANIELS: He came to Chicago at the convention. We were very pleasant, but, oh, yes, the Trumans had rooms
next to ours at Chicago, and we saw them and we remember some very amusing details but not anything important to history. FUCHS: You remarked in your biography, The Man of Independence, that Truman organized his office, with some contempt for the way Wallace had run his, to be effective for the administration. Can you elaborate on that statement? DANIELS: Oh, yes, Wallace had no skill in affability and camaraderie; he was an intellectual whose interests were not in the Senate, but in great problems in the office of BEW, the Board of Economic Warfare and things of that sort. He was an intellectual among politicians, whereas Truman understood the necessity for a politician of the administration among politicians. Truman had a lot of friends; he got along with Sam Rayburn --it was the difference between a political technician and an intellectual in the Senate. FUCHS: Who was the Kansas City newspaperman who told you that Roy Roberts arranged the celebration after the Truman nomination in 1944?
DANIELS: Well, it could have been Roy Roberts himself, I'm not positive, but I think it's true. That you will also probably find in my notebook. FUCHS: Mr. Truman states in his Memoirs that you and Steve Early and others searched for the Bible for the swearing in ceremony on April 12, '45. Do you recall who found the Bible and just where? DANIEL: No, but I remember this, that he was sworn in on the Bible and that the photographers didn't get enough pictures. So we had a swearing in the second time for more pictures. So, he was sworn in twice. FUCHS: Did you have an opportunity to talk |
