Oral History Interview with
Charles S. Murphy
Former staff member in the office of the legislative counsel
of the U.S. Senate, 1934-46; Administrative Assistant to the President
of the United States, 1947-50; and Special Counsel to the President, 1950-53.
Subsequent to the Truman Administration Murphy served as Under Secretary
of Agriculture, 1960-65; and chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board,
1965-68.
Washington, DC
Jerry N. Hess
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This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry
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but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember
that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written
word.
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of the Harry S. Truman Library.
Opened May, 1971
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri
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Oral History Interview with
Charles S. Murphy
Washington, DC
July 15, 1969
Jerry N. Hess
HESS: Mr. Murphy, what are your recollections of the events leading up
to the recognition of the State of Israel?
MURPHY: I do not remember very much about it. I do remember that it was
a very active question. I guess Israel actually was recognized when the
President was in New York City. I was there in the party at the time and,
I would say, on the fringes of what was going on.
You asked also what part did Clark Clifford, Eddie Jacobson and David
Niles play in this. As to Eddie Jacobson and David Niles, I have no recollection
at all on this matter. Clifford was active in it. Now, just what he did
I don’t know, but he was very active in, I suppose, pulling together the
pieces at the time when the action was actually taken in New York.
HESS: What, in your opinion, was the basis of Mr. Clifford’s interest
in this particular matter?
MURPHY: Well, I don’t know. It was during the campaign of 1948 and I
think that gave an added urgency to his interest, whatever the basis for
it was.
HESS: The fact that there was a larger Jewish vote in the United States
than there was an Arab vote. Is that right?
MURPHY: That undoubtedly had something to do with it.
HESS: It has been pointed out that the recognition came very shortly
after Israel declared themselves a state, just in a period of a very short
time, and some diplomatic historians think that the United States acted
a little prematurely in this matter.
MURPHY: I am not expert on this. It’s my impression and recollection
that the action was only a matter of hours after Israel declared its independence
and that it was prearranged and deliberately done that way. And one of
the purposes was to encourage other nations to recognize the new State
of Israel. I suppose it would be my view of history, although I’m not
a student of this matter, that the action was quite successful in that
regard and perhaps had a great deal to do with the fact that Israel was
able to declare its independence successfully. Just the promptness with
which the action was taken by President Truman, I think, was of extreme
importance and a great helpfulness to the new State of Israel.
HESS: In view of the difficulty that the State of Israel is in today,
what is your estimation of the effectiveness, the value, of our recognition
at that time?
MURPHY: Well, I don’t know. I’m certainly not an authority on this subject,
or a scholar, but we have had a State of Israel as an independent state
since that time and we have the State of Israel as an independent state
now. While the fact that it was an election year when the independence
of Israel was recognized had something to do with the urgency that was
attached to the action, at least by Clark Clifford, I think, it also is
true, and is of further importance that it was an action that many people,
including President Truman, had felt for a long time was something that
should be done as a matter of principle. I know of no backtracking, no
weakening, no feeling to the contrary, among those people and certainly
not on the part of President Truman, that there should be an independent
State of Israel. That there should have been and should continue to be
in the future.
HESS: Any other thoughts on the State of Israel?
MURPHY: No other thoughts on the State of Israel.
HESS: What do you recall about the development of point 4?
MURPHY: There again I do not recall very much. It first appeared in the
President’s inaugural address in 1949, in January. It would be my best
recollection that there was something of an informal division of labor
among us on the White House staff, and that I was concentrating mainly
on the State of the Union message and the Budget message at that time
and Clark Clifford and George Elsey were concentrating on the inaugural
address and assisting the President with the preparation of that. It is
my understanding that the idea of point 4 came from someone in the Department
of State and that it did not come through the regular channels to the
President, but came from someone in the Department of State to Elsey and
Clifford and that they took it up with the President.
You told me that you expected to talk to George Elsey again and I would
urge if you haven’t talked to him about this, that you talk to him about
this particular thing. It would be my belief that his memory on this would
be better and more complete than that of anyone else.
HESS: Do you recall the name of the gentleman in the Department of State?
MURPHY: I do not.
HESS: Do you recall if it took any special effort to convince Mr. Truman
that a provision of this nature on technical assistance should be included
in the inaugural address and should be undertaken?
MURPHY: I don’t have a clear recollection of this, but on the basis of
my knowledge by Mr. Truman’s attitude generally and particularly on point
4, in later years, it would be my belief that he welcomed this suggestion
and was enthusiastic about it from the beginning. I know he was enthusiastic
about it after that.
HESS: How successful was point 4?
MURPHY: Well, I’m not sure. First place, I think it changed, it evolved
into something different from President Truman’s original concept, and
from the concept that was expressed in the inaugural address. It was to
be technical assistance, not involving very great expenditures of money,
and to be primarily, I suppose, a sharing of our know-how and various
skills, with developing countries. The foreign aid program, as it developed
in the years after that, contained a great deal of economic assistance
in terms of goods and money, and it came to, I would say, overshadow the
point 4 concept very considerably.
So far as I know, I think the point 4 concept, to the extent that it
was followed, was what would you say, entirely successful, almost all
plus. There are many people that felt that there was not enough attention
paid to it and I suppose I share that feeling. The practical problems
that we had and that the administrators of foreign aid had after that,
I guess, must be taken into account. Here again, I think, is a matter
where George Elsey’s views and memories might be particularly helpful
because he left the White House staff to work with Averell Harriman who
was then the administrator of the foreign aid program.
HESS: All on point 4?
MURPHY: All on point 4.
HESS: All right. What do you recall of the letter the President wrote
to Paul Hume the music critic?
MURPHY: Excuse me. Could I go back to say one thing about point 4?
HESS: You sure may.
MURPHY: You probably picked this up somewhere else, but one of the--the
President saw this thing in very specific and concrete terms in a good
many places around the world and one of the places that he mentioned frequently
was Ethiopia, and the possibilities that they had in Ethiopia to produce
great quantities of food with the right kind of guidance and technical
assistance. One other thing. He was personally very fond of Doctor Bennett
who was the administrator of the point 4 program and quite early along
in the history of the point 4 program was killed in an airplane accident
I believe in Africa and this was a considerable personal blow, personal
loss to President Truman. That’s all that I have on point 4.
On the letter to Paul Hume. I don’t have any special or unique recollections
about it. If my memory serves me right, it was written the day after Margaret
Truman had given a concert at Constitution Hall and she was on tour around
the country and had been to a number of different cities and had given
concerts in a number of different places. And the President and Mrs. Truman,
of course, were very keenly interested in the progress of that tour.
[Page 291 has been closed for the present.] 5/13/71 HSTL
Well, the next day, Paul Hume, who was the music critic of the Washington
Post wrote a review which was not at all complimentary. President
Truman was extremely sensitive about anything that people said about Margaret,
and anything that people said about Mrs. Truman. He got up and read the
paper early in the morning, and wrote this very sharp letter, and I think
went out and mailed it before anybody else got up. That was a practice
that he followed some times when he really wanted to mail one of these
letters, he’d go and mail it before anybody would have a chance to persuade
him not to. And this one he did mail. Now, that about completes my recollection
on the subject.
It came up from time to time after that and I think, in recent years,
the letter was actually made public by Paul Hume. On the whole I think
Paul Hume took it in good part. And I must say, I think that it probably
helped President Truman’s standing with the people generally throughout
the country.
HESS: Did you hear about that letter the next day, the day that he mailed
it?
MURPHY: I don’t remember.
HESS: On the subject of Key West, how did staff procedures vary when
the President went down to Key West?
MURPHY: Well, the situation there was very different from what it was
in the White House in Washington. The President’s schedule was very different,
and the arrangements for the staff were very different. I think we might
start out by referring to the living arrangements down there.
The President stayed in a big white frame house that was normally the
quarters for the commanding officer at the naval base. And the naval base
was, of course, enclosed with a fence. And nearby, within, oh, a hundred
yards or so, as I recall, there was a modest office facility where several
rooms were set aside for the use of the President and the White House
staff. And they were equipped as offices.
Now, the first trips that I made down there as an Administrative Assistant
to the President, I stayed in the second quarters which was sort of the
Administrative Assistant’s headquarters. And then later, after I got to
be Special Counsel, I stayed in the main house with the President. Matt
Connelly was my regular roommate when I stayed over there. Dr. Steelman
stayed there regularly. Clark Clifford, as long as he was on the White
House staff. Bill Hassett. Harry Vaughan--General Vaughan--and the Naval
Aide used to stay on the Williamsburg. Quite regularly when the
President went to Key West the Williamsburg would go too and would
be tied up at a dock and they would live on the Williamsburg.
The President ate regularly in the dining room of his quarters, where
a table would seat, I suppose, something over a dozen people and if he
had guests, as he did occasionally, why they would eat there and the rest
of the table would be filled up with his White House office staff. They
would always have room for those staff people who were staying in the
house with him and usually for some of the White House staff people who
were staying in other quarters and they would tend to rotate or take turns
at eating there.
The President did not have regular staff meetings while he was there.
He did most of his work in the morning. He would work on the papers. Of
course, the papers would come back and forth in a regular flow in pouches.
He would work on the papers, he would get the help and advice of such
staff people as he wanted, usually separately on an individual basis.
He’d give such assignments as he wanted to give. And, usually in the afternoon,
why, the work would taper off and always by dinnertime, unless it was
some emergency, it was pretty well over with.
The various and sundry recreational activities, fishing and walking and
the like. The President did right much walking. There was a swimming beach,
I expect more than a half a mile away where he went swimming regularly
once and sometimes twice a day. He regularly walked to the swimming beach
and back and those members of the staff who were hardy enough walked with
him; I usually rode. And if I walked, I usually got there sometime after
he did.
Incidentally, you had mentioned I guess, and are aware of, the accounts
of these visits that were prepared by Bill Rigdon. I have a set of them.
They are very valuable and they have not only a text telling what happened
in a somewhat dry manner, I suppose, leaving out some of the spicier parts
of the story, but they also have a good many pictures, and basically,
I think they are quite accurate.
The house or quarters in which the President stayed had a large, extremely
nice enclosed porch. It was enclosed with jalousies to be opened or closed
as much as you wanted them closed. A very comfortable place and over in
a big corner there was a poker table and they fairly regularly had a poker
game in the afternoon and again in the evening.
HESS: Was that one of the spicier items that Commander Rigdon would leave
out of the log?
MURPHY: I don’t know, I expect he would put that in. I don’t know whether
he did or not.
HESS: What were the spicier items?
MURPHY: Well, I don’t know. Well, I don’t remember. I just remember that
Commander Rigdon, the fine man that he is, is inclined to be sort of serious
and sober sided about life.
All this has some relationship to the staff work because, you see, the
President was during most of the day just living with the members of the
staff and there was just no occasion for having a formal staff meeting
for the most part, and when he wanted to say anything to any of us we
were usually very handy, he would say it and when he wanted us to discuss
anything, why, we could discuss it and the matters of Government sometimes
intruded on the recreational activities, but not always. The facilities
for carrying out the assignments that we received from the President were
not nearly as good at Key West as they were in Washington, and the facilities
that each of us might have for keeping up our part of the staff work were
not nearly as good down there as they were in Washington. Now, obviously,
a major part, I would say the largest part of a staff person’s time is
not spent with the President but is spent with other people--working with
them for the President. So, in terms of volume, you spend a lot more time
talking to people from the departments and agencies, and people outside
the Government, than you do talking to the President if you’re on his
staff. There was some gap so far as this is concerned, or some lack of
ease of access to these people, perhaps, and largely for this reason,
I did not stay in Key West very much.
When the President would go down for an extended time, it was usually
my practice to go and stay about a week and then come home, with his permission.
In addition to that, why, we had a young and growing family that I wanted
to be with, but it was mainly because of the difficulty keeping up with
the staff contacts, or contacts outside. Some of the things that we had
to do and undertook to do by long distance telephone, illustrate some
of the difficulties that we had.
I have a few recollections about some of these things that might be of
interest. One is that it was on the telephone from Key West that I asked
William McChesney Martin if he would accept the President’s appointment
as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and he said he would. At that
time, John Snyder was Secretary of the Treasury, and the Chairman of the
Federal Reserve Board at that time was Tom [Thomas B.] McCabe, a man who
had been appointed by President Truman on the recommendation of John Snyder
and he was an old personal friend of John Snyder’s. A very fine man, not
a banker, but a businessman and the head of Scott Paper Company.
Well, during that period, when there was considerable controversy about
monetary policy and interest rates, there was a cooling off in the relationship
between Snyder and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and it finally
got to the point that they were not on speaking terms with each other.
And in trying to help the President deal with this problem, I talked from
time to time with each of these two gentlemen and each of them would tell
me of the very high personal regard that he had for the other and the
sadness with which they looked on the situation that had developed.
The chairman, in the course of this--it developed that the chairman of
the Reserve Board wished to retire before his term had expired largely
because of his unhappiness at this situation that had developed. But he
did not want to retire unless he knew who his successor would be and unless
it was someone who would be satisfactory to him. At the same time, John
Snyder, had a very vital interest in the question of who would be the
new chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. In effect, I think it was a
situation where the new man could not be chosen unless he was acceptable
to both of these people.
In talking to the two of them, I discovered that they would both agree
to the appointment of Bill Martin who was then an Assistant Secretary
of the Treasury and I spoke to them about their reasons for their feelings
about Bill Martin at some length and eventually I reported this back to
the President and talked with him about it and then he, in turn, I’m sure,
talked to John Snyder about it at least. Tom McCabe, McCabe was chairman
of the Federal Reserve Board. And the President decided that he would
appoint Bill Martin if Martin would serve and asked me to call him and
inquire. And I did call him from Key West and asked if he would accept
the appointment and he said he would.
At that point McCabe was informed of this and he wrote a letter of resignation
to the President which was a little bit on the bitter side, which referred
to some of the unpleasant aspects of his experience, I was really rather
doubtful that Tom McCabe wanted to leave the record in that shape so I
took it on myself to go and ask him. I took his letter of resignation
and took it back to him and talked to him for awhile and asked him if
he didn’t want to write it over and he said he did. He said he did. He
took it back and wrote one which was right much more pleasant in tone.
Well, we got into this talking about Key West and then the use of telephones,
and one of the other things that I remember had to do with Lamar Caudle
who was an Assistant Attorney General in charge of the tax division, I
guess.
Just before the President was leaving for Key West on one of his trips
down there, a member of the staff of a congressional committee, it was
the Ways and Means Committee, and although it’s not their usual custom,
at that time they were having some kind of an investigation. This was
not a permanent staff man, he was an attorney who was working for the
committee in connection with that investigation, called me on the phone
and said that they had some transcript of a closed hearing that they had
had up there involving Lamar Caudle and they had decided that as the President’s
staff man I could see what that transcript said so that the President
would know about it. Well, I was on the verge of going to Key West. I
think I actually was on the way to the plane when I got this call and
so couldn’t go see the transcript, but I gathered that there was some
urgency about it so I asked David Stowe to go and read this transcript.
He was then an Administrative Assistant to the President and would be
in Washington.
He did go and read the transcript and called me at Key West and told
me at length about what he had found there.
Well, the gist of it, as I recall, was that Lamar had been guilty of
a number of indiscretions, not very serious, and some stupidity which
was kind of serious, I think without any evil intent or motive at all
but I think enough to raise rather serious questions about his judgment
and discretion, rather than about his integrity. On the basis of that
it seemed to me that the President could not keep him in his administration
in that position but that the circumstances were such that it would be
appropriate to allow him to resign voluntarily.
I talked to the President about that and reported to him on the facts
and he agreed that this would be an appropriate thing to do and told me
to call the Attorney General, who was Howard McGrath, and tell him to
get Lamar’s resignation.
Well, I called and asked for the Attorney General and he was not available
so I talked to the Deputy Attorney General, who was Peyton Ford. I’m not
sure the title was Deputy Attorney General at that time, it may have been
The Assistant to the Attorney General, but he was in effect the Deputy
Attorney General, and told him that the President wanted Lamar’s resignation.
Well, he hemmed and hawed a little bit about that but he said that he
would talk to the Attorney General about it, and then I didn’t hear anything
for a day or so, as I recall. Then the Attorney General called and said
that he thought that Lamar ought to be allowed to stay on. And the President
said no. I don’t remember who McGrath talked to, whether he talked to
me, I expect he did, and I talked to the President. But at any rate the
President said no, he wanted his resignation. And so I reported that back
to the Attorney General and they got Lamar to write a letter of resignation
and it was in the mail on the way to the President, but all this had taken
some three or four, five days. I guess that by this time the President’s
patience had given out so he announced, at a press conference at Key West,
that he was firing Lamar Caudle. At the time he made the announcement
the letter of resignation was in the mail on the way to the President.
HESS: Do you recall any other interesting phone calls made from Key West?
Any other bits of business that had to be handled by long distance?
MURPHY: I do not at the moment.
HESS: What do you recall about the President’s press conferences that
he held at Key West? Were they conducted in any different manner than
the ones in the Indian Treaty Room and the Oval Office?
MURPHY: Well, they were conducted with right much less formality. For
most of them he went to a room in one of the buildings on the base. I
don’t remember just which building it was. It was a fairly sizeable room
and very sparsely furnished. When he had his press conferences, they tended
to be, I think, somewhat shorter than the press conferences he normally
held in Washington. Occasionally he had press conferences in the yard
or the garden of the house where he lived.
I have a picture which was published at the time in Life magazine
and I happened to be standing back of the President with a very, very
multicolored sports shirt on. That was the uniform down there. Well, this
picture appeared in Life magazine and a friend and neighbor of
my oldest brother teased me and bugged me so much about that picture and
that shirt that I finally sent him the shirt.
The shirt, by the way, was a gift from Admiral Radford who was the President’s
host when the President went to Wake Island to meet General MacArthur.
He was his host in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor and he presented the President
and each member of the staff with a sport shirt. They were laid out on
the bed and all of us came and each chose as best we could, one that would
match his size and make his choice as to color. I got there late and I
had to take one that was too big and not really a very pretty shirt.
HESS: On the subject of colorful garb, I have heard that Mr. Truman had
a pair of red trousers that he tried to take to Key West one time. Is
that right?
MURPHY: I don’t remember anything about any red trousers. But it was
a topic of conversation and somewhat of a contest to see who could turn
up with the gayest of sport shirts. And President Truman had some very
gay sport shirts. I must say he always looked very nice and neat in all
of them. Not all of us did but he always looked very nice and neat no
matter what he wore.
He went swimming. I don’t know if you have anything on his swimming activities.
There was a beach down there where he went quite regularly. There was
something of a surf but not very much, he went out and swam in the water
and swam always with a side stroke. He lost his glasses out there on one
occasion, his eyeglasses. There were Secret Service men nearby, of course,
so all the Secret Service men and all the rest of us came up and walked
around and dove under water, felt around for his eyeglasses and finally
one of the Secret Service men found them and he put them back on.
HESS: What was your favorite recreation down in Key West?
MURPHY: Oh, I suppose it was the poker game. I was not much of a fisherman,
there were a few fishermen in the crowd. Wallace Graham was a fairly enthusiastic
fisherman. Some of the others fished, some of the Secret Service people
fished pretty regular. I went out fishing one day, the President would
usually go about one day...
HESS: One day each trip.
MURPHY: One day each trip, yes, fishing. And we went once to Key West
during my time, we went on the Williamsburg all the way from Washington
on the Williamsburg. That in itself was something of an eventful
trip as we went around Cape Hatteras. The Williamsburg was not
a very steady boat in a sea and anyone who is subject to seasickness was
reasonably sure to get seasick on the Williamsburg if you left
Chesapeake Bay. So, up around Cape Hatteras it pitched and tossed quite
a lot and almost everyone did get seasick.
HESS: Did the President get seasick?
MURPHY: I think he did, he stayed in his cabin about two days.
HESS: Were you at Key West when Charles Wilson came down to see the President
during the steel controversy in 1952?
MURPHY: I was.
HESS: What do you recall of that?
MURPHY: I don’t have many very clear recollections about it. But I do
remember seeing Mr. Wilson there when he arrived and when he left.
HESS: Were you in on any of the discussions that he had with the President
at the time that he was down there?
MURPHY: I don’t have any clear recollection of that either. I suppose
my answer would be that I participated in some of those discussions, but
not all. Mr. Wilson was President Truman’s personal selection for the
job he held at that time. When the President decided to create that position,
it must have been in the fall of 1950, I guess, after the Korean war started,
this was the man he wanted. There’s no question on it, there was no--there
might have been a second choice if he couldn’t have gotten Charlie Wilson,
but Charlie Wilson was his first choice. He had gotten to know him in
the course of his work as chairman of the Investigating Committee during
World War II and had a very high regard for Mr. Wilson and asked him to
take this job. Now, Mr. Wilson was quite a sensitive person, it might
be a surprise to some people, and he was at something of a loss in the
Federal bureaucracy. He had a very difficult position, there was no question
about it. He was brought into a job that overlapped considerably the job
that Stuart Symington had at the time.
HESS: National Security Resources Board?
MURPHY: National Security Resources Board. And as a result of that, I
think, finally the National Security Resources Board was terminated. But
it was an extremely difficult assignment, I think, and involved, I suppose,
some of the most difficult problems in Federal bureaucracy and governmental
relations.
As I say, it just was not Charlie Wilson’s bailiwick. There were a number
of things that troubled and hurt his feelings from time to time and it
got to be a fairly regular thing for me to go see him from time to time
and just sit and listen. I was a good listener and quite sympathetic and
he had something to talk about, no question about that, so I would go
over and sit sometimes for an hour or more so he could tell me his troubles
and his problems. Most of them were things that nothing could be done
about, but when things could be done about it, why, I tried to get them
done. I think this was something of a relief valve for him. We never got
to be intimate but because of this I did know him fairly well and he knew
me and I’m sure that such feelings as he had, were friendly as far as
I was concerned. I would have known him when he came to Key West.
The staff people that President Truman would have been relying on primarily
at this time in connection with these problems were John Steelman and
me, and at that particular phase, I suppose, mostly John Steelman. My
memory is not altogether clear about the sequence of events.
My most intense interest in it and participation in the staff work began
at the time that it was decided to seize the steel industry. Before that
it had been primarily a labor dispute which was the kind of thing that
John Steelman worked on and I expect Dave Stowe must have worked on that.
I expect Dave Stowe would remember some of the early parts of that much
more clearly than I.
HESS: In William Rigdon’s logs of that trip, I noticed that Roy Harper
and Frank McKinney and Clark Clifford were at Key West during that trip.
Did their presence have anything at all to do with Wilson’s visit?
MURPHY: I would be certain it did not. It was purely social.
HESS: In Grant McConnell’s study of the 1952 steel strike, he states
in relation to Wilson’s resignation, that some of Wilson’s aides tried
to call the President and talk to him by telephone and he says, "The
aides even called some of the White House staff to learn if the President
would talk to Wilson." Do you recall who they called at that time?
MURPHY: I don’t have any actual recollection of it. I think it would
have been likely to be me. I think the man most likely to have made the
call would have been Charlie Stauffacher. And I was the man he would have
been most likely to call.
HESS: But you don’t recall at this late date if he did call you or not.
Is that right?
MURPHY: That is right. I think it’s quite likely. Stauffacher had been
in the Bureau of the Budget. He had worked with the President and on the
White House staff in setting up this office that Charles Wilson was asked
to accept and did accept. Then he went from the Bureau of the Budget to
work with Charlie Wilson on this staff. Wilson’s chief staff people were
General Lucius Clay, and then Charlie Stauffacher, and then on a kind
of a part-time basis--I’m terrible about names, I ought not to start out
on one that I can’t remember, but the man who is the director of so many
corporations in New York, that they brought an antitrust case against
him, the only one in history. He’s still living up there and in investment
banking. [Sidney Weinberg]
But I had known Stauffacher pretty well when he was in the Bureau of
the Budget and we continued to work together and communicated quite freely.
He left, incidentally, after that was over, General Lucius Clay went to
Continental Can Company and Charles Stauffacher went with him where he
is now vice president of Continental Can Company--maybe executive vice
president.
HESS: Do you recall who drafted Wilson’s letter of resignation?
MURPHY: No.
HESS: Was that drafted in the White House?
MURPHY: No. No, I don’t have any recollection about it.
HESS: Okay. In your papers at the Truman Library there are indications
that you helped to write the Executive order and the messages of April
the 8th and 9th regarding the steel strike. Do you recall those?
MURPHY: Yes. That would have been a regular part of my duties to participate
in and actually supervise the staff work preparing those documents. I
don’t have any independent recollection of the Executive order itself
as a document.
I do remember something about the radio and television address and about
the message to Congress. The principal people who would have worked with
me on those things at that time, I think, that is from the White House
staff, would have been David Bell and David Lloyd. I would guess, on the
normal division of labors at that time, Bell would have been primarily
responsible for the message to Congress and Lloyd primarily responsible
for the radio and television address, although our working together merged
so much that perhaps you couldn’t divide it out.
I do remember that the radio message was written under great pressure
of time and in only about, oh, one or two days, I think, from the time
to start working on it with the President until he delivered it, which
is a very short time for a message or speech of such major consequence
about such an important event. And because of that, it was quite late
when the finishing touches were put on it, when we got the final draft.
We went over it with the President, oh, the last time as a group, late
in the afternoon I think before it was delivered that night and he made
some changes and gave it back to us to revise with his changes. When that
revision was finished, it was, oh, I don’t know, early evening I guess.
And I suppose after the President’s dinner hour. I took it to him in this
oval study upstairs in the White House and he went over it a time or two
and made some marks on his reading copy and asked me some questions and
I talked with him about it some and finally he was prepared and ready
to go and he looked at his watch and there was, I don’t remember how long,
maybe twenty or thirty minutes before the time he was scheduled to go
on the air and he said, "Charlie, come on, I’ve got something I want
to show you."
We walked downstairs to the East Room where there were two grand pianos.
Someone had just sent in a new piano. So he went in and he played the
new piano for awhile so I could hear that and then he went and played
the old piano for awhile, so I could compare them.
No, I am so illiterate in this field that this--the sound didn’t mean
a great deal for me. But here he was before he was going to make this
radio address on this very critical thing, down there showing me how these
two pianos sounded. Then he looked at his watch and it must have been
ten or fifteen minutes before it was time for him to go on the air and
he said, "Well, I guess that we had better go on over."
HESS: On a speech of that nature, just what would be the first step in
its preparation?
MURPHY: Well, I suppose the first step would be to talk to the President
and listen to the President for awhile.
HESS: You would do this? You would talk to the President?
MURPHY: Well, in this case I think it would have been probably three
of us, Dave Bell and Dave Lloyd and me. Because in this case, I would
have asked one of them to sit down and write the first draft, and I always
preferred for the man who had to write the first draft to hear what the
President said directly instead of getting it secondhand through me. Because
when anything goes secondhand through me it loses a lot, especially if
it started with President Truman. And so, that’s the way it would have
started and the basic purpose of the speech, from the standpoint of the
staff working on it, would have been to explain to the American people
what was being done and why, and why it was necessary, and how it had
come about. Just a report to the people I think is essentially what the
President felt he wanted, and what we tried to help him with.
HESS: Give your personal opinion on this matter.
Do you think the President should have seized the steel mills as he did
in 1952?
MURPHY: Well, I do. I so recommended to him and I thought it was the
right recommendation at the time and I think that I would, under the same
circumstances make the same recommendation again. This action was taken
by the President, I think, largely on the basis of the recommendations
made to him by John Steelman and me. We were his staff people that worked
on it and this is the report that we came back with and the recommendation
we made to him.
Now, there’s something back of what we recommended you understand. I
think we were guided and influenced primarily by the attitude and feelings
of the Department of Defense and especially the Secretary of Defense,
Bob Lovett, and by the Department of Justice, especially the views and
attitudes of Philip Perlman who was then the Solicitor General and the
Acting Attorney General. There must not have been an Attorney General.
Phil Penman was Acting Attorney General for a good many months at one
period and he is the man that we dealt with primarily on this, so I think
this must have been when he was Acting Attorney General.
Basically what we got from the Department of Defense was that the defense
of the United States, and the critical needs of war, were so imperative
that these steel mills had to be kept in operation, the President just
did not have any choice. And the man who stated this most effectively,
as far as I was concerned, was Bob Lovett. And given that imperative need,
then the question got to be what is the best way to do it.
Here we were guided very largely by the opinion of the Department of
Justice as to what was the best way to do it, all things considered, and
all the legal consequences considered.
We were told by the Department of Justice that they had no reasonable
doubt as to the President’s authority to do this under the circumstances,
and they had a departmental memorandum that had been prepared on this
question some time in the past which had been signed by the then Attorney
General Tom Clark, and that was the principal authority that we all relied
on most of all; this memorandum that had been signed by Tom Clark as Attorney
General. Then when the case got to the Supreme Court, Tom Clark voted
the other way. He did.
HESS: As I understand it, the methods by which the Government could have
taken over the steel mills were: Number one, seizure under section eighteen
of the Universal Military Training and Service Act of 1948. Number two,
by an act of Congress. Number three, by employing the Taft-Harley Act.
Number four, the Defense Production Act of 1950 and, number five, the
"inherent powers" of the President. Were all of those possibilities
discussed beforehand?
MURPHY: I don’t remember each of these possibilities one by one specifically.
All I can say is that all possibilities were discussed beforehand
and discussed at length.
HESS: Why was the Department of Commerce chosen as the agency to take
the responsibility of the operation of the mills? You mentioned Bob Lovett
at the Department of Defense who seemed to be quite interested. Why wasn’t
the Department of Defense selected?
MURPHY: Oh, I’m not sure that I have a clear recollection at this point.
I think one reason is because the President had a great deal of respect
for, and confidence in, the Secretary of Commerce, Secretary Sawyer. I
don’t mean to imply that he didn’t have respect for, and confidence for,
the Secretary of Defense, but he, I guess, thought that that would perhaps
be more compatible with the views of the people in the business world
and...
HESS: Secretary Sawyer was a rather conservative man.
MURPHY: Sawyer was quite conservative.
HESS: What was his reaction to being selected to do that?
MURPHY: If this is what the President told him to do, he’d do it and
do the best he could. And he did a good job. And he had a general counsel,
whose name I don’t remember, who had very much the same attitude, but
he did a good job, too.
HESS: On April the 27th of 1952, the President sent a letter to Charles
S. [Caseyj Jones in response to some questions that Mr. Jones had had
about the steel strike. And the text of that letter was also released
by the President on that date. Do you recall that incident?
MURPHY: I don’t have any recollection of that, no.
HESS: Would you know why the President would select this particular method
to voice his views?
MURPHY: No.
HESS: Okay.
MURPHY: No, I could speculate. I would speculate that by that time he
thought that it would be useful to have some peg to hang it on and some
opportunity or occasion to express some views and here was a letter he
could answer and that was one way to do it. But this is just speculation.
HESS: Holmes Baldridge stated before Judge Pine on April the 23rd and
the 24th that in effect the Executive had unlimited power in an emergency.
What was the reaction of the President and the members of the White House
staff to that particular statement?
MURPHY: That it was a very unfortunate statement.
HESS: If that was the reaction, wasn’t Mr. Baldridge informed that that
was the President’s opinion before he made the same statement the following
day on the 24th?
MURPHY: I don’t know. I do know that we were very unhappy with the way
that Baldridge was presenting the case to the court and we talked to Phil
Perlman about it and tried to get him to do something about it and that
he found various and sundry reasons why it was extremely difficult to
do anything about it, and changes were not made so quickly as some of
us wanted them made and thought they should have been made. But, it’s
been a long time ago and my memory is not clear.
My recollection is that we thought that Baidridge presented the case
very poorly and particularly in this regard where he claimed so much more
than was necessary on the facts of that particular case. And...
HESS: Were you surprised when Judge David Pine ruled against the Executive
Department?
MURPHY: I was. And more surprised at the decision of the Supreme Court,
and still more surprised at Tom Clark’s vote.
HESS: Why do you think he voted that way?
MURPHY: Well, I don’t know anything more than what’s in his opinion,
which I haven’t read for a long time.
HESS: Do you have any other things to add, anything else to add on the
‘52 steel strike?
MURPHY: One thought perhaps. There is an ultimate question the President
of the United States must get to in a situation like that as to what he
is going to do about the decision of the Supreme Court, as to whether
he is going to accept the decision and conform to it or whether he is
just going to ignore it. And on this particular thing, I did visit with
President Truman just after the decision of the Supreme Court came out
and I recommended to him that he conform to that opinion of the Supreme
Court. Whether he would have had any thought of doing other than that,
I don’t know. I really didn’t ask him. In the meantime, since he issued
the order seizing the mills, there had been some developments which had
made the case for a seizure much weaker than it had appeared to be at
the time. The, I think, quite straightforward story we had gotten from
the Department of Defense was, that if these strikes were not stopped,
we would meet with a great military disaster in Korea. Well, the fact
is that the strike was not stopped and we did not meet with a great military
disaster. And so the thing that the Department of Defense had said would
happen had not happened, which made quite a difference in terms of the
justification, legal and otherwise, for the President’s action and for
his continued course of action after the decision of the Supreme Court.
I suppose it made a difference in the opinion of the Supreme Court. I
think it’s quite possible that if there had been any kind of military
disaster, as the Defense Department had said there would be, that the
decision of the Supreme Court might have been different.
HESS: Do you think that President Truman considered not going along with
the Supreme Court?
MURPHY: Well, I don’t know. I just said I don’t know whether he considered
it or not.
HESS: Could he have held out against them? Could he have issued orders
that even though the Supreme Court said this is unconstitutional, I’m
not going to give up the steel mills?
MURPHY: Well, that’s a highly difficult question. I would think the answer
is yes. I would think he is the commander in chief of the Army and Navy
and if he ordered the Army and Navy to run the steel mills, I expect they
would have gone and run them. Now, what kind of mess it might have been,
I can’t tell you.
HESS: That would have upset the balance of power.
MURPHY: If it comes down to an ultimate question of who’s got the military,
I expect the President’s got the military.
HESS: Everything on ‘52?
MURPHY: On the steel strike?
HESS: On the steel strike.
All right, moving into the events of the election of 1952, what do you
recall of Mr. Truman’s decision not to run for re-election in 1952?
MURPHY: Well, a good bit, first and last. I think I first heard of it
at Key West in the...
HESS: What time of year in Key West?
MURPHY: I don’t have a clear recollection. I noticed you raised a question
whether it was in March of 1951 or November of 1951. I would think it’s
more likely it’s in November. If this is a matter of importance, I do
have a paper at home that will enable me to pin this down.
HESS: Fine. We would appreciate that because, as I have noted here, Mr.
Truman mentions in his Memoirs that it was in March 1951, that’s
in Volume II, page 489 and William Rigdon has in his book White House
Sailor, page 267, that was on November 19, 1951 when the President
told a group of his White House staff members in Key West, and Mr. Rigdon
mentions that you were one of those present. Is that correct?
MURPHY: Well, I was one of those present and fairly recently at
home I have run across a copy of a longhand note that I wrote the President,
at the time, making some comments about that statement he had made to
us. And I think I can find that and I think it will have a date on it.
[The memorandum and letter were the subject of comment again in Interview
#7, page 376, and have been appended to the transcript]
HESS: Good. What was the nature of your comments?
MURPHY: Well, it--I was very sorry that this was what he had decided
to do, but he was the boss so if this was what he decided to do, well,
God bless him.
HESS: Do you recall if in late ‘51 or early ‘52, if Mr. Truman expressed
an opinion as to who he would prefer to see as Democratic standard-bearer
that year?
MURPHY: I do.
HESS: Who did he want to see?
MURPHY: Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson.
HESS: Tell me about that.
MURPHY: Well, Fred Vinson was the President’s clear choice and only
choice really to succeed him. I don’t remember when that first--my recollection
about the dates of this sequence of events is not sorted out. I think
by referring to different papers I probably could straighten them all
out. But I think that very soon after he told us about this in Key West,
he invited Fred Vinson to come to Key West. Vinson came and he stayed
for about a week.
The principal purpose of the invitation was so President Truman could
tell him that he wanted him to be the candidate for the President in 1952.
And Vinson came, and he and the President talked about this privately,
I am sure. Vinson was very good company, very convivial. I enjoyed some
very fine conversations with him at a long breakfast table when there
was just the two of us there. But he did not give the President an answer.
He said that he would think about it, and for some time after that he
did not give the President an answer. And on some date after Vinson had
come home, whether it was part of this same--whether it was during the
period of this same trip of the President to Key West, whether the President
had come home and had gone back, I’m not sure. This is one of the things
that I need to check. But I got kind of impatient because Vinson had not
given the President an answer so I took it on myself to go see him and
ask him, when he was going to give him an answer and what he was going
to tell him.
Vinson had an apartment out at the Wardman Park, now the Sheraton Park
Hotel, and his family was not there. He was there by himself. We sat and
talked for awhile and I told him what I wanted to know and he looked at
me and said, "Charlie, did the President send you to ask me this
question?"
I said, "No, sir."
He said, "Well, I’m not going to tell you. I’ll tell him."
He didn’t tell me. But he did tell President Truman not long after that
and the answer was no. Well, this was quite a surprise for the President
I’m sure, it just hadn’t occurred to him that Vinson might say no.
HESS: Why, in your opinion, did the Chief Justice decline?
MURPHY: I don’t know. I expect somewhere he must have said something
on this. I don’t know, I don’t remember anything that he actually said.
I suppose that it was his feeling that it sort of eroded the distinction
between the Court and the executive branch, and if the Court Chief Justiceship
particularly was regarded as a stepping stone to the Presidency, why,
that might tend to influence the conduct and decisions of members of the
Court and so on. Some people have stronger feelings about this than others
and that would be my best guess as to his reason, it also may be that
Mrs. Vinson didn’t want him to do it. That I don’t know.
HESS: At the time that you were in Key West, when the Chief Justice was
there, were you present at any of the meetings when the President may
have asked him?
MURPHY: No. I don’t think anyone was.
HESS: How did you come about your information? Did Chief Justice Vinson
tell you or did...
MURPHY: No, President Truman.
HESS: President Truman.
MURPHY: Oh, I think it was a fairly open secret among us on the White
House staff down there that this was why Vinson was being invited to come
down. I think the President had told us that he wanted Vinson to succeed
him.
HESS: Were there any other of the major Democratic political figures
that may have received support from the President, or recognition from
the President? Here I’m thinking about Vice President Barkley or Averell
Harriman. Did you ever hear the President make any statements about their
possible chances for the nomination?
MURPHY: Well, later, but not at that time. As I say, when Vinson said
no, this was quite a surprise to President Truman and he just did not
have a prepared fallback position or second choice. He just simply didn’t.
And so he began looking around.
One of the people that was in the public eye at that time and that he
did not know very well, but thought well of to the extent he knew him
was Adlai Stevenson who was then Governor of Illinois. Some of us on the
White House staff thought very highly of Governor Stevenson and we sort
of pushed his name forward.
HESS: Who on the White House staff?
MURPHY: Well, David Lloyd and I in particular.
David Lloyd had worked with Stevenson in the Department of State some
years earlier when Stevenson made a trip to Europe and Italy.
Dave Lloyd went with him and knew him well personally.
So, I talked to President Truman about Stevenson and asked him if he
didn’t think Stevenson was a good man and worth looking over and so forth
and so on. And President Truman said, yes, that he would like to talk
to him. He said, "See if you can get him down here and I’ll talk
to him."
Dave Lloyd and I put our heads together about how do you proceed to do
this. Since Dave knew the Governor personally, he called him on the phone
and asked him if he planned to be in Washington any time soon.
We had found out by that time, if you call from the White House and put
that question to almost anyone, the answer was most likely to be yes.
And the Governor said yes, he as a matter of fact did expect to be down
here within two or three days. And so Dave told him then that the President
would like him to come by and see him. I suppose maybe he told him to
start with that if he planned to be in Washington soon, the President
would like for him to come by for a visit. And so, Stevenson did come
within two or three days.
George Ball was practicing law here at that time and prior to that had
been a partner of Stevenson’s in law practice in Chicago. Dave Lloyd and
I knew George Ball. I expect Dave knew him better than I. I think Dave
must have said something to Ball about the reasons for our interest in
Stevenson’s visit to Washington, but at any rate, Dave Lloyd and I met
Stevenson in George Ball’s office late in the afternoon before Stevenson
went to see President Truman that evening and we talked to him about this.
I remember Stevenson started out by saying, "Now, what is this all
about?" And so we undertook to tell him what it was all about. The
President was not going to run again, and thought possibly he would be
a good candidate and wanted to talk about it. And I don’t remember what
his reactions were particularly beyond disbelief and surprise and so forth.
Well, then that meeting broke up and I went then, and briefed the President
on that meeting with Stevenson, before Stevenson got there that evening.
And I’m sure, I hope, that I remembered better at that time, what happened
than I do now about that meeting with Stevenson. But then later in the
evening Stevenson did go see the President in the Blair House and there
was nobody there but the two of them. And they had their conversation.
Well, sometime fairly soon after that, again, the President was in Key
West and we on the staff, asked him, "What did Stevenson say?"
And he reported that Stevenson said, yes, he would run. And then, somehow,
and now I do not remember how, I found out that Stevenson had reported,
and was reporting, that he had said no.
And so here we were. Just the two of them had been there, and one says
he said yes and the other says he said no. Well, this seemed to be an
altogether unsatisfactory situation and I thought I should try to straighten
it out.
The President was at Key West, and I was with him, and he was going to
New York or New York State to make a talk. On the way he was going to
stop, or his plane was going to land at least, in Washington. And I came
to Washington with him on that plane and Jim Loeb--Dave Lloyd was not
available, I think he may have been at Key West--Jim Loeb went with me
and we went and had dinner with Stevenson at George Ball’s house. And
Stevenson and George Ball, and Jim Loeb and I had dinner and spent the
evening after dinner talking about this and then Stevenson insisted that
he had said no. And furthermore, he insisted that he did not want to run
and...
HESS: All the time the President thinking he was going to run.
MURPHY: Yes. And in fact, up till that point, he denied that he was willing
to run. Well, at any rate, I think that Stevenson made it quite clear
at that time that he didn’t want to run and would not, was not willing
to run.
I guess, in due course, I went back to Key West and shortly after that
I got a long letter from Stevenson written on yellow lined paper with
all his views written in his longhand about how he felt about running
or not running for the Presidency. That’s in my papers that are sealed
in the Truman Library, by the way. I did have some typewritten copies
of it made.
I indiscreetly mentioned this letter to someone who was writing a book
about President Truman, and he wanted to get a copy of it. I refused to
give it to him but that raised a question in my mind as to what I should
do with it and shortly before Governor Stevenson died I called him on
the phone, and asked him what he wanted me to do with this letter and
he said send him a copy of it and he’d let me know.
Well, I sent him a copy of it and I never heard from him. And I have
just received today, from Carol Evans who used to be his secretary, a
request for a copy of this letter to use in connection with the Stevenson
papers that they are preparing.
HESS: One point, when did you first become acquainted with Governor Stevenson?
MURPHY: On the President’s non-political campaign trip in June 1948.
His first major speech was made in a big amphitheater, I guess you call
it, in Chicago at a big Swedish celebration of some kind. And he made
the major speech and Governor Stevenson was there and introduced him and
did it very eloquently and well.
HESS: In Cabell Phillips’ book The Truman Presidency on pages
418 and 419, he makes mention of a meeting that was held in the Blair
House in March of 1952 at which time the President was speaking of running
since he couldn’t get Stevenson to run even though he had said that he
was not going to run. That’s on pages 418 and 419, in which he said, "Well,
the time was coming to fish or cut bait." And, "Briefly, Truman
toyed with the idea of reversing his earlier decision and going for another
term himself." Do you recall that meeting?
MURPHY: Well, there were two meetings. It’s true that after Vinson said
he would not run and, perhaps, after Stevenson said he would not run,
President Truman did review in his own mind and with other people, the
question of whether or not he should run. Now, I don’t remember, I think
he did not make his public announcement at the Jefferson Day Dinner until
sometime in April as I recall. I think that was later. But he had one
meeting at the Blair House. Mrs. Truman was out of town and this was at
dinner, and there were just four of us there, President Truman, Clark
Clifford and me and one fourth person--I think it was Fred Vinson, it
may have been John Snyder. And this is what we talked about. We had dinner
out in the garden, in the yard, in the back, with a glass topped wrought-iron
table, and the President didn’t get any particular encouragement at that
meeting to run. I don’t remember whether this one was before Stevenson’s
refusal or after. But this was the first time I guess.
HESS: What was your view at this time? Did you think that the President
should stand by his earlier announcement to the staff and not run or did
you think that he should still run for President?
MURPHY: I believe at this point I thought that he should not run.
HESS: Why?
MURPHY: Well, at the later meeting, and there was a later meeting, I
remember when it came my turn to speak and I spoke and I remember what
I said. I was fairly junior in the crowd so I was pretty far down the
line and so I didn’t undertake to review the pros and cons completely
but rather tried to add something to what the others had said. And I said
that I agreed that he should not run and I thought that one of the important
reasons that he should not run was that we needed a sort of a turnover
in the Administration. That it would clear away a lot of deadwood in his
Administration that ought to be cleared out. I thought it would be better
for a new Democratic President to do it than for a Republican President
to do it. Don’t think any of us had any real doubt that President Truman
could have won if he had run. Now we might not have been right you understand.
But in our own thinking, I don’t think this was an important consideration,
we just took for granted that if he ran he would be reelected.
HESS: Do you recall who was at that second meeting? You spoke of yourself
as being a junior member of the group.
MURPHY: Most of his senior White House staff was there. Matt Connelly
would have been there, John Steelman, Bill Hassett. His press secretary
at the time I guess would have been there, Joe Short. Now this was before
Joe died I guess. Yes...
HESS: He died on September the 18th of ‘52.
MURPHY: Yes. It was after Charley Ross died, Joe Short would have been
there. And Fred Vinson was there. I think John McCormack was there, I’m
not sure. But I remember Fred Vinson as we were coming out sort of shaking
his head in wonderment and saying, "That was the frankest meeting
I ever heard in my life." He was expressing surprise how many people
had told President Truman they thought he ought not run and so forth and
how frank they had been about their reasons, which I think was quite different
from the popular conception at the time--that the President’s staff, his
hangers on, would be urging him to run again, so they could keep their
jobs. But I think it was unanimous, there must have been I expect a dozen
or more people. Now Frank McKinney might have been there, I don’t remember
about that.
HESS: Do you recall if anyone advised him to run?
MURPHY: At that time, in that group? No, I think it was unanimous, they
advised him not to run. Incidentally I note you quote from Cabell Phillips
about the newly minted silver dollars. That again is not quite accurate.
They were not newly minted, they were minted in 1884, the year of President
Truman’s birth.
HESS: Is that one you have there?
MURPHY: And this is one of them he gave me that night.
HESS: Well, how about that?
MURPHY: And the reason he happened to have them, John Snyder had run
across a bunch of these dollars minted in 1884 and he gave them to President
Truman and President Truman gave them to other people and this just happened
to be the time when he had them and gave them out and gave me that one
which I’ve carried ever since.
HESS: At least Mr. Phillips is right in saying that they were silver
dollars.
MURPHY: Yes. I think that Phillips is that nearly right about a good
many things in his book.
HESS: Just what is your general opinion of Phillips’ book?
MURPHY: Oh, I think it’s a good book. I think the...
HESS: Do you find any glaring errors in it?
MURPHY: Oh, I don’t remember any, no. I think it’s a little bit, what
would you say, out of balance. I think this is natural.
HESS: In what way?
MURPHY: Well, he would have learned more about some things than he would
about others and necessarily he would write more about the things that
he had learned about whether they were the most important or not.
HESS: Do you think that he would write more about certain people than
others, if he learned more about certain people?
MURPHY: Well, yes, I think he would and did.
HESS: Who?
MURPHY: Well, you’ll have to read the book.
HESS: I’ve read the book.
MURPHY: All right, then you probably know.
HESS: What do you recall about the convention in Chicago that year?
MURPHY: I went to the convention with President Truman when he went.
He flew out there. They had started calling the roll, they had taken one
and possibly two ballots before he got there. I had been in Chicago once
before in my life and maybe twice. But in any case when I had been there,
I was in the President’s party. I was working for him at the White House
and all I did was keep up with his party. I had never been on a street
in Chicago alone. We got to the Blackstone Hotel where he stayed out there,
and just immediately after we got there he called me into his bedroom
and says, "Charlie, I want you to do something for me."
I said, "Yes, sir."
He said, "Find Averell and tell him I want him to withdraw."
And so here I was with an assignment in the city of Chicago, some two
or three million people I guess with no idea where Averell Harriman is
nor how to get to him. Didn’t know where the convention was or how to
get to the convention and the President tells me to go find Averell Harriman
and tell him to withdraw. So I start out to find out how do you get to
the convention? And not knowing whether Averell was there or not. Well,
I did, I got to the convention and I got in. Just fortunately I ran into
someone in the convention hall right after I got there that knew Averell
and knew where he was. And he was there, he had an office in the convention
hall and this person took me to him. And I got there and told him why
I had come. He told me that he had already issued a statement withdrawing,
and he had. This was before he got the message from President Truman.
And he, at the moment, was sitting there waiting for his announcement
to be reported on the television. So, I had an opportunity to sit there
with Averell Harriman and Marie, his wife, and watch the television while
they were reading the announcement of his withdrawal, which was a relatively
sad occasion I might say.
HESS: What was his reaction when he found out that the President would
also like him to withdraw?
MURPHY: I think he was a little peeved. I think he was a little peeved.
Now, that is certainly my principal recollection of that convention. I
stayed in Chicago as long as President Truman stayed and left when he
left. I suppose he must have addressed the convention, I’m sure he did
while he was there.
HESS: Do you recall working on his address?
MURPHY: I don’t at the moment have any recollection of working on that
one, but if he made one I’m sure I worked on it.
HESS: What do you recall about Vice President Barkley’s efforts to obtain
the nomination that year?
MURPHY: Shortly before the convention, the President called a number
of his White House staff, including me, into his upstairs study on the
second floor of the White House and announced to us that he was supporting
and going to support Vice President Barkley for the Democratic nomination
for the Presidency at the convention, and he would like for us to do likewise.
And that was...
HESS: What time was this?
MURPHY: Well, it was shortly before the convention. I think it must have
been within...
HESS: A week or so?
MURPHY: Less than that, in my recollection it would have been two or
three days before the convention. Well, now after that, Barkley’s nomination
was very adamantly opposed by organized labor.
HESS: Why?
MURPHY: No, I don’t know why. I think it was because of his age, but
at any rate it was a fact that they did oppose his nomination adamantly
and directly. They told him, they didn’t go around behind beating the
bush, they just told him that they could not support him and they would
oppose him and talked to him face to face about it. Well, this was, I
think, a very severe blow to him but he finally decided that that being
the situation that he would not be a candidate for the nomination and
he called President Truman on the phone and told him so. And this was
before the President left Washington to go out there. And so that, I think,
for all intents and purposes ended the Barkley episode and his support
of Barkley. But as long as Barkley was an active candidate, a very short
period, a few days as I recall, he was supporting Barkley for the nomination.
Then after that, it must have been, he got a call from Stevenson who asked
him if President Truman would object now to his accepting the nomination.
And President Truman says he responded, "Hell, no, that’s what I’ve
been trying to get you to do all the time." But at that time, my
memory’s not clear, he must have been supporting Harriman. I perhaps would
have to think this out but I think the situation after Barkley withdrew
might have been that he was supporting Harriman but did not object to
Stevenson’s acceptance and did not object to Stevenson being nominated.
But at any rate, he did tell me to go find Averell and tell him to withdraw.
That I remember clearly.
HESS: One point I want to clear up in my own mind. We discussed about
the confusion that existed between Governor Stevenson and Mr. Truman when
Mr. Truman thought that Mr. Stevenson said yes and Mr. Stevenson thought
that he had said no. Just what was the President’s reaction when he found
out that the Governor did not want to run? At the time that there
was some confusion, about the first of the year I trust. Is that right?
MURPHY: Well, I’m sure he was irritated.
HESS: And then after that came the two meetings when the President was
reconsidering his withdrawing his withdrawal, so to speak.
MURPHY: Well, now the second of those two meetings, I’m sure would have
been after that, I think the first one would have been after that, although
it’s possible that the first one came between Vinson’s refusal and Stevenson’s.
HESS: And then along in there came...
MURPHY: I don’t know of any way of pinning that one down except to get
the Blair House records and see what day that he had three people there
for dinner, Clark Clifford and me and one other.
HESS: And then the date of the announcement at the National Guard Armory
at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner.
MURPHY: It must have been in April.
HESS: I think it was late in March--March 29th.
MURPHY: Well, maybe so.
HESS: Did the President, during this period of time, try to get Governor
Stevenson to change his mind. Was there continued efforts made between
the last of March and the date of the convention trying to swing Governor
Stevenson into line--get him to run?
MURPHY: Not to my recollection. I don’t remember any such instance.
HESS: So, during that period of time was...
MURPHY: I think that when I got this letter from Stevenson that that
sort of…
HESS: Cooled it.
MURPHY: The President took that as Stevenson’s signing off and took it
at face value, I think.
HESS: All right. One other point about the convention. According to a
memorandum in your papers out in the Library, you participated in the
drafting of the civil rights plank in the Democratic platform that year.
Do you recall that?
MURPHY: I remember something about that, yes sir. Well, first, the first
draft of the entire Democratic platform was prepared by the White House
staff. Dick Neustadt did it. It was, in earlier times, rather traditional
that the administration in power would have a first draft prepared so
that the platform committee could have a working draft, at least to start
with. This was an assignment that I gave to Dick Neustadt a good long
time ahead of the convention. He had a long time to work on it and did
an excellent job. I think it was a far better document from a literary
standpoint, and probably from the standpoint of content, than the one
that came out eventually. But what was done with that draft was the thing
that you usually do with drafts of that sort, you turn it over to the
chairman of the platform committee. And what happened after that is what
usually happens. They try to set out to make as many changes as they can
just for the sake of change so that they won’t have a platform that somebody
handed to them.
Parenthetically, I had a very interesting experience along this line
at a later convention in 1956. There were several of us around Washington
here that had experience in working with matters of this kind including
Democratic platforms and so we prepared, at the request of the chairman
of the platform committee, or the chairman of the national committee,
one or the other, we prepared a first working draft of the platform and
that was given by the chairman of the national committee to the chairman
of the platform committee. I believe that was John McCormack, who had
not become Speaker at that time. Then several of us in this same group
went out to the convention with no particular assignments, just to be
there. We ran into some members of the staff of the platform committee
and they were desperately in need of help of somebody to work on the language
of the platform and so we volunteered. They gave us the draft, and it
was the same draft that we earlier had given to the chairman of the national
committee and he had given to the chairman of the platform committee and
they gave it back to us and they gave us just one instruction, change
the language. So we worked it all over again for three days changing the
language.
HESS: Change your own language.
MURPHY: But to get back to the 1952 platform and the civil rights plank,
this is one of the planks that received, I guess, more attention than
some of the others and I was involved in some discussion and conversations
about that plank later on and that involved some of the particular language.
I don’t remember all the details but my best recollection would be that
I would have been called from Chicago by someone who was working on this,
possibly Frank McKinney, who was then chairman of the national committee
and he would have told me what the problem was and what the words were
involved and I would have taken the story to the President and talked
with him about it and gotten from him a decision which I would have passed
back along to McKinney. And I expect this is the kind of thing you ran
across.
HESS: As you will recall in 1948 the civil rights plank caused quite
a flap, so to speak.
MURPHY: Well, that’s right.
HESS: Was there anything anticipated, was anything expected to arise
at the ‘52 convention of the same nature that did in 1948?
MURPHY: Well, I suppose so.
HESS: Hubert Humphrey was going to be there.
MURPHY: Well, this was an issue, a very live issue and one about which
people feel intensely and one that they like to make very prominent and
I guess just in the nature of things it was expected that it would be
made prominent. There was a likelihood, a chance, that it would explode
on the convention floor, there always was. One year I worked, at some
length, on the civil rights platform with Brooks Hays.
HESS: Of Arkansas.
MURPHY: Of Arkansas. I expect that was in 1952. This was in an earlier
stage than drafting the language. When I said earlier that Dick Neustadt
prepared the first draft of this, that is true; but in working on this
he would have had consultations with others of us on the White House staff
and we would have reviewed and revised and we would have, from time to
time, we would have consulted President Truman about this, and I am sure
that very serious attention would have been paid to the civil rights plank
at that stage as well as later.
HESS: Do you recall any of the President’s comments relative to the civil
rights plank?
MURPHY: No.
HESS: It’s a little bit past 4 and our reel is just about out so shall
we knock off for today?
MURPHY: We had better stop.
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