Choosing Truman: The Democratic Convention of 1944

Unlike President Franklin Roosevelt himself, Democratic Party leaders were intensely anxious about choosing a running mate in the 1944 convention, aware that, given FDR's failing health, the Vice President would probably become chief executive. In this pungent examination of one of the century's great political stories, Ferrell analyzes the crucial meeting of July 11, 1944, in which Roosevelt and his lieutenants rejected both the sitting Vice President Henry Wallace and adviser James Byrnes in favor of a relatively unknown senator from Missouri. The author maintains that Harry S. Truman was surprisingly reluctant to accept the party's bid. One reason: his wife Bess and sister Mary Jane were on his Senate-office payroll, though neither performed clearly defined services. This revelation, notes Ferrell ( Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910-1959 ), ``does not accord with Truman's historical image as a man honest in all his dealings.'' The author's account of the Democratic national convention in Chicago includes a vivid description of the attempt by Wallace supporters to stampede the convention, yet Truman won the vice-presidential nomination by a landslide. (Apr.)