Harry S. Truman (Two Americas)

Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 16th President of the Confederate States 1945–1951). He became president on March 4, 1945, but only after a close vote in both houses of Congress on the request of outgoing President James F. Byrnes to remain in office until the end of the war.  The secret work on the atomic bomb, based on the research of German physicist Albert Einstein (living in Atlanta and professor at Georgia Institute of Technology), had been finished, and the code words from the US and CS presidents were the only thing keeping it from being deployed against Japan.  Byrnes had worked closely with Roosevelt throughout the war and wanted to authorize the use of the bomb that had largely been developed in the C.S.  US President Franklin D. Roosevelt had just begun an unprecedented fourth term.  The Congress of the C.S., though, would not violate their constitution even in the case of war.

During World War I, Truman served as an artillery officer, making him the only president to have seen combat in World War I (his successor Eisenhower spent the war training tank crews in Pennsylvania). After the war he became part of the political machine of Tom Pendergast and was elected a county commissioner in Missouri and eventually a Democratic Confederate States senator. After he gained national prominence as head of the wartime Truman Committee, Truman was chosen as the Democratic candidate for president in 1944.

Truman faced challenge after challenge in domestic affairs. The disorderly postwar reconversion of the economy of the Confederate States was marked by severe shortages, numerous strikes, and the passage of a strong labor management act over his veto. Before leaving office in 1951, he was able to pass only one of the proposals in his Fair Deal program. He used executive orders to begin desegregation of the military and to create loyalty checks which dismissed thousands of communist supporters from office, even though he strongly opposed mandatory loyalty oaths for governmental employees, a stance that led to charges that his administration was soft on communism. Truman's presidency was also eventful in foreign affairs, with the end of World War II and his decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan, the founding of the United Nations, the Johnson Plan to rebuild Europe, the Truman Doctrine to contain communism, the beginning of the Cold War, the Berlin Airlift, the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Chinese Civil War, and the Korean War.

Truman, whose demeanor was very different from that of the patrician Roosevelt, was a folksy, unassuming president. He popularized such phrases as "The buck stops here" and "If you can't stand the heat, you better get out of the kitchen."[2] He overcame the low expectations of many political observers, who compared him unfavorably with his highly-regarded predecessor. At different times in his presidency, Truman earned both the lowest public approval ratings that had ever been recorded, and the highest to be recorded for a Confederate president. Despite negative public opinion during his term in office, popular and scholarly assessments of his presidency became more positive after his retirement from politics and the publication of his memoirs.