Southern Explosion

Before Harry Truman, the U.S. had had six Presidents whom death had brought to the White House. Of those six, only two--Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge--were elected for another term. The others--John Tyler (1841-44), Millard Fillmore (1850-52), Andrew Johnson (1865-68) and Chester Arthur (1881-84)--were all repudiated by their own parties.

Last week there was considerable talk around the country, mostly in the South, urging the Democrats to put Harry Truman among the discards.

"Sacrificial Altar." The week's sound & fury was touched off by Virginia's portly Governor William Tuck in a loud speech before his General Assembly. The Governor put on his striped trousers and wing collar for the occasion. His double chin quivered as he attacked Harry Truman's civil rights program, (anti-poll tax, antilynching, antidiscrimination, antisegregation) as an "unwarranted assault upon the established customs and traditions of the entire Southland." Too long, he cried, had "the electoral vote of the South been counted . . . even before it was cast. . . . The people of the Southern states have been placed upon .the sacrificial altar to appease racial and other minority fringe groups."

In a bill which he placed before the legislature, he offered all other Southern states a model way in which to count Harry Truman out. The bill would simply keep Harry Truman's name--or that of any other candidate--off the ballot. Instead of voting for President and Vice President, the voter would cast his ballot for the party. Presidential electors would be bound to support the party's nominees --unless a state party convention ordered them to vote for another candidate before they went to the Electoral College. The bill had Senator Harry Byrd's blessing. That night somebody raised a Confederate flag over Virginia's Capitol.

"Brazen Scheme." This first shot fired, Democratic politicians manned the ramparts all over Dixie. South Carolina's Senator Burnet R. Maybank said that his state would follow Virginia's lead. His colleague, Senator Olin Johnston, proposed that the Democrats draft Secretary of State George Marshall. Arkansas' Senator John McClellan came out for Harry Byrd. Even at the price of defeat, Georgia's Senator Walter George looked forward to a party shakeup after the election, with Southerners taking a stronger grip on it.

Even Texas' Tom Connally, the party's foreign policy leader, took up the cry: "A lynching of the Constitution. We will not take it lying down . . . simply to catch a shirttail full of votes." The rebellion hit the Democratic National Committee; Georgian George B. Hamilton, its finance director, resigned.

Only one Southern stalwart came forward to sound a sober warning to the secessionists. He was no warm friend of Harry Truman's. But Florida's Senator Claude Pepper thought Virginia's ballot plan a "brazen scheme," the effect of which would be to give the electoral voting power "to a little group of party bosses."

A Move for Power. But the Southern politicos had other aims besides wanting to keep Harry Truman off the ballot. They wanted to insure their own re-election at home. And they hoped to gather enough power in the party to restore the two-thirds rule at their national convention--a rule which for 100 years had given them a virtual veto power over presidential candidates.

By week's end, they had achieved at least part of their purpose. Their revolt had spread defeatism in the Democratic Party to such an extent that Northern labor leaders had also begun to suggest privately that Harry Truman withdraw.

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