What was Harry Truman interested in when growing up? What are some important things he did as president?

Question

The question kind of says it all:
What was Harry Truman interested in when growing up? What are some important things he did as president?

I need them for a biography of him, but those two things I can't seem to find.

Date of birth
place of birth
2 paragraphs on his military term (if he had one)
Another two paragraphs on his parents
a paragraph if he had brothers and sisters.
his education.
a paragraph on his wafe
another one on his children
his death, and the place where he died.
Not to mention two paragraphs for each of my questions.
It's due in 6 days, but I like to get a head start on my homework.

Do you still think I'm trying to do the entire thing through Yahoo A! cartwrightfour4?

ooohhhhh. By the way, all that stuff I just listed, I have already. It was just to show cartwrightfour4 that I wasn'ttrying to get everything off of Y A!

Answer 1

Okay, Alex, I'll tell you a little bit about Harry Truman. Some of that stuff you can get in Wikipedia just by typing his name in, and you've go to do that yourself.

Lessee ... Harry S. Truman was the 33rd president. He became president in 1945 when FDR died. Roosevelt had just been inaugurated for his fourth term, then he died in April, so Truman was president for almost a full term.

Somebody wrote a good biography of him, called "Truman" (author might've been McCullough) that I read once.

He was born in Missouri, I think, not too long after the Civil War. His father or grandfather probably was on the Confederates' side. Missouri was called a "border state."

As a youngster he lived on his grandfather's farm, maybe, but in high school I think he lived in town (maybe Independence, MO) where his girlfriend was the daughter of a judge or something. They thought he wasn't good enough for their daughter, but he married her anyway. Her name was Bess (probably Elizabeth), and they had one daughter, named Margaret.

Sometime -- maybe during the Depression -- his mother or grandmother lost the family farm, and Harry got it back so she could live out her days there. He was very attached to that farm.

As a young man, he tried different jobs, but wasn't particularly successful at any of them. They called him a "haberdasher" which means he ran a hat shop at one time. I think that failed too. And he had in-law problems because they still thought he wasn't good enough for their daughter.

When World War I came, he joined the army, maybe because he hadn't been very successful at anything else. He was actually pretty old to be a soldier. But it turned out that he was brave and courageous, and a good leader of men. He was an artillery captain over in Europe, and was a real war hero.

When he got back home, he got hooked in with the Pendergast political "machine" in Kansas City, Mo. This had to do with local politics and patronage, because the Pendergast machine controlled everything in Missouri politics. (The guy's name may have been Tom Pendergast.)

Harry Truman was a straight, honest guy, but Pendergast was associated with political corruption, and that connection stayed with Truman a long time, maybe all his life.

Truman did well in politics, always staying on the good side of Tom Pendergast. Harry became a U.S. senator and, around the time of World War II, he ran an investigation of corruption in the military procurement process. Because he was an old army guy, and he knew how corruption worked, he was able to find a lot of people in the U.S. who were skimming profits at home while the boys overseas were getting killed in the war. The Truman Commission got a lot of good headlines, and Harry earned a reputation as an honest, straight-talking politician.

Roosevelt ran for a fourth term in 1944, but he was a sick man. In a smoke-filled, back-room deal, Harry was picked to run as vice president. Roosevelt hardly knew him, and as vice president, Truman had nothing to do. It was the most boring job in the world.

But then FDR died, and Truman suddenly became president. Nobody thought he was qualified for that job. But he was the boss, and he did that job the best he knew how. He became famous for saying, "The buck stops here!"

Shortly after becoming president, he ordered the atomic bomb to be dropped on Japan, ending the war. He hired George Marshall, the head of the army in WWII, to be his secretary of state, and Marshall came up with the "Marshall Plan" to save Europe after the war. He later had another good secretary of state, Dean Acheson.

Readjusting after the war, the steel workers went on strike for more money, and he shut down the steel mills. There was a coal miners strike that he dealt with He recognized the state of Israel when it got started. With one thing after another, Harry Truman did whatever he thought was right.

But these things made him very unpopular with the people. They never thought he was qualified to be president in the first place. So when 1948 came, everybody figured he's lose the election to New York's governor Tom Dewey. In fact, Dewey was so confident, that he hardly campaigned.

Harry was a fighter, though. Even though it looked like he was going to lose the election, he campaigned as hard as he could. He went on a famous "whistle-stop" campaign on a train that went all over the country, making 20-minute "whistle stops" in small towns where he'd make a short speech from the back of the train.

And he always defended his record as president, and attacked the Republicans. "Give-em-hell Harry" they called him.

When the election was over, everybody thought he'd lost, and a big-city newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, printed a headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman." Well, Harry won the election, and a famous photograph shows him holding up that newspaper with a big grin on his face.

His second term was dominated by the Korean War. General Douglas MacArthur was in charge of the army, and, along with General Dwight Eisenhower, one of the two most famous soldiers in America. MacArthur thought he was going to win the war in Korea, and to do that, he wanted to drop an atomic bomb on China. Truman told MacArthur that, as president, he (Truman) was the commander-in-chief, and MacArthur took orders from him.

Well, MacArthur didn't think much of Truman, so he kept mouthing off. Harry had enough of that, so he fired him. The country was shocked, and Truman went down in the polls again.

In 1952, Truman decided not to run for president again. He had been president for over seven years, and it was time to retire. He took a train back to Missouri where his wife Bess was living, and that's where he spent his retirement. He went on long walks every day, and all the neighbors knew him. I think he died of old age around 1965.

When he left the White House, Truman was not very popular. But in the years since, his reputation has continued to grow, until now, he's considered to be one of the near-great presidents. His time in office set the tone for the second half of the 20th century.

You still need to read the Wikipedia article on him. Type "Truman" into google.

Answer 2

Harry S Truman was once the worst president due to the fact that he was once warned by means of generals and he might have nuked Russia give up the unfold of nuclear guns to our enemies and the USA might be residing in an extra wherein handiest the USA and its allies have nukes and the USA proper now might be ruling the arena and spreading freedom and democracy like none different however Harry S Truman was once a jack *** that did not concentrate to his generals now Russia, China North korea all US enemies have Nukes pointed on the US. **** Truman he was once a pussy and a Chump and due to the fact that he was once an fool freedom and democracy hangs and the steadiness and with one flawed transfer by means of the USA it might be long past. Screw Truman I hate him the worst president ever.

Answer 3

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