Progressive Presidential Campaigns, Part 5: How Wallace's Intractibilty and Gullibilty Doomed His Campaign Even Before The Convention

 

For decades many leftist scholars as well as prominent people who you’d think should know better have tried to polish Henry Wallace’s reputation. Oliver Stone in interviews and in his work for the leftist documentary The Untold History of the United States has gone out of his way to place Harry Truman as a tool of empire and Henry Wallace an unsung hero who the powers that be forced out of the Vice Presidency so that the imperialist United States could begin its mission.

Similarly George McGovern, who spent his early years working under Henry Wallace at his magazine and was a delegate at the convention, never lost his devotion for him even decades later. Perhaps we should not be shocked by this considering McGovern’s own leftist beliefs that caused him to clash with every President he served under and let to his own similarly disastrous Presidential campaign in 1972. Even know, many leftists still want to consider Wallace misunderstood in his own time.

To do so all of these men and his followers blatantly have chosen to ignore the very real person that Wallace was and that almost every around him knew. No less a man than Theodore White, who would spend his career chronically the Presidency and began his career working for him, soon learned was a ‘bitter man, eccentric, ambitious and self-righteous…He was susceptible to flattery…the Communists flattered him…inflated his opinion of himself, wasted his name and honors and left him beached years later in history as an eccentric, a hissing word in American politics.” Just as with Robert La Follette when he was running for the Republican nomination in 1912, by mid-1947 “Wallace was seeing more and more of fewer and fewer people.” And because of that any realistic chance he had and his party had to be a factor in the 1948 election began to erode very quickly.

Even the most devoted defenders of Wallace acknowledge that he had ‘unfortunate ties to Communists.” This is putting it mildly. The term ‘useful idiot’ had not yet entered the lexicon but it was clear even before 1948 truly began that Wallace was that…and heavier on the idiot part. In March of 1948, after a coup in Czechoslovakia led to the premier being murdered by defenestration, Wallace first argued that the presence of the American ambassador (who had not entered Czechoslovakia until two days after the coup) had led to his death. He was also willing to parrot the line of the Daily Worker that the premier had killed himself  because he had recently been diagnosed with cancer. He did nothing to dismiss the endorsements of the American Communist Party and its general secretary. Platform committee chair Lee Pressman and general counsel John Abt were active members of the Communist Party. Many of the key members were either Communist secret police, KGB agents members of the American Communist Party and Wallace’s own campaign managers C.B. Baldwin was a covert Communist operative.

The party was also heavily filled with many prominent celebrities, at least at the start. At one point many non-communists such as Gregory Peck, Lena Horne, Edward G. Robinson, Jose Ferrer and Gene Kelly were prominent Wallace supporters. However the more leftist and Communist influenced the party became, only the hardline Communist party members remained. The most prominent ones were Lee J. Cobb, Zero Mostel, Paul Robeson and the young folk singer Pete Seeger. Years later, Seeger would admit he had been misled.

Lillian Hellman, one of the most avid activists enlisted early on. Her former lover and close friend Dashiell Hammett was always skeptical and tried to warn Hellman that he loved Wallace “but you simply can’t make a politician out of him. As time went on close friends and allies tried to convince him that he was being a handmaiden for the Communist. Budd Schulberg actually told him as much and Wallace sloughed him off.

But much of Wallace’s behavior fits the idea of bitterness and martyrdom, some of which was justifiable. He had been so close to the Presidency that Truman had taken from him. In December of 1947, just before he officially announced for the Presidency a supporter asked him why he was running. Not content with his stump speech, he pressed and got was probably the truth. “Harry Truman is a son-of-a-bitch.” Many third-party candidates are labeled spoilers, but Henry Wallace had a personal reason to wish to be one.

What is tragic about Wallace’s determination to embrace Communists was that were legitimate reasons to raise about our true motives in the Cold War. Another politician, another person, could have capably raised these issues, could have rallied the many progressives who did have doubts about Truman and turned the Progressives into a force going forward. Instead many of these people, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Hubert Humphrey, chose to focus their energy on the Democratic party and coming up with an alternative to Truman during much of 1948.

 And the opposition had consequences beyond the political. Wallace aids were beaten, Wallace had eggs thrown at him. Newspapers across the country published the address of Wallace supporters. Worst of all, in Charleston, a twenty-eight year old prominent African-American Wallace supporter was murdered by one his co-workers in a drunken argument. His defense attorney, the former mayor of Charleston, claimed he was prosecute him: “for raising unrest among the colored people of the South and…as one of the despicable, slimy Communists prowling the waterfront.”

The few elected officials who had supported Wallace initially began to run away as quickly as they could. Claude Pepper, who had nominated Wallace for Vice President in 1944 and had been one of the most ideological supporters, withdrew not only from running as his vice president, but from the entire candidacy. Without him Wallace had few viable options for a running mate. He settled on one-term senator from Idaho Glen Taylor, known (not fondly) as the ‘Singing Cowboy.

Taylor had spent his childhood in show business before the Depression hit. He then studied economics and had run unsuccessfully for Congress once and the Senate twice before he had inexplicably won election in 1944. In November 1947, he embarked on cross-country “Ride for Peace”, riding his horse and at times sounding more ludicrous than Wallace. He wanted to shrink the State and War Department (it had not yet been renamed Defense) and called Secretary of Defense Forrestal: “the most dangerous man in America – a potential Hitler.”

Much as he supported Wallace, joining his ticket was another matter. He knew that if he chose to run, he would lose his Senate seat two years later, the only real resource he had. After  a conference with Truman (Taylor somehow fought he was a possibility for Truman’s ticket he announced his candidacy: “I did not leave the Democratic Party. It left me. Wall Street and the military have taken over.”

On May 1, 1948 Taylor attempted to address the Southern Negro Youth Conference in Birmingham. Publicly safety commission Bull Connor, as anti-communist as he was racist, had made it clear that was not going to happen. When Taylor attempted to enter anyway, he was manhandled, jammed into a patrol and arrested.

Two days later, Taylor provided the Senate with a lurid account of his captivity. He later recalled “I expected that when I had finished, every Senator of at least those from above the Mason-Dixon line would express outrage and indignation at the physical mistreatment I had endured and the indignities which had been heaped upon a colleague…Not one Senator opened his mouth.”

This was a secondary tragedy of Wallace’s Progressives. They were major advocates for civil rights and the need to alleviate equality in the Jim Crow South. Harry Truman’s gradual efforts towards integration had antagonized the Southern Democrats so much that they were in the process of forming a pro-segregation party contemporaneously with Wallace’s. Civil rights were increasingly becoming an issue in the post-war world and Wallace, who had been more ahead of the curve than other New Dealers, should have gotten credit for it, or at the very least praise.

But because Wallace was tied so closely to the Communists – and because for so long the cause of African-American equality had been one of the causes of the Communists – no one in the establishment gave him or Taylor any sympathy for the stands that they were taking. Even Hubert Humphrey, who had stood for Wallace at the convention four years ago and who give the first major address in a political party for civil rights, had deserted Wallace years ago.

By the time the Progressives met in Philadelphia (they did so to have their convention, like that of the Democrats and Republicans, televised) they finally had a platform. It’s worth noting quite a few of their parts were adopted by both parties year’s later – racial desegregation, the abolition of HUAC, suffrage of eighteen year olds, D.C. home rule and statehood for Alaska and Hawaii. That was overshadowed by the destruction of all U.S. atomic weapons, nationalization of banks, railroads, merchant marines, manufacture of aircraft and a full capital gains tax. The foreign policy was almost entirely to the Soviet line. Taylor said the ‘red communists will support Dewey because they hope the best way to get a revolution is to have another Hoover administration.”

When Wallace held an impromptu press conference, what was left of his candidacy was completely wrecked. He admitted that he was getting Communist support and that it was a liability, but he still would not renounce it. Indeed, he actually thought it might be a plus. He gave a mystifying presentation involving the murder of a radio correspondent who had been against Truman’s foreign policy than had no answer as to what should be done. He dodged questions from a black reporter about the sending of foreign troops in the South to enforce civil rights and American socialist Norman Thomas as to why he wanted to debate Truman but not him. Then at the end came the cherry on top:

“Have you ever repudiated the authenticity of the Guru letters?”

Between 1933 and 1934 Wallace had sent a series of letters to exiled Russian artist and mystic Nicholas Roerich, whose plans for wartime cultural preservation inspired the Roerich Pact. That was not controversial but when Wallace dispatched Roerich to China, he embarrassed U.S. diplomats by trafficking with the Japanese puppet government and Manchuria. During that period Wallace had sent a series of letters that were mystical and silly – and could only trigger the worst sort of question.

One such letter read:

“I have been thinking of you holding the casket – the sacred most precious casket. And I have thought of the New country going forth to meet the seven stars under the sign of the three stars. And I have thought of the admonition: “Await the Stone.”

This letter was dated just three days after Wallace was sworn in as Secretary of Agriculture. By comparison to what was to come, it was benign.

“The rumor is the Monkeys (the British) are seeking friendship with the Rulers (the Japanese) so as to divide the land of the Masters (Manchuria) between them,” he wrote to this Japanese sympathizer. The Wandering One (FDR) thinks this and is very suspicious of Monkeys…He does not like the Rulers and wants adequate preparation two or three years hence.”

That was a kind reference to his boss. In another, “FDR’s extraordinary sliminess makes even simple problems difficult at times. The One has a lovely upward, surging spirit with what he calls ‘hunches’’ Combined with this is a charming open-mindedness which makes him the prey at times of designing people – for example the Tigers (Russians).

By 1940, this correspondence had fallen into the hands of the Republicans after Wallace had been named FDR’s Vice President. Only because FDR exploited an extramarital affair candidate Wendell Willkie was having with a divorcee did FDR negate it as a factor. (And yes FDR was a philanderer himself.)

By 1947 those letters had fallen into the hands of notable political columnist Westbrook Pegler. After he verified their authenticity, he launched a series of column exposing every bizarre facet of the correspondence. “His open cordiality to Communists and his current partiality to Russia could be no more than a momentary political convenience in the aspiration of a messianic fumbler towards an idealistic brotherhood of man and the purification of the whole human race through suffering, philosophy, and politics.” Pegler had given Wallace multiple occasions to secure Wallace’s comments” and Wallace had refused to answer.

Now in Philadelphia, he told the crows that he never engaged a stooge of Westbrook Pegler. A hush fell over the crowd.

Then Pegler himself stood up. “I ask you whether you did or did not write certain letters to Nicholas Roerich, addressing him as Dear Guru?”

“I will never engage with Westbrook Pegler,” Wallace repeated.

Two other reporters asked the same question. Henry Wallace would answer ‘no Pegler stooges.”

A Washington Post correspondent got up and said she wasn’t a stooge and didn’t even like Pegler. “But you have been talking her about objectivity in reporting and you cited that point in your letter to Stalin. Therefore, I demand you answer this question.” He refused.

Another journalist got up. “Would you consider me a Pegler stooge?” H.L Mencken asked.

Everyone laughed, even Wallace who said: “I would never consider you anybody’s stooge.”

“Well then,” Mencken said. “it’s a simple question. We’ve all written love letters that would bring a blush later on. There’s no shame to it. This is a question all of us here would like to have answered, so we can move on.”

Mencken, who pointedly disliked Wallace was giving him the easiest way out. He gave him multiple chances in fact. But Wallace refused.

Another  supporter told him: “Some people defended you and your actions in 1940 and 1944. You owe it to them to clear up this matter.” Wallace refused. When the bloodshed was over, Henry Louis Mencken said: “Everybody named Henry should be put to death. If somebody will do it for Henry Wallace, I promise to commit suicide.”  Before the convention was even gaveled into order, Wallace had killed off his campaign. (He never did address the Guru letters at any point in the next several months.)

In the final part dealing with Wallace I will deal with how messy the convention was and how Wallace used every opportunity to make a bad situation disastrous right up until November.