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Editorial Note
The
documents in this volume constitute only a small number
of the vast quantity of historical materials that concern
the collaboration and friendship of two presidents of
the United States. Herbert Hoover and Harry S. Truman
worked together on large-scale projects such as food
relief in Europe and the reorganization of the executive
branch of the federal government. Not surprisingly,
these projects generated hundreds of cubic feet of documents
that indirectly relate to the partnership of these two
men. It is simply not practical to compile and publish
such a vast quantity of material.
It
is possible, however, to bring together the key documents
that fill out the contours of the communication and
miscommunication between Hoover and Truman between 1945
and 1965. Included are the letters, reports, and telegrams
that the two men sent directly to one another as well
as diary entries and memoranda that document their periodic
meetings. Also included are the appropriate passages
of speeches and public statements in which one president
mentions the other. Finally, the volume includes candid
comments the two men made about each other as captured
in the diaries of friends and associates.
Generally
not included, however, were passages from oral histories
and memoirs recorded or published long after the events
took place. In our opinion, this type of document proved
generally unreliable in recording the twists and turns
of the friendship of these two presidents.
With
few exceptions, all of the documents in this volume
were typewritten with occasional handwritten annotations.
These handwritten additions as well as signatures at
the close of letters and memoranda, are indicated with
the mark /s/. Such a mark at the opening of a document
is an indication that it is entirely handwritten.
This
volume is subtitled a "documentary history," a term
the editors use to place emphasis on both documents
and historical commentary. Each document, therefore,
is preceded by an introduction that sets the historical
context and links the document to others. The editors
hope that these explanatory passages will encourage
readers to follow the story of the partnership and friendship
between these two presidents as it unfolds in the documents.
The
documents in this volume come from three repositories:
the Herbert
Hoover Library in West Branch, Iowa; the Harry
S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri; and
the Hoover
Institution in Stanford, California. Some documents
are unique to a single repository; others appear in
collections at all three institutions. The majority,
including all of the correspondence between these two
men, are at both the Hoover and Truman presidential
libraries. Unless otherwise indicated in the opening
commentaries, the copies of the documents used for this
volume are from the Post-Presidential
Papers of Herbert Hoover at the Hoover Library.
Complete copies of all these documents as well as copies
of all of the documents listed in Appendix A [not available
on website], can be obtained at cost from the Hoover
Library.
Just
as the documents in this book come from several institutions,
so also do the contributors. This volume is very much
of a collaboration between the editors and more than
a dozen scholars and archivists across the country.
Professor Donald R. McCoy of
the University of Kansas and Professor Robert
H. Ferrell of Indiana University were kind enough to
share their knowledge about these two men and, more
important, to review the manuscript for errors of both
omission and commission.
In
like manner, the staff at the Truman Library led by
Benedict K. Zobrist, George H. Curtis, and Raymond H.
Geselbracht reviewed the manuscript from their unique
perspective. In particular, we would like to single
out the work of Philip Lagerquist and Niel Johnson,
senior archivists at the Truman Library, for the comments
and careful review of the manuscript.
We
are also grateful for the support of the staffs of the
Hoover Institution and the Office
of Presidential Libraries of the National
Archives. In particular, we would like to thank
Anne Van Camp and Elena Danielson of the Hoover Institution
for locating copies of several important documents,
and Nancy Kegan Smith and John T. Fawcett of the Office
of Presidential Libraries for their thoughtful comments
on the manuscript.
Finally,
we would like to acknowledge the extraordinary assistance
that we received from our colleagues at the Hoover Library.
During the two years of work on this project, the editors
were enthusiastically supported by Richard Norton Smith,
Dale C. Mayer, Patrick Wildenberg, Jim Detlefsen, Jennifer
Pedersen, Janlyn Ewald, Shirley Sondergard, Joan Cahill,
and Vivian Billick. Pedersen and Ewald are to be commended
for their excellent proofreading. In addition, we would
like to thank Mildred Mather for her diligence in compiling
Appendix B [not available on website] as part of her
index of Hoover's
daily calendar.
It
is our collective hope that readers of Herbert Hoover
and Harry S. Truman will come to see the documents in
this volume as building blocks for a serious and sustained
study of the relationships that develop between presidents
and their predecessors and between former presidents.
As Richard Norton Smith has noted elsewhere, Hoover
and Truman were "the oddest of couples," yet their practical
partnership is a model for other presidents to follow
in working with their predecessors. More important,
Hoover and
Truman were men of opposite political persuasions
who became friends. For that reason alone, the collaboration
between these two men deserves close attention by anyone
interested in the American presidency.
Timothy Walch
Dwight M. Miller
West Branch, Iowa
Presidents' Day, 1992
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