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Harry S. Truman, (April 12, 1943 – January 20, 1953)
• Born: May 8, 1884
• Birthplace: Lamar, Missouri
• Died: December 26, 1972
• Best Known As: 33rd President of the
United States;
Harry S. Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884. After serving in the Missouri National Guard and the U.S. Army, he was elected county court judge before serving two terms in the U.S. Senate.
He went to France during World War I as a captain in the Field Artillery. Returning, he married Elizabeth Virginia Wallace, and opened a haberdashery in Kansas City.
Active in the Democratic Party, Truman was elected a judge of the Jackson County Court (an administrative position) in 1922. He became a Senator in 1934. During World War II he headed the Senate war investigating committee, checking into waste and corruption and saving perhaps as much as 15 billion dollars.
Truman was elected vice president in November 1944. During his few weeks as Vice President, Harry S. Truman scarcely saw President Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman’s to solve when, on April 12, 1945, he became President. He told reporters, “I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”
As President, Truman made some of the most crucial decisions in history. Soon after V-E Day, the war against Japan had reached its final stage. An urgent plea to Japan to surrender was rejected. Truman, after consultations with his advisers, ordered atomic bombs dropped on cities devoted to war work. Two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese surrender quickly followed.
In June 1945 Truman witnessed the signing of the charter of the United Nations, hopefully established to preserve peace.
In June 1950, when the Communist government of North Korea attacked South Korea, Truman conferred promptly with his military advisers. There was, he wrote, “complete, almost unspoken acceptance on the part of everyone that whatever had to be done to meet this aggression had to be done. There was no suggestion from anyone that either the United Nations or the United States could back away from it.”
A long, discouraging struggle ensued as U.N. forces held a line above the old boundary of South Korea. Truman kept the war a limited one, rather than risk a major conflict with China and perhaps Russia.
Indeed, Truman faced critical foreign and domestic challenges during his two-term presidency, including guiding the nation through the final stages of the war against Japan and avoiding a recession during the transition from war to peace; preventing the spread of communism; and addressing civil rights issues. Highlights of his presidency include the:
• Truman Doctrine, affirming the United
States' willingness to provide military aid
to countries resisting communism.
• Marshall Plan, a strategy for reviving the
economies of the European nations
• Negotiation of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, a military alliance to protect
Western nations.
• Fair Deal, a program outlining his agenda
for domestic economic growth and social
reform.
• Use of executive orders to end racial
segregation in the armed forces and civil
service.
• Appointment of eighteen women to high
ranking posts, including Georgia Neese
Clark, the first U.S. Treasurer.
Secretary of the Treasury appointed by President Truman:
• Fred M. Vinson (Louisa, Kentucky) July
23,1945 – June 23, 1946
• John Wesley Snyder ( Forrest City,
Arkansas) – June 25, 1946 – January 20,
1953
United States Mint Directors Appointed by President Truman:
• President Truman did not appoint any
United States Mint directors.
Coinage legislation enacted under President Truman:
• Private Law 438, 79th Congress,
approved March 22, 1946: Authorized a
Congressional Gold Medal to General of
the Army George Catlett Marshall and Fleet
Admiral Ernest Joseph King.
• Private Law 831, 79th Congress, approved
August 7, 1946: Congressional Gold Medal
to General of the Armies of the United
States John J. Pershing.
• Private Law 884, 79th Congress, approved
August 8, 1946: Congressional Gold Medal
to Brigadier General William Mitchell.
• Act of August 12, 1949: Authorized a
Congressional Gold Medal to Vice
President Alben W. Barkley.
• Act of August 7, 1946: Authorized the
coinage of 50-cent pieces to commemorate
the life and perpetuate the ideals and
teachings of Booker T. Washington.
• Act of August 7, 1946: Authorized the
coinage of 50-cent pieces to commemorate
the one-hundredth anniversary of the
admission of Iowa into the Union as a
State.
• Act of June 5, 1947: Amended section
3539 of the Revised Statutes, relating to
taking trial pieces of coins. The change
authorized selecting 10, instead of two,
coins for the Annual Assay.
• Act of June 14, 1947: Amended sections
3533 and 3536 of the Revised Statutes
with respect to deviations in standard of
ingots and weight of silver coins.
Deviations from the weights of each of
America's four silver coins were to be six
grains for the dollar, four grains for the half-
dollar, three grains for the quarter, and one
and one-half grains for the dime.
• May 10, 1949: President Harry Truman
signs bill into law allowing the Mint to
recover costs of producing and selling
Proof coins.
• Act of May 10, 1950: Amended section
3526 of the Revised Statutes relating to
coinage of subsidiary silver coins. The gain
arising from the coinage of silver from
bullion was to be credited to a newly
established silver-profit fund, among whose
several uses was to cover the cost of
distributing silver coins. (One of the last
laws on circulating silver coins.)
• Act of September 21, 1951: Authorized the
coinage of 50-cent pieces to commemorate
the lives and perpetuate the ideals and
teachings of Booker T. Washington and
George Washington Carver, two great
Americans. Amended the Act of August 7,
1946.
Number minted: 15,000 Number sold: 14,786