Beschreibung:

TRUMAN, Harry S. Printed text of his last message as President signed ("Harry Truman"), Washington, D.C., 15 January 1953. 6 pp., mimeograph text on rectos of 6 legal folio sheets, page 1 headed "Hold for Release. Please guard against premature publication or announcement," dark blue morocco gilt case. Fine. RARE. HARRY TRUMAN PREPARES TO STEP DOWN AS PRESIDENT, AND SUMS UP HIS YEARS IN THE WHITE HOUSE One of Truman's longest and most heartfelt addresses, from the White House, on the eve of his departure from the highest office: "Next Tuesday, General Eisenhower will be inaugurated as President...I will once again be a plain, private citizen of this Republic. Inauguration Day will be a great demonstration of our democratic process...how peacefully our American system transfers the vast power of the Presidency from my hands to his." He is speaking, "from the room where I have worked since April 1945. The greatest part of the President's job is to make decisions--big ones and small ones. The papers may circulate around...for a while but they finally reach this desk. And then, there's no place else for them to go. The President has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody." Truman recounts how he took over as President after the death of President Roosevelt: "I felt the shock that all of you felt...At 7:09 p.m., I was sworn in as President in the Cabinet Room." He relates the events leading up to the first use of the atomic bomb, Soon after Germany surrendered, "the first atomic explosion took place out in the New Mexico desert," and at the request of Churchill he went to Potsdam to meet with him and Stalin. "I made the decision that the atomic bomb had to be used to end [the war]...in the conviction that it would save hundreds of thousands of lives." Truman urges American support for Eisenhower, since "whether you are Republican or Democrat, your fate is tied up with what is done in this room," and observes that "history will remember my term in office as the years in which the 'cold war' began to overshadow our lives," but prophesies that "in the long run, the strength of our society, and our ideals, will prevail over a system that has respect for neither God nor man. [T]here will have to come a time of change in the Soviet world...I have a deep and abiding faith in the destiny of free men." He concludes with the observation that "when Franklin Roosevelt died, I felt there must be a million men better qualified to take up the Presidential task. But the work was mine to do, and I had to do it. I have tried to give it everything that was in me..."