“A Cold and Frosty Affair”: Ike, Truman and Inauguration Day, 1953

Eisenhower and Truman ride to the Capitol on Inauguration Day, January 20, 1953. Library of Congress.

Handing the presidency from one leader to the next is routine yet special — sometimes between allies, sometimes between rivals. On January 20, 1953, President Harry Truman handed it to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Photographed together in the back of a car, both men smiled; the smiles hid real frustration, even acrimony. Still, they rode to the Capitol together for one of the country's oldest traditions.

Two roads to power

Truman grew up on a Missouri farm, saw combat in France in World War I, went back to farming, ran a haberdashery, and moved into local and state politics, reaching the U.S. Senate in the 1930s. In World War II he made his name on the Committee on Military Affairs, investigating waste and corruption in war contracts. In 1944 he replaced Henry Wallace as the Democrats' vice-presidential candidate; when Franklin Roosevelt, elected to a fourth term, died months later, Truman became the 33rd president — a county judge to the presidency in little more than a decade — and faced decisions on atomic weapons and the shape of the post-war world.

Eisenhower, born in Texas and raised in Kansas, was about to take the first elected office of his life. His road ran through West Point and decades of Army postings. While Truman was in France, Ike ran a tank training camp at Gettysburg, his future home; while Truman was in the Senate, Ike served in the Philippines on General Douglas MacArthur's staff. World War II lifted both: Eisenhower went from brigadier general to five stars by December 1944, and by May 1945 was one of the best-known men on Earth.

Friends, then rivals

Both parties courted Eisenhower after the war. He declined, serving as Army chief of staff and then president of Columbia University, and worked well with Truman as his commander in chief. Truman gave him the Distinguished Service Medal in 1945, 1948 and 1952 (adding to two earlier ones, from 1922 and 1943), and in 1951 made him Supreme Commander of NATO forces. In 1947 Truman even offered to step aside so Ike could head the 1948 Democratic ticket, with Truman as his running mate. Eisenhower said he had no interest in politics. When he later ran as a Republican in 1952, ending twenty years of Democratic control of the White House, the falling-out began.

Truman and General Eisenhower shake hands in 1945, with Mamie Eisenhower. National Archives.

The 1952 campaign

The campaign made it worse. Adlai Stevenson headed the Democratic ticket, but Truman, as party leader, joined in the attacks. Republicans called his administration "soft on communism"; Democrats hit Ike's lack of political experience — Truman said the general knew no more about politics "than a pig knows about Sunday." Such lines were common in politics, but Eisenhower was not used to them.

Sharper still was Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose wild charges of communism included General George Marshall, Truman's Secretary of State and then of Defense. Eisenhower did not condemn McCarthy's attacks on Marshall, and Truman accused him of "moral blindness." That stung: Ike owed much of his wartime rise to Marshall. One of his speechwriters, Emmet John Hughes, later wrote that the mere mention of Truman's name brought flashes of hostility from him. Eisenhower's landslide in November did not help.

The two met once after the election, at the White House on November 18. Truman offered advice on staffing and world affairs; Eisenhower later wrote that it "added little to my knowledge, nor did it affect my planning for the new administration."

Inauguration Day

January 20 was "a cold and frosty affair" in more ways than one. Arriving at the White House, Eisenhower declined an invitation to come in for coffee and waited in the car for Truman to come out. The ride down Pennsylvania Avenue was chilly and quiet.

Truman remembered Eisenhower breaking the silence to say he had stayed away from Truman's 1948 inauguration so as not to draw attention from him — and replying, "Ike, I didn't ask you to come—or you'd been here." Eisenhower later said no such exchange happened. He did remember asking who had ordered his son John, an Army officer in Korea, home for the ceremony. Truman said he had done it himself: "The President thought it was right and proper for your son to witness the swearing in of his father to the Presidency." A few days later Eisenhower wrote to thank Truman for his help with the transition and for bringing John home. It was their last contact for six years.

Reconciled by grief

As with many strained relationships, the loss of shared friends brought them back together. When George Marshall died in 1959, they sat side by side in the front pew at his funeral in Virginia — their first time together since the inauguration.

In November 1963, after President Kennedy's assassination, they again shared a car, to the graveside service at Arlington National Cemetery, and then rode together to Blair House, where Truman was staying. There, a decade after Ike refused Truman's coffee, they finally had their cup — with sandwiches and more than an hour of warm reminiscing, joined by Mamie Eisenhower and Truman's daughter Margaret (Bess Truman was too ill to travel). A White House aide, Admiral Dennison, said you would have thought there had never been any differences between them.

At the end they shook hands for a long time and parted, never to meet again.

Sources

• National Park Service, Eisenhower National Historic Site, "A Cold and Frosty Affair:" Ike and Truman's Strained and Tumultuous Relationship on Inauguration Day, 1953.