TRUMAN SCHOLAR FEATURED SPEAKER AT COPPER DOME DINNER

Harry S. Truman was a study in contrasts, a man steeped in Victorian values who ushered in the Atomic Age, a machine politician who valued personal integrity, said Alonzo Hamby.

Hamby, a top Truman scholar and distinguished professor of history at Ohio University, spoke Friday night at the Copper Dome Society dinner at the Show Me Center.

But, Hamby argued, those contrasts reflect the struggle Americans face daily between values and expediency and the struggle of democracy itself to govern benevolently in an imperfect world.

Most of all, Hamby said, Truman was a realist who knew that "progress was possible only in a perfect world."

His career reflected that knowledge "and the larger struggle of a democracy whose progress and whose promise he worked so hard to implement."

Hamby spoke, fittingly, on the date of Truman's 114th birthday.

Truman fascinates Americans, Hamby said, not only because of his decision to use the atomic bomb, but also because he was "a democrat with a small d" who went through the same triumphs and travails that most Americans have.

Truman struggled through several business ventures while trying to establish himself in Independence and Kansas City.

After unsuccessful ventures into mining, oil wells and haberdashery, Truman "finally turned to politics," Hamby said. "And politics was what he was good at."

Truman came of age at "the height of the Victorian era" in Middle America and reflected its values of hard work, duty, patriotism and honor, Hamby said.

He also shared the optimism that prevailed in turn-of-the-century America, and the belief that prosperity and progress would come through hard work.

The sense that westward expansion would bring prosperity "was still very much alive" in Independence as Truman was growing up, Hamby said, and both those beliefs stayed with Truman all his life.

"He was a person who believed in the future all his life, who believed that a better future was a matter of working hard and having all the right values," Hamby said.

Truman's life reflected those values, he said. He worked hard, was devoted to family and was proud of his service in the military, including the Missouri National Guard and the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, where he earned the rank of captain.

When Truman enlisted in 1917 as America was gearing up for the first World War, he was 33 years old, and had already served six years in the National Guard, Hamby said.

"A biographer asks himself, why did he do this? He wouldn't have been drafted," Hamby said.

Truman was at the time engaged to Bess, who wanted him to stay home so they could get married.

After his failed business ventures, Hamby said, it would be easy to conclude that Truman was "trying to redeem himself."

"But I finally came to the somewhat mundane conclusion that maybe he was doing it because he thought it was the right thing to do."

Military experience was valued in Truman's time, and he often drew on that experience during his presidency, Hamby said.

Truman's combat experience swayed his decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan in 1945, he said.

"I think the fact that he had actually seen men killed and wounded in combat, that he had seen corpses lining the dusty roads in France, lent a special urgency to that decision," Hamby said.

When Truman entered politics, it was not a "high calling," Hamby said.

"Politics involved blatant patronage, rigged contracts, the shoddy government that goes along with it, and political allegiances that were based mostly on personal relationships and family tradition," he said.

Truman was a "Democrat by heritage" in a largely Republican region, Hamby said.

But he wanted to make politics "as high a calling as possible," and would struggle with the conflicts between his chosen profession and personal values for the rest of his life.

Truman earned his chops in politics through the Pendergast machine, a notoriously graft-ridden political machine in Kansas City.

He looked the other way at rigged contracts and politics, Hamby said, "and tried to deal with it by being a personally honest public servant. He was not on the take, but he also knew that he could not control everyone who was on the take."

Hamby said Truman's ability to look the other way and ignore petty corruption would cause some damage during his presidential career.

Truman's struggles reflected the same struggles that American democracy is still going through, Hamby said, and Truman, like America, would "strive for perfection, but never quite reach it and would never be in a state of complete innocence."

Hamby has been a professor at Ohio University since 1965. He earned his bachelor of arts from Southeast in 1960, and in 1985 was named Southeast's Outstanding History Alumnus. He 1990, he received Southeast's College of Liberal Arts Alumni Merit Award.

He is the author of four books, including, "Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism."