Philadelphia, July 15 (Thursday) – President Harry S. Truman was nominated on his own right early this morning for a full term as President. Senator Alben W. Barkley, 70-year-old orator from Kentucky, was selected soon thereafter as the vice presidential nominee.
Both won nomination on the first ballot.
North Carolina, a southern state, put Truman over when it cast thirteen of its thirty-two votes for the Missourian.
Besides Truman, Senator Richard R. Russell of Georgia, to whom the states’ rights delegates flocked in protest against the Missourian’s stand on civil rights, and Paul V. McNutt, former governor of Indiana, were placed in nomination. Georgia nominated Russell and Byrd Sims of Florida named McNutt.
The official count: President Truman, 947 ˝. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, 263/ Paul V. McNutt of Indiana, ˝ Not voting, 23
On the first count Truman received 926 votes to Senator Russell’s 267. Immediately after the tally, James Roe, Brooklyn leader, released the fifteen votes he had received to give the President the full ninety-eight votes from the big Empire state. The one McNutt follower in Florida withdrew his support of the Hoosier leader to giver the entire state’s vote to Russell. But Vermont cast a half vote for McNutt.
After the switch-abouts Rayburn declared Truman nominated by a vote of 947 ˝ to 263 for Russell.
Eight southern states stuck to the bitter end against the President’s nomination – Texas, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee and Virginia.
The entire Mississippi delegation was gone by the time of the vote. While a majority of the Alabama delegates joined their neighbors from “Ole Miss” in their walk, enough stayed on to cast thirteen votes for Senator Russell.
Truman had arrived a few hours earlier to deliver his acceptance speech.
The President came out fighting in his acceptance speech and announced to the surprise of the convention that he was calling Congress into special session July 26.
He tore into the Republicans with the announcement that he would ask Congress to pass many laws in line with the pledges made in the G.O.P. platform written here two weeks ago.
While the leaders seemed shocked, the delegates welcomed it with a great outburst of applause and cheers which drowned out the President to such an extent that he had to repeat most of the statement on Congress.
The President said he would ask the special session for legislation to curb rising prices, and to provide low-cost housing.
He listed many other items which he said Republicans favored in their platform, including aid to education, a national health program, civil rights, a boost in the minimum wage law, extension of social security coverage and increase in benefits and public power water development. The President said the Congress could accomplish all these things in fifteen days if it wanted to.
“Republicans will try to dodge their responsibility, you can be sure of that,” Truman declared. “They will drag all the red herrings they can across the campaign, but Senator Barkley and myself are not going to let them get away with it.”
His startling announcement caught his own party leaders flat-footed. They had expected a fiery campaign talk but nothing so stunning as a call for a special session of Congress with all its dangerous political implications.
Barkley was nominated by acclamation, a great tribute to his popularity in view of the intense feeling between the north and south wings of the Democratic party. The big push that made quick work of Barkley’s nomination came when James A. Farley, the guiding hand behind F.D.R.’s first two elections, rushed to the platform to place his O.K. on the veteran Kentucky statesman as Truman’s running mate.
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