The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World

by A.J. Baime

was dated July 19 (the first day of the convention, four days after this meeting). It read: Dear Bob [Hannegan]: You have written me about Harry Truman and [Supreme Court Justice] Bill Douglas. I should, of course, be very glad to run with either of them and believe that either of them would bring real strength to the ticket. Always sincerely, Franklin Roosevelt According to Roosevelt’s secretary, Grace Tully, Hannegan came out of the president’s study on the train car with a handwritten note, and he asked her to type it up for him. He also asked, according to Tully, that she reverse the names of Truman and Douglas as they originally appeared in Roosevelt’s note, so that Truman’s would come first, and thus appear as if he was the preferred candidate. Hannegan later insisted this part of the story was apocryphal. Nevertheless, the train pulling the Ferdinand Magellan left Chicago with the president aboard. Hannegan kept the letter a secret.