All night the race rocked back and forth, and the clock read 3:45 a.m. in Washington when Dewey conceded. Franklin Roosevelt would be the first fourth-term president, and Harry Truman his number two. That night, after the guests had gone, Truman eased himself onto a bed in his suite at the Muehlebach Hotel. No longer in the public eye, he felt the impact of what was about to happen. A friend named Harry Easley was with him. “[Truman] told me that the last time that he saw Mr. Roosevelt he had the pallor of death on his face and he knew that he would be President before the term was out,”
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