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

by A.J. Baime

The following day the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent General MacArthur orders regarding China and Korea: “The President desires that such advance arrangements as are practicable be made to occupy the Port of Dairen [in China] and a Port in Korea immediately following the surrender of Japan if those ports have not at that time been taken over by Soviet forces.”

The now famous thirteen-inch-long sign appeared on his desk, a gift from his friend Fred Canfil, who had seen a sign like it in an Oklahoma reformatory. It read, THE BUCK STOPS HERE!

At end of WW2

Perhaps only the presidential election of 2016 surpasses 1948 as the biggest upset in American electioneering history. Truman’s victory moved his daughter, Margaret, to pronounce, “Harry S. Truman was no ‘accidental President,’” for now he had been elected by the American people.