Miles, John L. Papers

Major, 129th Field Artillery Regiment, 1918; Chief of Police, Kansas City, Missouri, 1929-1930

The papers of John L. Miles consist of correspondence relating to his appointment as police chief of Kansas City, Missouri in 1929; records documenting Miles’s financial affairs from the 1920s to the 1950s; and other items.

Size: Less than one linear foot (approximately 200 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: No donation of copyright was received with this collection. Documents created by U.S. government officials in the course of their duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Randy Sowell (2024).

John L. Miles (1878-1961) was a soldier during the Spanish-American War and the Mexican border campaign, and later served as a major in the 129th Field Artillery Regiment during World War I. At a critical moment in the Meuse-Argonne offensive in late September 1918, Miles ordered Captain Harry S. Truman of Battery D and the other batteries under his command to prepare for a counterattack by German infantry. This would have entailed firing directly into the oncoming enemy; if that tactic failed to repel the assault, the artillerymen would have to stand by their guns and either die or be taken prisoner. The expected counterattack never took place, but Truman and his comrades would remember Major Miles’s courage in later years. In 1920, Miles was elected marshal of Jackson County, Missouri, with strong support from war veterans. When Truman ran for Jackson Couty judge as a Democrat in 1922, his opponents charged that he had voted for Miles, a Republican, in the 1920 election. According to an early biographer, Jonathan Daniels, Truman freely admitted to the allegation. “I was closer to John Miles than a brother,” he declared at a campaign rally. “I have seen him in places that made hell look like a playground. . . . He was of the right stuff, and a man who wouldn’t vote for his comrade under circumstances such as these would be untrue to his country.” Truman added that John Miles was the only Republican who had ever received his vote, and that he had no apology to make for his action. Truman won the election, with the help of his friend Miles, who as marshal took steps to ensure that Truman’s opponents did not steal an important ballot box in Mt. Washington.

Miles was elected Jackson County sheriff in 1924, after the office of marshal was consolidated with that of sheriff. In March 1929, he was appointed chief of the police force of Kansas City, Missouri, an office he held until April 1930. When Miles died in 1961, former President Truman attended his funeral.

The papers of John L. Miles consist of correspondence relating to his appointment as police chief of Kansas City, Missouri in 1929; records documenting Miles’s financial affairs from the 1920s to the 1950s; and other items.

The correspondence in the collection consists almost entirely of congratulatory messages that Miles received upon his appointment as chief of police. Included among these messages is a letter from Harry S. Truman’s cousin, Ralph Truman, who served with Miles in World War I. Also included are copies of letters from Miles acknowledging the congratulatory messages, as well as a 1918 letter that Miles wrote to a friend in Kansas City while serving in France, and a 1924 letter to the veterans of Jackson County urging them to support Miles in his campaign for county sheriff (this letter was co-signed by Harry Truman’s close friend and fellow Army officer, Ted Marks).

The collection also contains pages from an account book that provide information about Miles’s investments and other financial activities. (In a handwritten note on one page, Miles stated that he lost a great amount of money because he failed to anticipate the stock market crash of 1929.) Also included in the papers is a memorial book from Miles’s funeral service in 1961, with the signatures of Harry S. Truman and other mourners.

Most of the materials in this collection were originally open for research as part of the General Historical Documents Collection (GHDC No. 70).