Oscar L. Chapman Oral History Interview, October 4, 1972

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened 1980
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

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HESS: All right, to begin this morning, Mr. Chapman, let's discuss the New Deal and I want to get your views on whether or not the Fair Deal of Mr. Truman's was a continuation of the New Deal, or whether or not Mr. Truman made what you might consider too many changes in the New Deal, did not follow it through adequately. And to get into that, let me read a statement from the Journal of American History. This is an article by Lon Hamby, "The Liberals: Truman and FDR," this will tie two subjects together, the New Deal and the 1946 off-year congressional election.

In 1946 as disillusion with Truman deepened in the liberal movement and the liberal movement suffered repeated defeat, many liberals felt that the memory of FDR presented the best hope for the revival of their cause. John L. Nichols, a transportation consultant with an interest in democratic politics proposed an elaborate system of National Roosevelt Clubs in order to resurrect the spirit of the New Deal and identify it with the Democratic Party. Some important liberal politicians, Claude Pepper, Chester

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Bowles and Oscar Chapman planned a national pressure group tentatively called the Roosevelt Forum. Those schemes proceeded from the assumption that Truman had rejected the New Deal. A memo outlining the ambitious plans for the Roosevelt Forum asserted that popular dissatisfaction with the Truman administration stemmed from 'the fact that the leadership of the Democratic Party has turned away from the Roosevelt program and politics.' Neither plan reached fruition because of the hostile Democratic National Committee and the intense activity underway on other fronts to rebuild the liberal movement.

CHAPMAN: I'm delighted to hear you quote Mr. Hamby on this article and what he has to say about it, but it gives you again a perfect example of what happens to what is originally said and then what is translated into another article by the interpretation of a third person of what he said that someone had said. You go from one to the second to the third.

Now what he did there, I'm quite sure--there was a lot of talk at that time by a lot of liberals about whether Truman was following the Roosevelt program strong enough, or whether he had initiated enough new programs. My honest belief is he did

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exactly what the times and events called for; it's all he could do. Mr. Hanby was interpreting our basic memorandum that we had prepared discussing the full problem of the New Deal and what directions it was taking, what success we were having. We decided that we would try to have a conference with the President and discuss it with him. We wanted to be of some help to him and not be critical of him, leave him out on a limb with his own people. So, we were very cautious to move on that, because when we began to discuss it we found an awful lot of liberals that were not taking a part, but not even making much effort to help us in the last period of time, after Truman.

It isn't a question of whether Truman was following Roosevelt's policies, or whether he was carrying out his policies, as already laid down through major programs, or whether he was establishing some new programs. Well, you have to look at the times that we were going through;

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what was our national posture at that time? You've got to remember when something in history that happens once in a century, such as the Republicans had succeeded in putting through that constitutional amendment to keep a President from running the third time. Now, President Truman took that to mean that he shouldn't run three times, that he should run only twice. He considered that after having served practically all of Roosevelt's fourth term, for all practical purposes, and the spirit of the Constitution as it was written, he had a full term there, practically, lacking 30-some days, lacking from January 20th to...

HESS: April the 12th.

CHAPMAN: ...April 12th.

HESS: Even though he personally was exempted from the provision of the amendment...

CHAPMAN: Yes. That provision did not technically tie

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him to it and it did not apply to him.

HESS: That's right because it so stated that it did not apply to the President who was in the Presidency at...

CHAPMAN: At the time.

HESS: ...at the time it was signed, at the time that the bill went into effect.

CHAPMAN: Now reviewing that, you will see that Truman had in mind far deeper thinking than a lot of these fellows were having at the time about two things. First is how much could we accomplish and get put on the books in the form of a law, or initiate new programs at that time, or whether we could just go along and pick out the major emphasis of the Roosevelt program that was popular and had strength to it. Truman picked that up and carried forward as he went along.

Now Truman did do that to a great extent.

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He took the Roosevelt program and just continued it without any interference. He also had his friends in the administration, his little friends, like myself and others. We soon began to see where we might be on the wrong track of this thing from timing purposes, and you had to think of the next election.

Now, what we were going to do, in painting this picture, was to set up a peephole to look at the next election. You had to clarify the Roosevelt program, and to explain or make clear to the people where the Truman program followed the Roosevelt program. And if there were some points that were rather obvious or otherwise, Truman would have a chance and the time to clarify them in his speeches and in his campaign that was coming up.

HESS: Do you recall if you pointed out any programs where Mr. Truman may not have been following the Roosevelt model closely enough? Any particular programs?

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CHAPMAN: You go by what a lot of people think. Now you have a difference of opinion among our own liberals on that, and our liberals were divided pretty much on the effectiveness of what the President was doing in regard to following all of Roosevelt's programs. There were quite a few programs that were considered by the liberals not to have been solid enough in President Truman's mind and, going forward with this, in trying to project it to the people strong enough, and...

HESS: Could you give a couple of examples; did you think he was falling behind for instance in civil rights?

CHAPMAN: They did at first, but what they did not understand about this man was, and I told them from the very beginning--one of the most serious things about the Truman administration was that we did not and couldn't get across to the American people the type of man we had, the good qualities

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he had. The solid, solid qualities of this man were so clear and so definite as time went on,

Those of us who first thought about the possibility of assisting him with some kind of an auxiliary help, some committees, or something, to give help to him, we soon saw that Truman was following the President's program pretty close.

Now, let me take the department that I was most acquainted with. Harold Ickes was Secretary at the time, and I was his assistant, and I worked very closely in that program. I believed in it. That program carried with it the big Roosevelt spending program of money, where we did spend a good deal of money. However, when you look at the money that the present President is spending on his little war game he is carrying on over there at the mercy of the American people, that didn't look like much money to us now, but then 3, 4 and 5 billion dollars looked like a lot of money, and it was a lot of

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money. But when he stepped out to put on what the money was asked for, they screamed to high heaven. And Truman asked for more money for the Public Works Administration.

Truman was an unusual fellow, as I told you; he kept strictly to his obligations and to the law, what he had to do, and he tried to push some liberal things in the direction that he believed in, and he was most helpful. I had been all my life a liberal in the sense that I was a crusading liberal on certain issues of the day. For instance, I did not have worked out in my mind a long-range liberal program to be followed. I had only gone as far as my time--I was young--as my time and experience gave me the opportunity. I began working on the immediate liberal program that was before me at the moment and before the public, such as the civil rights program. I was very much intrigued with the civil rights program and the timing was right.

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I told Mr. Truman, "If we start on this thing you must go all the way; you can’t go halfway, because you'll leave them to sink on their own accord if you don't help them before you get them all the way across this great chasm between the so-called 'civil rights people,' who believe in civil rights, and those who did not. And I'm sorry to say that there are people who still today don't believe in civil rights and they don't support the civil rights program any more than they have to, just to get by with the outward appearance of it in their community. Which they do; they do that in the form of making an appearance of a civil rights supporter when in reality it was an opportunist type of approach.

Now, in talking to Claude Pepper and...

HESS: Chester Bowles.

CHAPMAN: ...Chester Bowles and myself, we had had quite a few little meetings, some evenings.

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I was not married at that time. I used to have them at my house, and I had a maid that took care of dinner and everything, and they'd come over and spend the evening and we'd talk, discuss these...

HESS: This was before your marriage in 1940, is that right?

CHAPMAN: Yes. This was before my marriage in '40. You see, we began to get very concerned in '38, '39. We were caught between what we knew was a serious situation with our foreign policy, which' was the Hitler followers in Germany, which was upsetting everything, everywhere. Roosevelt had to be ready for it, and so he, Roosevelt, had said to me; he said, "Well, if anything should happen to me I'll have this program at least far enough along that the other poor fellow will have to just try to pull the two groups together as much as he can and not let them separate any more than they are." And he said, "He's got a hard job ahead

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of him." Roosevelt said that to me after he came back from Yalta.

HESS: Shortly before his death.

CHAPMAN: Yes. I had a visit with him one afternoon, a straight visit. I called him, went in to see him, and I wanted to give him a briefing on this project which he had asked me to do; and I gave him an honest review of the Department, how the work was going and how things were developing. And you know, I always gave the old man--the old man Harold--a good plug whenever I talked to Roosevelt about him. So, I knew that it was only a question of time.

HESS: You could tell that his health had been going down...

CHAPMAN: I could tell that his health...

HESS: ...and deteriorated.

CHAPMAN: Two things deteriorated; two things were

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happening at the same time. Roosevelt's health was definitely going down. I could see that. The other thing was Ickes' relationship with Roosevelt was going down; it was not good. Those last years of Ickes, and...

HESS: What were the main problems there, do you recall?

CHAPMAN: Well, the truth of it is the President was so busy trying to keep up with all of the military ends, with his checkerboard, with men all over the world, militarily located...

HESS: And all of his maps on the wall of the Map Room.

CHAPMAN: That's right. And he was so well-acquainted with that, that nobody could tell him anything, any of those things he didn't know. He knew what they were doing and he had the most minute detailed information in his mind of any man I can ever think of could possibly have as he was

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going forward with his determined fight to keep Hitler from dominating Europe. Then, we expected him then, to try to come here, over here as he dominated Europe.

Now, Roosevelt thought we could stop Hitler right there in Europe if we moved quickly enough, fast enough, but if we lost too much time in arguing about it over here, we'd create a bad psychology in this country to start with and wouldn't get the job done that we ought to do.

I noticed his health going down a little bit, and I noticed Ickes' reactions, and Roosevelt's too; I could tell that they were not quite as friendly as they had been.

HESS: Did Ickes seem to feel that Mr. Roosevelt was not paying enough attention to domestic considerations?

CHAPMAN: No. No, it wasn't that. Mr. Ickes didn't--he made no comment to any group at any time I was ever in, in which he was critical of Roosevelt,

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what he was doing, or how he was doing it. He simply was joining with a lot of us as we were getting concerned that a few of these programs were being left behind. The timing was before Roosevelt's death, you see, and he was beginning to feel that. There was a lot of the New Deal program established in the Department of the Interior because--two reasons for it--the type of personnel that we had at the top in the Department who was interested in that kind of a program to start with...

HESS: You had to pass on a lot of the PWA projects, did you not?

CHAPMAN: Oh, yes. We had a board for quite a while. Then we disbanded the board, leaving the Secretary as the administrator. That made it easy for the President not to have to waste time with other Cabinet members or at least that time to

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come over to a meeting, and the Secretary was the only one that had time to look at these projects and to have them studied. I don't know how he did it. He worked extremely hard, Ickes did, in trying to keep the public works program caught up, and in properly proportioning his time so as to keep it all going in an orderly fashion and to see that there was no dishonesty in the operations. He spent a great deal of time on that to see that it would work.

Now, because Roosevelt was so tied up with this war issue up until the time he died, Ickes' last two or three years under Roosevelt was a period of shifting just by the nature of the situation that had developed. War problems had shifted so heavily onto the President that he didn't have the time that he used to spend on those liberal programs and things of that kind; he couldn't spend as much time on that now as he

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could in the beginning. He had to shift his feet a little in that direction and divert his energies as much as possible to widen the war effort. And to be of some help himself in the war effort, Vice President Truman was keeping himself informed and up-to-date as much as he possibly could. Being a Vice President and not a President, you don't get to sit in the same seat; you don't get the same briefings, and it makes quite a difference.

Now, I think there were several people that talked about Roosevelt resigning, and letting Truman come on in to be President. That subject was discussed some, but it was an impractical thing.

HESS: Was this following Yalta? Was this just before his death?

CHAPMAN: Just before Yalta.

HESS: Just before Yalta?

CHAPMAN: Yes, there was some talk before Yalta about

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whether Roosevelt should retire or not.

HESS: This was just after the inauguration, is that right? He was inaugurated on January the 20th.

CHAPMAN: Yes, January 20th; it was right in that period.

HESS: And who was doing the talking and how serious was that?

CHAPMAN: It didn't get serious. It didn't get serious, but it could have been serious.

HESS: Who was doing the talking?

CHAPMAN: Strangely enough it was coming from some of the liberals who were unhappy because of the proportioning of his workload. They thought that an unequal share of his time was being spent on the domestic programs, as compared to the military part of the program. Among the others, you could divide them

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up quickly about this thing. The southern conservatives were already mad at him because of the fine liberal program that he had already gotten through Congress. He had gotten Congress to pass so many bills establishing and giving solid legal footing to his bills.

I saw in my mind; I interpreted what I thought was happening. They were not together; they were totally separate people; they were not working together.

HESS: Were you in any of the discussions?

CHAPMAN: Not in the southern group, I wasn't. I was in some of the others.

HESS: Who were a few of the other participants?

CHAPMAN: Well, it was usually a liberal group that was trying to find a new approach to this thing, a new face to put on our program to the public with a better program appearance than we had.

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You couldn't do anything that was going to interfere with Roosevelt's time, or the President of the United States' time; regardless of who he was, taking his time away from his war problems and to give that time over to the development of some new domestic programs. And then in all of the…

HESS: Didn't they see at that time that the war was pretty well winding down?

CHAPMAN: That's what they were thinking. It focused the issue; the fact that the war was closing down, and they thought that President Roosevelt's health was not good. They were very concerned about that, and they were hoping that he could help us and agree with us and support a program on something, get it set up this way.

HESS: And turn the administration over to Mr. Truman?

CHAPMAN: Well, some people mentioned that. I never took it seriously. It was mentioned; but that was

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impractical thing for a man like me to consider that I didn't pay any attention to it because you were simply--you were swapping away something you had for something that was totally unknown. And the kind of a fight that you have to go through to get this kind of a thing done, it would be totally disruptive of anything. If you disrupt the war effort in finishing it up, you were disrupting a chance of getting any more new programs at all. And I shut off the discussion on it as much as I could wherever I hit it; when I would hear it I had a pretty strong feeling about it, and they knew that I had a pretty strong feeling about that and as far as I was concerned I wasn't going to fool with it.

HESS: Let's move on to 1946 and the tentative establishment of the Roosevelt Forum. Can you tell me about the meetings that were held by Claude Pepper, Chester Bowles, and yourself and were there others?

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CHAPMAN: Sometimes there were others.

HESS: Who?

CHAPMAN: Well, sometimes there was Clark Clifford and...

HESS: He was also interested in setting up a Roosevelt forum?

CHAPMAN: No, no, no, he wasn't interested. He was a kind of a guidepost for us in that, to tell you the truth; he was a leveling-off factor in that and a guidepost for us that kept some of them from going kind of wide.

HESS: Why did they feel that it was necessary to have a Roosevelt program, a Roosevelt forum at this time? Was it felt that Mr. Truman's influence would lose votes in the off-year election?

CHAPMAN: They were not concerned so much with whether he would lose votes on this particular type of

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a format in going forward as they were concerned about the loss of public support for these programs. Some of them were speaking in an uncertain note as to what Truman would or would not do.

You know, that was one of the places that I felt a great respect for Clark Clifford. He would take a group of these, what I would call liberals, and he’d pick a dozen of them and we'd get into a discussion. He would pretty much come up with the united thought behind something that he felt was good for Truman and we worked together on it. Even in that group we did some of that. Now, this did not take as much time as--this discussion here may be giving the wrong impression that we spent an awful lot of time on it, when we didn't. We didn't spend much time on it. We spent a great deal of time in discussing programs to be followed on through during this period and...

HESS: What particular programs?

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CHAPMAN: Well, we were discussing what programs could be picked up and fitted into the then going programs, like public works, and then relate that to the number of unemployed and with what we still had, even with the war going on. That would be related to the overall picture that you could get out of this as you sat by and wisely watch it unfold, as we have more or less done again this morning in a small way.

You must understand that you are getting one man's interpretation of what these other fellows set as their interpretation. So again you're getting a third man's interpretation of the other fellow's talk, and whether you interpret them exactly right or not, that's always a questionable thing, and to some degree a historian has to be extremely careful concerning these comments about various persons, like myself, and about what the other fellows were saying and discussing. It's very difficult to be extremely accurate in the sense of keeping your timing straight and

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keeping the time and events in sequence as much as possible to tell this story, which I would like to continue to do until I get more of it put together, just like we're doing this morning. I like the approach this morning better than I have some of our first ones, and it takes quite a while to get started on these, to really get them done. I'm trying to give you as much time as I could possibly spare here and run my office, which I had to do because I still have to make a living, and I had to open my office, fight for it.

I always go back to Clark Clifford as, in my mind, one of the rich possibilities in Truman's immediate family, his official family. I felt that Clark had great potential in this picture. Now that doesn't mean that a man can always go forward with that possible potential and develop it through himself, or set certain events in motion that they would produce that success that's pointing

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towards him as the man that he is. He was a good man, and I speak of him in such high regard because I worked with Clark pretty closely. We never had to take but a very little time to get our position together, because we were thinking in the same direction and so on. Clark could relay it and discuss it, relay it to an audience so much better than I could. He became our spokesman for almost any group we wanted him to work with and contact, or talk with. He was practically always on any group--he didn't just work with one group here--he worked with every group that came along, and was really interested in it all.

HESS: On the subject of the New Deal and whether or not Mr. Truman carried it on or not, I wonder if we could get some specifics...

CHAPMAN: Yes.

HESS: ...as to what programs you think should have been carried further, what programs were

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unsuccessful in the Truman administration. As you know, a housing bill was passed later in the Truman administration; there was an expansion of the Social Security Act, and the coverage was broadened, more people were brought in under the provisions. But that's expansion of Social Security and that's housing; now those were two that were passed, but the Fair Employment Practices Act was never implemented. There was an Executive order one time, but they could never get it through Congress; they couldn't get a bill. But what would you have liked to have seen done that was not done? What were the minuses on Mr. Truman's liberal programs, public health programs, public power programs? He couldn't get the Columbia Valley through. Was welfare a minus? He tried to get, I believe, welfare broadened. So, we've mentioned civil rights, public health, public power, and welfare. What are some of the things that did not go right?

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CHAPMAN: Well, now, when you speak of all those headings like the Columbia Valley, power, area authority, all of those things, a great deal of responsibility for those kinds of things being pushed forward farther than they were, really lies heavily in the hands of the Cabinet officers. The potential of succeeding with it or not succeeding with it was their responsibility, a great deal, and not the President's. However, there's never been a President since Roosevelt as liberal and as positive in his support of his Cabinet officers in supporting public power, for instance. Truman supported public power with all the might he had; he couldn't have done more if he had tried, and you've got to remember he did not have a friendly Congress all the time.

HESS: Was that the main hurdle?

CHAPMAN: The main hurdle was that they cut

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short his programs here and here and here, wherever they could chip off anything.

HESS: The conservative Midwesterners?

CHAPMAN: That was backed by two basic philosophies; one was that of the Southerners who are normally conservative generally. Irrespective of civil rights they were our conservative group. They would join with any of these other groups. Sometimes some of the liberals who got a little nervous about some of these things would get their support in some cases, and the Southerners would cut down in his money for nearly everything pertaining to welfare. The conservatives also cut down a good deal on the liberals' power program, but not so much, because we had done the footwork--I think adequate footwork--in the Department as laborers in the field, selling this program and getting it understood in the area in which it was to be built. That made it easier for Truman to get that program through and that's why I speak with some

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feeling. I feel there's some responsibility on the Cabinet officer to put these programs in such a shape and handle them in such a way that he sells them to the people and makes it easier for the President to sell them. And he has to do that, and I cant honestly say that I could look at Truman's program and look at our situation in the world of that moment and in the United States, what our atmosphere was, our thinking, our concern in the war picture. I honestly can't see where Truman neglected any part of the liberal program of the Roosevelt program. He couldn't carry out all the things that Roosevelt had started, but he put through some things that Roosevelt could not have gotten through anyhow.

That first hundred days of Truman's was extremely successful. He got through a lot of pieces of legislation, firming up and rounding out the program with the legal base under it, and he got a lot of support in that respect there.

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Now, as time went on, that Congress got tighter and tighter and made it more difficult as time went on to accomplish anything very much, to get many things done.

Now, that's what you're faced with. You're faced with a hostile Congress divided on a social issue. Your Social Security program itself had been pushed through by great maneuvering, and hard work, working with these various Congressmen and Senators. To get that program through, we had to individually talk to each Congressman and Senator that we could talk to personally, all of them, and try to personally sell them on these programs, and we did. I don't know of a single program--there may be some I'm sure--but I don't know of a single program of Roosevelt's that Truman didn't either carry through completely and expand it, or work on it to its fullest extent. Sometimes the interference cut it down.

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HESS: Did you ever speak with Mr. Truman about your participation in the establishment of the Roosevelt forum in 1946? Did he ever comment on that?

CHAPMAN: Yes. We talked about it in the sense of not just the Roosevelt forum; we talked about it in the overall picture of what could we do to firm up better support for him throughout the country. Well, what could we do? This was not any secret meeting or anything at all; this was nothing in the world but a lot of us were talking about different things that we could, if possible, develop for Truman now, and see whether we could come up with something that could be of assistance to him. We tried that and as I said, this was not a secret program or anything,

HESS: For our discussion now, Secretary Chapman, let's discuss the role of the Cabinet itself. In your opinion what did President Truman regard as the proper role of his Cabinet? Were they his principal advisers?

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CHAPMAN: Well, I never considered that the Cabinet themselves were solely his principal advisers. True, you might use the word "principal" advisers; I suppose they would be the principal advisers...

HESS: In their field.

CHAPMAN: In their field, that's exactly right. In dealing with their particular field, they would be the principal advisers on it, and Roosevelt and Truman both used them in that way.

Now, a President can raise havoc with a Department if he attempts to try to run it from the side with somebody. They can cause a lot of trouble if he attempts to try to run a department on the sidelines with some of his side friends trying to run it from the outside.

HESS: Could we give an example?

CHAPMAN: Yes, sometimes a lot of us felt that as fine a man as he was, a man that we all had a great respect for, that Barney Baruch and men like

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that had an awful lot of influence on both Roosevelt and Truman--influence beyond their capacity in some particular fields. That was not true in all cases, but in some cases they were not qualified to go beyond a certain point on certain subjects.

HESS: Were there times when recommendations that may have been made by Mr. Baruch to Mr. Truman caused you difficulty?

CHAPMAN: Not in my case; I want to say in my case not a single problem of that kind ever came up.

HESS: Were there other departments in the Truman administration that might have received difficulty through Mr. Baruch's influence?

CHAPMAN: Now some of your independent agencies, commissions, things of that kind got more attention from Baruch than some of the departments did sometimes. He'd have a special interest in certain things, and he was dedicated to helping the TVA; he was always giving help to them

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wherever he could, and he spoke out for these various individuals and their agencies to give them help.

Now you look at the Cabinet list and it's like a flowing creek, kind of brook; it rolls on and on. You have a change of a Cabinet officer every so often, but the turnover wasn't any greater than others had been. But if you have much turnover at all in this kind of a Cabinet, the size we have--and of course, Mr. Nixon has named several Cabinets for everything now. A Cabinet post for about everything he wanted, and...

HESS: And then sends Mr. Kissinger around to do it, while Mr. Rogers sits here in Washington.

CHAPMAN: Rogers sitting over there in the chair; it's very embarrassing really to Rogers and his friends.

Now, Mr. Truman tried to use his Cabinet officers in a very effective way. He tried to

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use them for what they were appointed for and he really had a strong feeling for a person.

Looking through here I see some of the old-timers; Secretary Stimson, he was just passing out of the picture when Truman came in, and Kenneth Royall who tried those seven Germans we caught. They had gotten off a submarine apparently, that seems to have been the mode, that they had gotten off a submarine there on the Atlantic coast somewhere.

HESS: As you will notice, while you are going through that list, in the first year or two of the Truman administration there was quite a changeover.

CHAPMAN: Well, there was; there was quite a change.

HESS: What effect did that have? This also ties in with what we have been discussing previously about Mr. Truman's policies, whether or not it was a continuation of the Roosevelt policy or whether or not he tried to establish his own method of operation; but what effect did this

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fairly rapid turnover in the Cabinet in the first year or two have on policy?

CHAPMAN: Well, you could understand that where there was a dramatic change come about through this kind of an incident of a man being assassinated, and a Vice President being sworn in immediately to succeed the President, there's bound to be a rather strong...

HESS: Of course, Roosevelt just died.

CHAPMAN: Yes, he just died...

HESS: Wasn't assassinated,

CHAPMAN: He wasn't assassinated, but I think everybody around him close to him anticipated the health there, not Truman to speak of. I don't mean that he anticipated Roosevelt's, maybe, and I have no feeling on the part of Truman except a Rock of Gibralter, you think of him, and...

HESS: And still getting along fine today.

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CHAPMAN: Well there you are...

HESS: Periodic trips to the hospital, but he gets along fine.

CHAPMAN: This is 1972, and he was sworn in in April of...

HESS: ’45.

CHAPMAN: ...’45.

HESS: April the 12^th of ’45.

CHAPMAN: Well, now that gave him quite a nice little run there.

HESS: One thing I want to discuss with you is liberal and conservative advisers to the President in the Cabinet. Who would fit into the category we might call liberal? Who would fit into the category we might call conservative; who might be called middle-of-the-roaders? Perhaps to get into that we should discuss your views. What would be a thumbnail description of a liberal or

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a liberal policy, and what would be your thumbnail description of a conservative or a follower of a conservative policy?

CHAPMAN: Well, now, Mr. Hess, you've got to remember that going back over the history you will find that some man has gotten himself established in the minds of the people as a great liberal because he was fighting on one particular issue so long, and was a leader in a very important issue, and just usually a good one and usually a good sign, and it didn't bear across the board as a lifetime liberal like you and I are thinking of.

HESS: He was liberal on one issue, but not so liberal on some of the others.

CHAPMAN: That's right. He was not a general, liberal person from the whole point of view. Like Norris; Norris was a liberal man on practically everything that had a liberal point of view about it, but I needed a good liberal to help me all the time. And I know that Norris made that comment to

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me once when I complimented him for carrying that fight on the Muscle Shoals, the basic program for the beginning of the Tennessee Valley, and I complimented him for being tenacious about it, and carrying it so long and being licked so many times and then finally winning it.

When Roosevelt came in he had some help; he got it done, but he said to me, he said, "You know, I have to have some boys that think somewhat along the line that I do as much as I can in order to help me to define my position on things; and when I make speeches I have to have some of these boys, these young fellows who will give them experiences and opportunity to train yourself and know the experienced man, for a liberal place in the Government when he comes in."

HESS: All right, now, that's very good. Now, Senator Norris is a good example of the liberal.

CHAPMAN: That's right.

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HESS: Who would you put forward as an example of a conservative and what would be the attributes, what would be his program, his policy, that would define him as a conservative?

CHAPMAN: Well, I go back to the State of Virginia sometimes, because I was born in Virginia.

HESS: That's very natural to.

CHAPMAN: That's natural so I turn back to the State of Virginia and look at its leadership. Its leadership has been conservative consistently. They broke through just a little bit this last two or three years on some statewide votes; they broke through to the liberal side on one or two issues, and they had one or two fellows that were carrying the fight on that. They are changing in Virginia.

HESS: As I understand, most of the changes are in the urban areas though, isn't that right?

CHAPMAN: That's right.

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HESS: Norfolk

CHAPMAN: That's right.

HESS: Newport News, some of the larger cities, but rural Virginia is just about as conservative as ever, isn't it?

CHAPMAN: This county that I was born in, Halifax County down there, is probably the most conservative county in the whole United States. I couldn't find one for my folks to have me born in any more conservative than that. In your early days when you're a boy, anywhere from seven years old and twelve or thirteen, a man has a lot of influence on you, if he takes a little time. There was one of them down there in my community that I got extremely intrigued with because he stopped and explained to me why the school board expelled me from school, didn't let me graduate with my class.

HESS: Was that the time that you brought the Abraham

[634]

Lincoln picture in?

CHAPMAN: Yes, that's the time I brought the picture. And he said, "I'm going to see that you are reinstated, because,"--he was not at the meeting. He said, "I am going to see that you are reinstated, because I'll file suit against the other two members," and he says, "we'll scare the daylights out of them because I'll sue them for their farm, everything they've got." He says, "That'll scare them out of doing these things."

Well, he was a decent sort of a man that wanted to be a liberal and he was a Republican on the, shall I say, on the higher level of fiscal planning and thinking, that kind, than anything else.

HESS: He was conservative.

CHAPMAN: No, he was more liberal...

HESS: On that.

CHAPMAN: ...than usual, but he was conservative and

[635]

didn't take any leadership in any of these individual civil rights things, you see; he took no leadership, he stayed away from them. Now, when I say he was a conservative on the fiscal side of all these things, practically every leader in the State of Virginia followed pretty much the same,

HESS: Well, the name that comes most readily to mind, of course, was Harry Flood Byrd, Sr.

CHAPMAN: Yes, Harry Byrd, Sr. And you go back further than that, now you go back to Senator Carter Glass; and Carter Glass made, I think, a substantial contribution to good government. He really worked on this thing.

HESS: He worked on the Federal Reserve System, did he not?

CHAPMAN: Yes, he really...

HESS: The father of the Federal Reserve System.

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CHAPMAN: He really was the brains of that. He really helped get that set up. And didn't he help set up the tax structure?

HESS: I think so.

CHAPMAN: He did; he was the father, or the leader of the tax thing.

HESS: Here are two good men. Now we're going to check off why we would call these men conservatives, say Carter Glass and Harry Byrd; just why would we call these men conservatives?

CHAPMAN: Because you can think of some one thing that will hit you immediately, that Byrd was an extremely conservative man on fiscal matters, very conservative. You can argue about a lot of different things on the civil rights issues as to whether he was liberal or whether he was not; you could argue about that, and nowhere do I find anything in his record that indicates that he was ever a liberal on rights. He was conservative

[637]

on the fiscal side of Government and he devoted a lot of time to being a leader in that group; he was really a leader.

Now he could corral more votes from the Republicans on a bill that he might introduce than anybody else on the Republican side. I was talking to Senator Townsend one day; he was getting along in years, too. He had served right along that time in the Senate and he said to me one day when I visited with him, "Well," he said, "you boys, you liberals, always feel that you have to categorize these people; put them in a catalog so to speak."

HESS: Put everybody in a slot.

CHAPMAN: "And then you start to picking a slot to put them in." He said, "You picked Harry Byrd for a conservative," and he says, "you just put him in for everything. You don't stop to break down anything that he was liberal on."

And I said, "Senator, were there any

[638]

liberal spots we could put him in at all?"

"Well," he says, "I could think of some issues that he'd support."

HESS: Did you ask him what issues?

CHAPMAN: Counting back to it Byrd was the man who got this Shenandoah Park up here for us; he got all that land for us.

HESS: He did like the out of doors, did he not?

CHAPMAN: He did; he liked the out of doors, and he was good on conservation, on most things in conservation, as between...

HESS: He used to climb one of those mountains down there, Old Rag, on his birthday every year.

CHAPMAN: Old Rag; he would take a hike up Old Rag, and go up every year and have a good time with his memories out there.

Now, he would do that and Townsend was very interested with me; he was laughing at how

[639]

we all picked our man and found a slot for him in it. And so Senator Byrd was rather liberal on a lot of conservation things, not everything; he is not liberal on everything in conservation.

HESS: Did you work closely with him, at the time that you were Secretary of the Interior, on conservation matters?

CHAPMAN: Yes, I worked very well with him. I had a very good talk with him. And do you know what our principal talk was with him?

HESS: What’s that?

CHAPMAN: He came to my office to see me, to get me to cancel the order that I had issued to the concessionaires that had concessions in these parks that they had to run them on strictly a nonsegregated basis, and they could not be turned down for a room at the lodge if they had one at all.

HESS: What did he say?

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CHAPMAN: He came to see me and he started off; he says, "Oscar, now you know those folks down there, there isn't a man in the county of Halifax that would take that concession, would they?"

I said, "No, they wouldn't, I don't think I know of a man who would," But I said, "In following my course that I have to follow, because of the laws you voted for, and you voted for these laws, I checked your record and you voted for every one. When we establish a national park, we've got that phrase in every one of them where the law says there shall be no segregation of people because of race, color or nationality."

HESS: Well, what did he say when you had pointed out to him that he himself had voted for that provision?

CHAPMAN: "Well," he said, "that's different because locally the people up there wanted that park.

[641]

They all wanted it, except those dozen or so people up in the hollow, as they call it, and you move them all out and they're very unhappy."

HESS: The people who had to be moved off of the specific ground.

CHAPMAN: We had built them a brand new house, and a good house, and they had been living in squalor and I mean squalor of the worst kind.

HESS: Is that quite often the problem when you want to go in and take over land for a national park, that is, moving the people who happen to be living on the land at that time who do not want to leave there?

CHAPMAN: That is a problem in every park.

HESS: That's what I mean, not just in Virginia, but in every park.

CHAPMAN: That's a problem in every park. And do you realize that it took us twenty years to get

[642]

the National Teton Park created? And do you know how I finally got it? Roosevelt through their Snake River Development Corporation had bought up all the land, 33,000 acres on the Snake River that runs through that valley, and right through the Teton Valley there. And there's this gorgeous monument of a rock sticking straight up out of the ground just like the Washington Monument. That is, if you stand far enough back it looks like the Washington Monument. It's that size and pretty much that shape, made straight up; it's not a rugged mountain.

HESS: Were people living in that area?

CHAPMAN: Oh, people all over the place. There was a lot of people living around there, and a lot of people who owned their properties. But there was also a lot of cattle people that had established a squatter's right on public land and...

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HESS: Grazing their cattle on public land...

CHAPMAN: That's right.

HESS: ...without permission.

CHAPMAN: And paying no fee for the use of the land, paying no taxes on the land; they pay nothing. They were just using the public land. Now, of course, Rockefeller was ready to give us the land at any time Ickes would accept it, with a reverter clause in it, to say that when it ceased to be used for the purpose in which the grantor is granting this property it shall return to its original owner.

HESS: Rockefeller owned most of that, did he?

CHAPMAN: He owned it all.

HESS: Owned it all.

CHAPMAN: Rockefeller on a portion of it had built a beautiful house, dining room and large rooms up there and everything in the park now.

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HESS: What size was that, in acres?

CHAPMAN: Oh, in acres it eras about...

HESS: One thousand?

CHAPMAN: Oh, no, about 40 thousand acres.

HESS: Forty thousand.

CHAPMAN: About 40 thousand acres I would estimate. That's a guess, but I think it's about that.

HESS: How did you settle the issue of the interlopers who were on there grazing their cattle?

CHAPMAN: Well, it finally ended up with about 14 families; got down to that many, and I got all of the information about how many families, how many children were involved, their ages and so on. And I figured out that children, why, would be another 50 years in which that issued settle itself, and second that many cattle running on that part of the range look pretty. It looks kind of natural to the area, and doesn't

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look bad at all and it's nothing like becoming an overgrazed, destroyed property situation that you had in some areas, where public land was so overgrazed because there was no development at all and no controls. The Park Service never allowed any grazing in the park. And they didn't want to do this, but I said, "Look, the major thing here is to get that law passed to create a national park, and eventually that title will clear itself up because the time will run on it." Congress never would vote us a park. Now, you must understand that you can create a national monument by Executive order, but you can't create a park by Executive order.

HESS: That has to go through Congress.

CHAPMAN: That's right, you have to take it to Congress and make your findings with your historical committee, and they must make their recommendations to it and you've got a very powerful historical

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committee scanning these parks to see whether there is any basis for historical reasons for keeping it, or some unusual thing in that area.

Well, that being the case, when I became Secretary, I issued an order declaring it a national monument. The only way they could beat me on that thing was they always put a rider on my appropriation bill and I couldn't spend a nickel on managing it.

HESS: You could have it, but you couldn't manage it.

CHAPMAN: I couldn't manage it. I said, "All right, I'll hold it; sit still, these folks are not going to live forever, and I'm going to do it on the base of a lifetime anyhow."

And so I made a stake; I worked out a scheme that I had been somewhat interested in for a long time, and I wanted to try it out. I wanted, for instance, to give to a state--in this case I set 25 cents on the dollar--it

[647]

could have been 50 or it could have been any other figure, if you wanted to figure up what is more economical and what is equitable as between the Federal Government and the State government. I, in my own way, came to my own conclusion that 25 cents out of every dollar would go back to their county that we took out of the county. Well, that meant the state didn't get anything out of the state, but a county got it.

HESS: The funds went directly to the county government?

CHAPMAN: That's right, right to the county government, and then they--this was the largest individual holding in the whole valley; thirty-three thousand acres, incidentally, was in the Rockefeller grant--and then as soon as that bill became a law, that is, we got the bill through, created the park, I got Rockefeller to come down and bring us his deed and I accepted it with a reservation in it. My reasoning, as to why I did it, no Secretary of

[648]

the Interior following me will ever change that law and change that land back to anything else. You won't dare turn it over for use as an airfield or anything else, because the minute you do it will go back to the Rockefellers. We have accepted it with that clause so that I'll always be sure that that land is protected. It can't be used for...

HESS: That was when it was turned into a monument, is that right?

CHAPMAN: Park.

HESS: A park.

CHAPMAN: I made a monument first by Executive order, and when I got it through Congress, they let me have appropriations then to manage the park.

HESS: Are those 14 families still living there?

CHAPMAN: No, there are only about seven now. Look how fast they're going down.

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HESS: Yes.

CHAPMAN: Now, we gave a life tenure to all the families, every member of the family that wanted to live there. He couldn't sell it, and he couldn't rent it; he couldn't do a thing, but stay there and run some cattle.

Now, with that, that meant the younger fellows, the younger members of that family, when one of them grew up and wanted to develop a cattle ranch, he could get some more land from the other 14 people, and put it with his and he could work out a scheme to handle some of that land and to develop a good-sized cattle range and to run it for quite a few years and get the benefit of the forage on that. That's unusually good forage in the Snake River Valley there; it's unusually good. It's very high grass that grows for 10 or 12 miles away from the Teton Mountain, as compared with the rest of the land that makes the scenery for the park. You see, you've got this very flat scenery from the Teton Monument up

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there to as far as you can go on it; then, looking way out over the range where it is so dry and clear an atmosphere, you can see so clearly.

HESS: Well, building on this background, I think this is excellent; this gives us an example of a liberal in Senator Norris, and an example of a conservative in Senator Byrd, and even though you have been cautioned not to place people in pigeon holes, let's do that right now, anyway. So, taking the list of Mr. Truman's Cabinet members, who would you classify as liberal; who would you classify as conservative? I think there were twenty-some men that...

CHAPMAN: Yes.

HESS: ...overall through the almost eight years of the Truman administration, who served as Cabinet members. So if you will just start there at the beginning, who would you classify

[651]

as--or how would you classify them, may be the best way to put it? Now starting with the State Department.

CHAPMAN: Let's start with the State Department; Stettinius was a conservative.

HESS: Let's see, he wasn't there very long; he stayed through the signing of the U.N. Charter in San Francisco.

CHAPMAN: That's all, he was there only for ceremonial purposes for a short period of time.

HESS: That's right.

CHAPMAN: And finish up the program.

Byrnes, who definitely was an activist, an active worker; Byrnes was a conservative.

HESS: Why do you think he had been asked to serve as Secretary of State?

CHAPMAN: Well, I think that the President felt that that was becoming, and going to become, one of

[652]

hardest areas on the Hill to deal with. I think he felt that's one of the hard places he had to deal with, and if he could get a good strong man, that had a strong relationship with Congress, that he could help get that by and that was a very good judgment to do that.

Now, you can't anticipate everything a man will do or say after you appoint him. Byrnes, when I say he's a conservative, I won't go any further to comment on what he did, or didn't do. He wanted to be President so bad he couldn't hardly look at Truman; he was so burned up about that 1944 convention that he didn't get the Vice Presidential nomination.

HESS: We've already discussed that, of course, that Mr. Byrnes had phoned Senator Truman in Independence...

CHAPMAN: That's right.

HESS: ...before the Chicago convention and asked

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Senator Truman to place his name in nomination. President Truman says in his Memoirs that he is of the opinion that Byrnes knew at the time of the call that he, Senator Truman's name, was also being...

CHAPMAN: Being considered.

HESS: ...being considered, and that this was a way to cut the ground out from a rival.

CHAPMAN: That's right.

HESS: But we have mentioned that.

Also there is some speculation by some historians that when President Truman appointed Justice Byrnes as Secretary of State, that it was sort of in the nature of a consolation prize, if you will; that President Truman knew that had Mr. Byrnes been successful in Chicago and received the vice-presidential nomination that he would have been sitting in the top chair at that time.

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CHAPMAN: That's right.

HESS: So, as sort of a consolation prize he appointed him as Secretary of State. Do you think there is anything to that?

CHAPMAN: Yes. I think that had some basis, but I think the other thing had the practical basis.

HESS: Because he wanted a good man on the Hill.

CHAPMAN: Right. He wanted a good man that had strong ties on the Hill. Well, it was that group and his element on the Hill that was always in opposition to Truman anyway.

HESS: The South, is that right?

CHAPMAN: Yes.

HESS: The conservative southerners?

CHAPMAN: Pretty much the southern conservatives; and the other part of the story, I am convinced that's true. I had no way of knowing, of course. Now, you take...

[655]

HESS: Give me an example of why you would classify him as a conservative.

CHAPMAN: Well, because I don't know of anything he did as a liberal. I can't think of a single liberal thing he did. He was opposed to any civil rights thing. He was opposed to that and rather openly about it, and...

HESS: I believe that even after he went back to South Carolina and ran and became Governor...

CHAPMAN: Yes.

HESS: ...his statements on the civil rights were still quite conservative. Is that right?

CHAPMAN: Oh, yes, he was a conservative man on practically everything that I can think of, and I can't find anything in which he was liberal. Everything that I have checked that was directly his accomplishment was based on a conservative...

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HESS: How would you evaluate his handling of the State Department? What I'm driving at here is--as you know--when he left, one of the reasons his resignation was requested was because he was coming back from a Foreign Minister's meeting and he had made the announcement that he was going to have an announcement to the American people, even before he checked in at the White House, even before he saw the President. He was coming back and announcing what I am going to do.

CHAPMAN: That's right.

HESS: There are those who say they think he was operating the State Department without checking with the President.

CHAPMAN: Well, he considered the White House as one of his bureaus, and he was running the State Department as the main Government and he was shifting the whole responsibility of the thing around.

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HESS: Well, didn't he know that President Truman would not like to be treated in that manner?

CHAPMAN: That's like I told Secretary Ickes when I saw the letter, which I did not know about until after...

HESS: His letter of resignation?

CHAPMAN: Yes, I did not know about that letter until after it had been received at the White House. Ickes showed me the letter, the day that it was answered by the President on Wednesday, and I said, "Mr. Secretary, don't you know that that letter is an open invitation for you, challenging the President's authority and his right to do what he pleased insofar as naming a Cabinet officer? Now," I said, "if you're trying to quit and create a moral issue from which you quit on, you don't have one. You haven't got an issue to quit on, with the idea that you are quitting because of some great moral issue--that you differ with the President on that moral issue." I said, "You haven't

[658]

gotten anything like that on this point." I said, "You just can't make anybody believe it if you told it in that way." And sure enough I was right, you don't pay any more attention--what he was writing in that column for about six months didn't mean a thing. People didn’t pay a bit of attention to it.

HESS: You think Justice Byrnes or Secretary of State Byrnes had the same view that he, too, was just going to operate his department in the way that he wanted to without the President's okay?

CHAPMAN: Oh, yes, no question about it. That's what he was intending to do. He was going to milk it for all it was worth to set Byrnes up for the next fight with the idea that the President would not run for a third term, you see, and he was so certain of that; he got himself ready. He got himself in a position to run, and if a man's going to give a public statement that he would not run for Vice President, or a third...

[659]

HESS: In 1940, that's right.

CHAPMAN: In 1940 on the third term. One might have said, "It's a violation of our Constitution and I won't do it." It's not a violation of our Constitution, it's just a...

HESS: Just a violation of tradition at that time.

CHAPMAN: Violation of tradition was all it was. Well, if you don't violate tradition somewhere you'll never move; you'll never get anywhere. You have to do that, and Truman had to do some of these things.

HESS: What do you recall about Secretary of State Byrnes' resignation?

CHAPMAN: I thought it was very badly handled. Byrnes fouled it up all he could to make it look as bad as he could. Byrnes tried to make it look bad on the President, but it didn't get over; the public had already seen through Byrnes. He

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didn't realize it, but he had burned his bridges behind him and the public was not trying to follow that river with him, and they wouldn't. They were not trying to follow him.

HESS: All right, now, the next man is General Marshall.

CHAPMAN: General Marshall. General Marshall could not, in any true sense, I don't think he classified as an absolute conservative. I think he was as much a professional man as it was possible to be and...

HESS: Professional soldier.

CHAPMAN: Professional soldier, and he was thoroughly loyal to the President to the nth degree.

HESS: Why do you think he was selected as Secretary of State?

CHAPMAN: Because the President could get along with him so easily. He was an easy man to work with.

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He wasn't like my friend Louis Johnson that started his fall and intrigue as soon as he was appointed--he started working on that side of the fence as soon as he got in.

Marshall, I couldn't classify him categorically as a conservative, and I couldn't say he is a liberal, because he is as much a liberal as I've known any of them to be on any of the things he had to make decisions on.

HESS: One of the things that Mr. Truman will be known for is the plan that had General Marshall's name, the Marshall plan.

CHAPMAN: That's right. And that was a pretty liberal thing in itself. That was basically a strong liberal movement at the time. Never before in any war had any country ever done this; turned around and after we completely annihilate our enemies in battle we turn around and finance the redevelopment of their industry, so that they can start making a living again, and that's--

[662]

and we've got a pretty darn good record on that due to the President having the courage to do this, because that took a lot of courage. A lot of people was still feeling the effects of having spent some time fighting Hitler.

HESS: Now, in 1947 to find out how adequately we would be prepared to carry on a program of this nature, of the Marshall plan, President Truman appointed two committees--three committees actually. He appointed Secretary Krug to make an investigation into our natural resources to see how much of our natural resources could be cut out of our economy and safely transferred, how much money we could spend on this; and then he asked Dr. Edwin G. Nourse, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, to make a study on the economic side of the picture to see how it would effect our economy, and then both of those reports were turned over to a civilian, or a public committee, to evaluate them and to turn them in to the President.

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But I believe that in Mr. Krug's report he said that 20 billion dollars could be transferred, could be taken out of our natural resources and applied to those problems. Did you work on that report?

CHAPMAN: I didn't work on that at all.

HESS: I have checked it out of the National Archives Library but did not bring it this morning. It's a printed report, big long thing.

CHAPMAN: No, I didn't do any work on that at all. I read it as it was being developed, but I was not asked for anything at all and there was no discussion about it.

HESS: All right, then, moving on to the next Secretary of State, all right?

CHAPMAN: The next Secretary of State...

HESS: Dean Acheson.

CHAPMAN: ...I would say more of the professional

[664]

type of a man prepared for his specialty.

HESS: He was a professional diplomat.

CHAPMAN: He was a professional diplomat, and trained himself, developed himself in that area of study and government. He had prepared himself to be a good diplomat in every sense.

HESS: Was he as well-prepared and as professional a diplomat as General Marshall was well, prepared and was a professional soldier?

CHAPMAN: Yes.

HESS: Would that be a good comparison?

CHAPMAN: That's a good comparison and both on the same basis, I think. Dean was well-prepared for his job when he went in. He had enough experience in the Government in different places that he knew the inside workings of the job itself, and he had been in the Treasury, you know, under Roosevelt; I think he was Under

[665]

Secretary of the Treasury for awhile and...

HESS: Assistant or Under Secretary, I'm not sure which.

CHAPMAN: He wasn't Secretary.

HESS: He wasn't Secretary...

CHAPMAN: No.

HESS: He was Assistant Secretary or Under Secretary.

CHAPMAN: I think he was Assistant Secretary. Well, whatever it was, he didn't get along with the Secretary and was in that time of...

HESS: Is that Morgenthau at the time?

CHAPMAN: Morgenthau I think was in there when Acheson had already been appointed. I believe that's correct in sequence, I'm not sure. And in any event, Morgenthau didn't want Acheson that close to the President. He felt that he was as close a personal friend as John Snyder was,

[666]

which of course he was not. He was a close personal friend of Roosevelt's.

HESS: Morgenthau?

CHAPMAN: Yes, he was a very close personal friend and Morgenthau would handle him exactly like he would his own boy. He was an old friend of his father's, a good friend of his father's. He would look out to help him where he could, give him a break, and he worked hard at his job.