Happy Birthday Mr. President: The Harry Truman Edition

By Kaleena Fraga

The United States’ 33rd president lived in an age before twitter. Unlike Donald Trump, Harry Truman didn’t have the easy access of the internet to hit back against alleged slights. He did, however, have the old fashioned method of strongly worded letters, which is exactly what he employed after a reviewer panned his daughter Margaret’s singing performance performance.

The reviewer, Paul Hume, wrote for the Washington Postthat Margaret Truman “could not sing very well” and was “flat a good deal of the time.”

In celebration of Truman’s 134th birthday, we’ve printed Truman’s fiery response in full:

“Mr. Hume:

I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.”

It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work.

Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!

Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you’ll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.

H.S.T.”

Hume, hardly an old man at 34, kept the letter for a few years and eventually sold it.

While many Americans sympathized with the president as a father defending his daughter, many more were outraged that Truman had decided to focus his anger on Hume and not on the ongoing war in Korea. David McCullough notes in his tome about the president, Truman, that the Chicago Tribune at the time wondered if the letter indicated that Truman’s “mental competence and emotional stability” were cracking under pressure.

The original letter was eventually purchased by the Harlan Crow Library, in Highland Park, Texas. A copy of the letter, however, hung in the office of President Bill Clinton during his two terms in the White House.