And, Acheson was always rather shocked by Truman’s criticisms of the State Department. Commenting on a draft of Truman’s memoirs in 1955, Acheson complained about his former boss’s use of “the cliché, ’striped pants boys in the State Department.’ I should like to see you change this to ‘people in the State Department,’” he wrote, “not merely because the phrase is tiresome, but because it gives quite a wrong impression of the tremendous support which you gave to the career service and for which they will be forever grateful.”

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During Truman’s terms of office, Acheson worried about what might happen when the president attempted to act the statesman on his own. When Truman got together with Britain’s Clement Attlee or Winston Churchill or other foreign leaders, Acheson recalled in 1955, there was “a great tendency . . . to have these fellows go off by themselves; this is just sheer murder and never ought to occur to a dog. It is a terrible thing to have happen, because you have no idea of what is said, and the President can tell you what he thinks was said; the other fellow is quite as sure that something different was said, and there is no way of resolving this thing.” In fact, Acheson believed that all state visits with foreign leaders were probably a bad idea, in part because no one could predict how Harry S. Truman of Independence, Missouri, might act.

Sometimes Truman simply opposed Acheson’s wishes; it happened at one time or another over issues involving Germany, China, Spain, the conduct of the Korean War, Israel, Iran, and Guatemala. The president usually gave in to the secretary of state eventually, but his initial resistance would sometimes provoke Acheson’s notorious powers of condescension.

Despite these lapses, a tone of mutual confidence dominated their relationship. Acheson never ceased to be impressed that Truman “had no trace of imperiousness about him” and never allowed his ego to come “between him and his job.” “One could not ask for a commander with more directness, understanding and courage,” he wrote to his daughter in 1950.

Acheson, however, seemed most impressed by Truman’s “deeply loving and tender nature.” In a 1969 television interview, he related how “During one period, . . . my younger daughter was very ill indeed and had a most serious operation, and it was not clear whether she would pull through. The President telephoned the hospital, where my wife was, got a report on my daughter’s condition and telephoned me, when I was abroad, every day as to how that girl was. Well, this is the kind of person that one can adore. You have an affection for that man that nothing can touch.”

Truman biographer David McCullough has remarked that “Harry Truman never had such a friend before.” They “really were buddies,” remembered State Department official John Hickerson. Treasury Secretary John W. Snyder, another Missourian, thought that Acheson’s relationship with the president was on a different plane from those who shared poker and bourbon with Truman. It was less social. Nonetheless, Admiral Robert L. Dennison, a White House naval aide, stated that the Truman and Acheson “families were the closest of friends, and background be damned.”

For years, writers and mutual acquaintances tried to identify the common elements making such a close relationship possible. Both men hailed from “small towns”–Independence, Missouri, and Middletown, Connecticut–and philosophically both were left of center, though “lodged there in a conservative way.” Each experienced his “first youthful brush with the ‘real world’ working with a railroad crew”; both enjoyed reading history and biography and “adored” Mark Twain. If Acheson was “a fashion plate,” Truman was too in his way, with his double-breasted suits and loud Key West shirts. Both men took early morning walks, “enjoyed a convivial drink [and] a good story,” and adored their daughters.

Truman and Acheson were both devoted to the gospel of hard work. Sharing a passion for orderly methods, they despised the chaos resulting from Roosevelt’s cavalier approach to administration. They liked having all important matters put on paper and emphatically preferred making, not avoiding, firm, clear decisions.

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