The Defeated

Henry Wallace had not wanted to go to Chicago. He was tired and jittery after his trip home from China. His stomach was upset: he had politely munched too many Chinese radishes. For several days he avoided friends and politics by simply locking the door of his Wardman Park apartment.

Finally, after frantic urging by his worried friends, he decided to join battle in Chicago. He made an exquisitely characteristic entrance. While other candidates were ogling photographers and passing out broadsides, Henry Wallace boarded his train one stop away from Washington, got off again one stop before Chicago. Twelve cameramen and half a dozen reporters were left waiting at Chicago's Grand Central Station.

His press conference, four hours after arrival, was the most pack-jammed of the convention. Henry Wallace had to be shoved through the crowd (only a third were newsmen). Sitting on a rickety table, with flash bulbs popping and microphones thrust at his face, Henry Wallace said stiffly, belligerently: "I am in this fight to the finish." What did he think of the President's feeble endorsement of him, which some of his own followers were calling a stab in the back? "The President did all I expected him to do. I told him that in justice to himself and myself there should be nothing in the nature of dictation."

Next afternoon he appeared on the Stadium platform to second the nomination of Franklin Roosevelt. But he had more in mind than the usual string of adjectives; he was prepared to give the delegates his idea of what the Democratic Party should be. Whether conservatives squirmed, or Southerners saw red, or New Dealers cheered, Henry Wallace's speech was the first that riveted the delegates' attention. It was blunt, brave, tactless. It easily explained why Henry Wallace was the best-loved and best-hated man in the Stadium. Southerners got a heaping dose of brine in their open wounds as Henry Wallace, no longer ill at ease, rubbed in the word "liberal" eleven times in his brief platform appearance:

"The future belongs to those who go down the line unswervingly for the liberal principles of both political democracy and economic democracy regardless of race, color or religion. In a political, educational and economic sense, there must be no inferior races. The poll tax must go. Equal educational opportunities must come. The future must bring equal wages for equal work regardless of sex or race. . . . The Democratic Party cannot long survive as a conservative party. . . . Democrats who try to play the Republican game inside the Democratic Party always find that it just can't work on a national scale."

After that, Henry Wallace seemed considerably relaxed. That night, after the galleries had given him the biggest ovation of the convention, he dropped in at his Sherman Hotel quarters. When he noted that some of his well-wishers were sipping highballs, he asked happily: "Has anyone got a glass of plain bubbly water?"

During the important first ballot, he napped at his hotel. A car waited down in the street to rush him to the Stadium. It was not needed. When the convention stampeded to Truman, Wallace went out for a walk with a few close friends. He said: "I feel freer now. I was not rehired. If I were a candidate I would have to follow a schedule and deal with issues from a partisan standpoint. This way, I can do more for liberalism."

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