U.S. At War: The Missouri Compromise

On stage, a rake-voiced orator tripped through his garden of adjectives. The man he was describing sat amidst the delegates below, hunched forward in his chair, sneaking bites from a hot dog and sips from a paper cup of soda pop, paying no more attention to the routine speech than the rest of the audience did. The speech was about him, but neat, grey little Harry Shippe Truman, 60, has heard thousands of speeches in his years of politics.

Harry Truman is no man to be taken in by adjectives. To Party workers, after...

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