Mark Twain

Salver 

Mark Twain

Harry S. Truman 

Salute 

Salt 

Psalms 85:10
“Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”  

 

 

 "and all the joyful world salutes the rising day"~~~Cowley

 

The salver as reconciliation
Historically, the salver existed to ensure: no poison; no hidden harm; no betrayal.

It is the object that removes danger so that relationship can be restored.

Psalm 85:10 is precisely about that:
the removal of enmity, the restoration of harmony. 

 

 

 

Chess: "Salver" "Mark Twain: mark two" " A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" "Salute" "Salt" 

 

 

In the early 1960s, a quietly historic moment unfolded inside the Oval Office as President John F. Kennedy welcomed former President Harry S. Truman back into the room where both men had shouldered the immense weight of American leadership. It was more than a courtesy visit—it was a meeting of two Democratic presidents shaped by different eras, united by an unshakable belief in public service and the moral responsibility that comes with power. The office itself seemed to bridge time, bearing witness to decisions that had altered the course of the twentieth century under both men.

 

On April 11, 1951, President Harry S. Truman sat down and signed a brief order. Four sentences. No fanfare. By the time most Americans woke up the next morning, General Douglas MacArthur — five-star war hero, the most celebrated soldier in the country — had been removed from command.

What happened next was ugly.

Members of Congress called for impeachment. Angry protesters gathered outside the White House. Mail flooded in by the thousands, most of it furious. One Gallup poll showed 69 percent of Americans supported the General. Truman's approval rating, already in the mid-20s at the time of the firing, would fall to 22 percent by early 1952 — the lowest Gallup had ever recorded for a sitting president.

But Truman had made up his mind, and he slept well that night.

"The thing you have to understand about me," he later told an aide, "is if I've done the right thing and I know I've done the right thing, I don't worry over it."

MacArthur's offense was not simply losing battles. He had publicly contradicted the President's foreign policy, written letters to Republican congressional leaders undermining White House strategy, and repeatedly defied direct orders from his commander-in-chief — including pushing troops toward the Chinese border after being told to stay back, helping trigger China's entry into the war. He had even floated the idea of bombing mainland China, a move Truman believed could ignite a third world war and a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

For Truman, the principle was non-negotiable: in the United States, civilians controlled the military. Not generals. Not war heroes. Not public opinion. The President had a constitutional responsibility, and he was going to honor it even if it cost him everything politically.

It nearly did.

To understand why that courage meant something, you need to understand where Harry Truman had come from.

He was born in 1884 in Lamar, Missouri, raised partly on his family's farm near Grandview, and educated only through high school. He wanted to attend West Point but failed the eye exam. He worked as a bank clerk, a timekeeper on railway construction crews, and spent years farming before enlisting for World War I. He studied books obsessively — history, biography, military strategy — not in a university but in whatever time he could find.

In France in 1918, he was given command of Battery D, 129th Field Artillery — a rowdy, undisciplined group of 200 men known unofficially as "Dizzy D," who had a history of driving out their officers. His first day, he faced 200 hungover, disdainful young men who bet he wouldn't last 90 days. By the time the war ended, he had led them through the brutal Meuse-Argonne Offensive, one of the bloodiest campaigns in American history — and not a single one of his men died in combat. His battery presented him with a large silver loving cup when they returned home.

That was the man who would fire Douglas MacArthur.

After the war, Truman and a friend opened a men's clothing shop in downtown Kansas City. After two good years it went bankrupt in the 1921 recession. His partner eventually declared bankruptcy. Truman refused to. He spent fourteen years quietly paying back every debt, dollar by dollar, while building a political career from the ground up — county judge, U.S. Senator, Vice President, and finally, in April 1945, President of the United States.

When he left the White House in January 1953, he had no presidential pension. There was no such thing yet. His only income was his Army pension of $112.50 a month. He moved back to Independence, Missouri, into the house that had belonged to his mother-in-law, and got by. He rejected corporate board positions and endorsement deals. He gave speeches and worked on his memoirs. Congress finally passed the Former Presidents Act in 1958, granting him a $25,000 annual pension. He accepted gratefully.

In the years after his presidency, visitors could walk up to his house. He took his daily morning walk around town, stopped to chat with neighbors, tipped his hat to people who recognized him. He kept his office at the Truman Library in Independence almost to the end of his life.

He died on December 26, 1972, at age 88.

History has since done what history sometimes does — vindicated the unpopular man. Truman is now consistently ranked among America's greatest presidents. Scholars credit him with saving South Korea, establishing NATO, rebuilding Western Europe through the Marshall Plan, and above all, upholding the principle that in a democracy, no general — no matter how celebrated — stands above the elected government. MacArthur, for all his battlefield brilliance, is remembered as a man who believed the opposite.

The sign on Truman's White House desk read: "The Buck Stops Here."

He meant every word of it.