Truman adopted a strategy of rapid demobilization after World War II, mothballing ships and sending the veterans home. The reasons for this strategy, which persisted through Truman's first term and well into his second, were largely financial. To fund domestic spending requirements, Truman had advocated a policy of defense program cuts for the U.S. armed forces at the end of the war. The Republican majority in Congress, anxious to enact numerous tax cuts, approved of Truman's plan to "hold the line" on defense spending. In addition, Truman's experience in the Senate left him with lingering suspicions that large sums were being wasted in the Pentagon. In 1949, Truman appointed Louis A. Johnson as Secretary of Defense. Impressed by U.S. advances in atomic bomb development, Truman and Johnson initially believed that the atomic bomb rendered conventional forces largely irrelevant to the modern battlefield. This assumption eventually had to be revisited, however, as the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic weapon in the same year.

Nevertheless, reductions continued, adversely affecting U.S. conventional defense readiness. Both Truman and Johnson had a particular antipathy to Navy and Marine Corps budget requests. Truman proposed disbanding the Marine Corps entirely as part of the 1948 defense reorganization plan but the idea was abandoned after a letter writing campaign and the intervention of influential Marine veterans.

By 1950, many Navy ships were sold to other countries or scrapped. The U.S. Army, faced with high turnover of experienced personnel, cut back on training exercises, and eased recruitment standards. Usable equipment was scrapped or sold off and ammunition stockpiles were cut. The Marine Corps, its budgets slashed, was reduced to hoarding surplus inventories of World War II era weapons and equipment. It was only after the invasion of South Korea by the North Koreans in 1950 that Truman sent significantly larger defense requests to Congress — and initiated what might be considered the modern period of defense spending in the United States.

The 1948 presidential election is best remembered for Truman's stunning come - from - behind victory. In the spring of 1948, Truman's public approval rating stood at 36%, and the president was nearly universally regarded as incapable of winning the general election. The "New Deal" operatives within the party — including FDR's son James — tried to swing the Democratic nomination to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a wildly popular figure whose political views — and party affiliation — were totally unknown. Eisenhower emphatically refused to accept, and Truman outflanked opponents to his nomination.

At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, Truman attempted to calm turbulent domestic political waters by placing a tepid civil rights plank in the party platform; the aim was to assuage the internal conflicts between the northern and southern wings of his party. Events overtook the president's efforts at compromise, however. A sharp address given by Mayor Hubert Humphrey of Minneapolis — as well as the local political interests of a number of urban bosses — convinced the Convention to adopt a stronger civil rights plank, which Truman approved wholeheartedly. All of Alabama's delegates, and a portion of Mississippi's, walked out of the convention in protest. Unfazed, Truman delivered an aggressive acceptance speech attacking the 80th Congress and promising to win the election and "make these Republicans like it."

Within two weeks, Truman issued Executive Order 9981, racially integrating the U.S. Armed Services. Truman took considerable political risk in backing civil rights, and many seasoned Democrats were concerned that the loss of Dixiecrat support might destroy the Democratic Party. The fear seemed well justified — Strom Thurmond declared his candidacy for the presidency and led a full scale revolt of Southern "states' rights" proponents. This revolt on the right was matched by a revolt on the left, led by former Vice President Henry A. Wallace on the Progressive Party ticket. Immediately after its first post - FDR convention, the Democratic Party found itself disintegrating. Victory in November seemed a remote possibility indeed, with the party not simply split but divided three ways.

There followed a remarkable 21,928 mile (35,290 km) presidential odyssey, an unprecedented personal appeal to the nation. Truman and his staff crisscrossed the United States in the presidential train; his "whistlestop" tactic of giving brief speeches from the rear platform of the observation car Ferdinand Magellan came to represent the entire campaign. His combative appearances, such as those at the town square of Harrisburg, Illinois, captured the popular imagination and drew huge crowds. Six stops in Michigan drew a combined half million people; a full million turned out for a New York City ticker - tape parade.

The large, mostly spontaneous gatherings at Truman's depot events were an important sign of a critical change in momentum in the campaign, but this shift went virtually unnoticed by the national press corps, which continued reporting Republican Thomas Dewey's apparent impending victory as a certainty. One reason for the press' inaccurate projection was polls conducted primarily by telephone in a time when many people, including much of Truman's populist base, did not own a telephone. This skewed the data to indicate a stronger support base for Dewey than existed, resulting in an unintended and undetected projection error that may well have contributed to the perception of Truman's bleak chances. The three major polling organizations also stopped polling well before the November 2 election date — Roper in September, and Crossley and Gallup in October — thus failing to measure the very period when Truman appears to have surged past Dewey.

In the end, Truman held his progressive Midwestern base, won most of the Southern states despite his civil rights plank, and squeaked through with narrow victories in a few critical "battleground" states, notably Ohio, California, and Illinois. The final tally showed that the president had secured 303 electoral votes, Dewey 189, and Thurmond only 39. Henry Wallace got none. The defining image of the campaign came after Election Day, when Truman held aloft the erroneous front page of the Chicago Tribune with a huge headline proclaiming "Dewey Defeats Truman."

Truman did not have a vice president in his first term. His running mate, and eventual vice president for the term that began January 20, 1949, was Alben W. Barkley.

Truman's inauguration was the first ever televised nationally." His second term was grueling, in large measure because of foreign policy challenges connected directly or indirectly to his policy of containment. He quickly had to come to terms with the end of the American nuclear monopoly. With information provided by its espionage networks in the United States, the Soviet Union's atomic bomb project progressed much faster than had been expected and they exploded their first bomb on August 29, 1949. On January 7, 1953, Truman announced the detonation of the first U.S. hydrogen bomb.

Truman was a strong supporter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which established a formal peacetime military alliance with Canada and many of the democratic European nations that had not fallen under Soviet control following World War II. Truman successfully guided the treaty through the Senate in 1949 and appointed Dwight D. Eisenhower as the first commander. NATO's stated goals were to contain Soviet expansion in Europe and to send a clear message to communist leaders that the world's democracies were willing and able to build new security structures in support of democratic ideals. The United States, Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, Portugal, Iceland, and Canada were the original treaty signatories; Greece and Turkey joined in 1952.

On December 21, 1949, Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) and his National Revolutionary Army left mainland China, fleeing to Taiwan in the face of successful attacks by Mao Zedong's communist army during the Chinese Civil War. In June 1950, Truman ordered the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent further conflict between the communist government at the China mainland and the Republic of China on Taiwan. Truman also called for the ROC not to make any further attacks on the mainland.

Throughout his presidency, Truman had to deal with accusations that the federal government was harboring Soviet spies at the highest level. Testimony in Congress on this issue garnered national attention, and thousands of people were fired as security risks. Truman was dubious about reports of potential Communist or Soviet penetration of the U.S. government, and his oft quoted response was to dismiss the allegations as a "red herring."

In August 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a former spy for the Soviets and a senior editor at Time magazine, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and presented a list of what he said were members of an underground communist network working within the United States government in the 1930s. One was Alger Hiss, a senior State Department official. Hiss denied the accusations.

Chambers' revelations led to a crisis in American political culture, as Hiss was convicted of perjury, in a controversial trial. On February 9, 1950, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the State Department of having communists on the payroll, and specifically claimed that Secretary of State Dean Acheson knew of, and was protecting, 205 communists within the State Department. At issue was whether Truman had removed all the subversive agents that had entered the government during the Roosevelt years. McCarthy insisted that he had not.

By spotlighting this issue and attacking Truman's administration, McCarthy quickly established himself as a national figure, and his explosive allegations dominated the headlines. His claims were short on confirmable details, but they nevertheless transfixed a nation struggling to come to grips with frightening new realities: the Soviet Union's nuclear explosion, the loss of U.S. atom bomb secrets, the fall of China to communism, and new revelations of Soviet intelligence penetration of other U.S. agencies, including the Treasury Department. Truman, a pragmatic man who had made allowances for the likes of Tom Pendergast and Stalin, quickly developed an unshakable loathing of Joseph McCarthy. He counterattacked, saying that "Americanism" itself was under attack by elements "who are loudly proclaiming that they are its chief defenders. ... They are trying to create fear and suspicion among us by the use of slander, unproved accusations and just plain lies. ... They are trying to get us to believe that our Government is riddled with communism and corruption. ...  These slandermongers are trying to get us so hysterical that no one will stand up to them for fear of being called a communist. Now this is an old communist trick in reverse. ... That is not fair play. That is not Americanism." Nevertheless, Truman never shook his image among the public of being unable to purge his government of subversive influences.

On June 25, 1950, the North Korean People's Army under the command of Kim Il-sung invaded South Korea, precipitating the outbreak of the Korean War. Poorly trained and equipped, without tanks or air support, the South Korean Army was rapidly pushed backwards, quickly losing the capital, Seoul.

Truman called for a naval blockade of Korea, only to learn that due to budget cutbacks, the U.S. Navy no longer possessed a sufficient number of warships to enforce such a measure. Truman promptly urged the United Nations to intervene; it did, authorizing armed defense for the first time in its history. The Soviet Union, which was boycotting the United Nations at the time, was not present at the vote that approved the measure. However, Truman decided not to consult with Congress, an error that greatly weakened his position later in the conflict.

In the first four weeks of the conflict, the American infantry forces hastily deployed to Korea proved too few and were under - equipped. The Eighth Army in Japan was forced to recondition World War II Sherman tanks from depots and monuments for use in Korea.

Responding to criticism over readiness, Truman fired his much criticized Secretary of Defense, Louis A. Johnson, replacing him with retired General George Marshall. Truman (with UN approval) decided on a rollback policy — that is, conquest of North Korea. UN forces led by General Douglas MacArthur led the counterattack, scoring a stunning surprise victory with an amphibious landing at the Battle of Inchon that nearly trapped the invaders. UN forces then marched north, toward the Yalu River boundary with China, with the goal of reuniting Korea under UN auspices.

China surprised the UN forces with a large scale invasion in November. The UN forces were forced back to below the 38th parallel, then recovered; by early 1951 the war became a fierce stalemate at about the 38th parallel where it had begun. UN and U.S. casualties were heavy. Truman rejected MacArthur's request to attack Chinese supply bases north of the Yalu, but MacArthur promoted his plan to Republican House leader Joseph Martin, who leaked it to the press. Truman was gravely concerned that further escalation of the war might draw the Soviet Union further into the conflict: it was already supplying weapons and providing warplanes (with Korean markings and Soviet fliers). On April 11, 1951, Truman fired MacArthur from all his commands in Korea and Japan.

The Dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur was among the least politically popular decisions in presidential history. Truman's approval ratings plummeted, and he faced calls for his impeachment from, among others, Senator Robert Taft. The Chicago Tribune called for immediate impeachment proceedings against Truman:

President Truman must be impeached and convicted. His hasty and vindictive removal of Gen. MacArthur is the culmination of series of acts which have shown that he is unfit, morally and mentally, for his high office. . . . The American nation has never been in greater danger. It is led by a fool who is surrounded by knaves. . . .

Fierce criticism from virtually all quarters accused Truman of refusing to shoulder the blame for a war gone sour and blaming his generals instead. Many prominent citizens and officials, including Eleanor Roosevelt however supported and applauded Truman's decision. MacArthur meanwhile, returned to the United States to a hero's welcome, and made a famous address to Congress. Truman didn't listen to it; he met with the Secretary of State and then took a nap. When he woke up he read what MacArthur had said and called it "a bunch of damn bullshit."

The war remained a frustrating stalemate for two years, with over 30,000 Americans killed, until an armistice ended the fighting. In the interim, the difficulties in Korea and the popular outcry against Truman's sacking of MacArthur helped to make the president so unpopular that Democrats started turning to other candidates. In the New Hampshire primary on March 11, 1952, Truman lost to Estes Kefauver, who won the preference poll 19,800 to 15,927 and all 8 delegates. Truman was forced to cancel his reelection campaign. In February 1952, Truman's approval mark stood at 22% according to Gallup polls, which was, until George W. Bush in 2008, the all time lowest approval mark for an active American president. However, it did not last beyond March.

United States' involvement in Indochina widened during the Truman administration. On V-J Day 1945, Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh declared independence from France, but the U.S. announced its support of restoring French power. In 1950, Ho again declared Vietnamese independence, which was recognized by Communist China and the Soviet Union. Ho controlled a remote territory along the Chinese border, while France controlled the remainder. Truman's "containment policy" called for opposition to Communist expansion, and led the U.S. to continue to recognize French rule, support the French client government, and increase aid to Vietnam. However, a basic dispute emerged: the Americans wanted a strong and independent Vietnam, while the French cared little about containing China but instead wanted to suppress local nationalism and integrate Indochina into the French Union.

The escalation of the Cold War was highlighted by Truman's approval of NSC-68, a secret statement of foreign policy. It called for tripling the defense budget, and the globalization and militarization of containment policy whereby the U.S. and its NATO allies would respond militarily to actual Soviet expansion. The document was drafted by Paul Nitze, who consulted State and Defense officials; it was formally approved by President Truman as official national strategy after the war began in Korea. It called for partial mobilization of the U.S. economy to build armaments faster than the Soviets. The assumption was the takeover of China, the invasion of South Korea and threats to Vietnam demonstrated a drive for world dominance by the Soviet Union and its Communist allies. A three part response was called for to strengthen Europe; weaken the Soviet Union economically; and to strengthen the United States both militarily and economically.

In 1948, Truman ordered a controversial addition to the exterior of the White House: a second floor balcony in the south portico that came to be known as the "Truman Balcony." The addition was unpopular.

Not long afterwards, engineering experts concluded that the building, much of it over 130 years old, was in a dangerously dilapidated condition. That August, a section of floor collapsed and Truman's own bedroom and bathroom were closed as unsafe. No public announcement about the serious structural problems of the White House was made until after the 1948 election had been won, by which time Truman had been informed that his new balcony was the only part of the building that was sound. The Truman family moved into nearby Blair House; as the newer West Wing, including the Oval Office, remained open, Truman found himself walking to work across the street each morning and afternoon. In due course, the decision was made to demolish and rebuild the whole interior of the main White House, as well as excavating new basement levels and underpinning the foundations. The famous exterior of the structure, however, was buttressed and retained while the renovations proceeded inside. The work lasted from December 1949 until March 1952.

On November 1, 1950, Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempted to assassinate Truman at Blair House. On the street outside the residence, Torresola mortally wounded a White House policeman, Leslie Coffelt. Before he died, the officer shot and killed Torresola. Collazo, as a co-conspirator in a felony that turned into a homicide, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in 1952. Truman later commuted his sentence to life in prison. Acknowledging the importance of the question of Puerto Rican independence, Truman allowed for a plebiscite in Puerto Rico to determine the status of its relationship to the United States. The attack, which could easily have taken the president's life, drew new attention to security concerns surrounding his residence at Blair House. He had jumped up from his nap, and was watching the gunfight from his open bedroom window until a passerby shouted at him to take cover.

In response to a labor / management impasse arising from bitter disagreements over wage and price controls, Truman instructed his Secretary of Commerce, Charles W. Sawyer, to take control of a number of the nation's steel mills in April 1952. Truman cited his authority as Commander in Chief and the need to maintain an uninterrupted supply of steel for munitions to be used in the war in Korea. The Supreme Court found Truman's actions unconstitutional, however, and reversed the order in a major separation - of - powers decision,Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. The 6 – 3 decision, which held that Truman's assertion of authority was too vague and was not rooted in any legislative action by Congress, was delivered by a Court composed entirely of Justices appointed by either Truman or Roosevelt. The high court's reversal of Truman's order was one of the notable defeats of his presidency. After coal miners went on strike in the spring of 1946, Truman threatened to draft the miners into the Army if they did not return to work, or use members of the Army to replace the workers.

In 1950, the Senate, led by Estes Kefauver, investigated numerous charges of corruption among senior Administration officials, some of whom received fur coats and deep freezers for favors. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was involved. In 1950, 166 IRS employees either resigned or were fired, and many were facing indictments from the Department of Justice on a variety of tax fixing and bribery charges, including the assistant attorney general in charge of the Tax Division. When Attorney General Howard McGrath fired the special prosecutor for being too zealous, Truman fired McGrath. Historians agree that Truman himself was innocent and unaware, with one exception. In 1945, Mrs. Truman received a new, expensive, hard - to - get deep freezer. The businessman who provided the gift was the president of a perfume company and, thanks to Truman's aide and confidante General Harry Vaughan, received priority to fly to Europe days after the war ended, where he bought new perfumes. On the way back he "bumped" a wounded veteran from a flight back to the U.S. Disclosure of the episode in 1949 humiliated Truman. The President responded by vigorously defending Vaughan, an old friend with an office in the White House. Vaughan was eventually connected to multiple influence peddling scandals.

Truman pardoned a Louisiana political figure, George A. Caldwell, a building contractor from Baton Rouge who had been imprisoned in the United States Penitentiary, Atlanta, for income tax evasion and accepting kickbacks. He also similarly pardoned the controversial Texas political boss, George Parr of Duval County, the political benefactor of Lyndon B. Johnson, winner of a contested 1948 U.S. Senate election, which ultimately catapulted Johnson into the presidency.

Charges that Soviet agents had infiltrated the government bedeviled the Truman Administration and became a major campaign issue for Eisenhower in 1952. In 1947, Truman issued Executive Order 9835 to set up loyalty boards to investigate espionage among federal employees. Between 1947 and 1952, "about 20,000 government employees were investigated, some 2500 resigned 'voluntarily,' and 400 were fired." He strongly opposed mandatory loyalty oaths for governmental employees, a stance that led to charges that his Administration was soft on Communism. In 1953, Senator Joseph McCarthy and Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr. claimed that Truman had known Harry Dexter White was a Soviet spy when Truman appointed him to the International Monetary Fund.

On December 6, 1950, music critic Paul Hume wrote a critical review of a concert by Margaret Truman: "Miss Truman is a unique American phenomenon with a pleasant voice of little size and fair quality ... (she) cannot sing very well ... is flat a good deal of the time — more last night than at any time we have heard her in past years ... has not improved in the years we have heard her ... (and) still cannot sing with anything approaching professional finish."

In response, Truman wrote a scathing response: 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. Truman was criticized by many for the letter. However, he pointed out that he wrote it as a loving father and not as the president.

A 1947 report by the Truman administration titled To Secure These Rights presented a detailed ten point agenda of civil rights reforms. In February 1948, the president submitted a civil rights agenda to Congress that proposed creating several federal offices devoted to issues such as voting rights and fair employment practices. This provoked a storm of criticism from Southern Democrats in the run up to the national nominating convention, but Truman refused to compromise, saying: "My forebears were Confederates ... but my very stomach turned over when I had learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of Army trucks in Mississippi and beaten." In retirement however, Truman was less progressive on the issue. He described the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches as silly, stating that the marches would not "accomplish a darned thing."

Instead of addressing civil rights on a case - by - case need, Truman wanted to address civil rights on a national level. Truman made three executive orders that eventually became a structure for future civil rights legislation. The first executive order, Executive Order 9981 in 1948, is generally understood to be the act that desegregated the armed services. This was a milestone on a long road to desegregation of the Armed Forces. After several years of planning, recommendations and revisions between Truman, the Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity and the various branches of the military, Army units became racially integrated. This process was also helped by the pressure of manpower shortages during the Korean War, as replacements to previously segregated units could now be of any race.

The second, also in 1948, made it illegal to discriminate against persons applying for civil service positions based on race. The third executive order, in 1951, established Committee on Government Contract Compliance (CGCC). This committee ensured that defense contractors to the armed forces could not discriminate against a person because of their race.

Truman appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States: Harold Hitz Burton — 1945; Fred M. Vinson (Chief Justice) — 1946; Tom C. Clark — 1949; Sherman Minton — 1949.

Truman's judicial appointments have been called by critics "inexcusable." A former Truman aide confided that it was the weakest aspect of Truman's presidency. The New York Times condemned the appointments of Tom C. Clark and Sherman Minton in particular as examples of cronyism and favoritism for unqualified candidates.

The four justices appointed by Truman joined with Justices Felix Frankfurter, Robert H. Jackson, and Stanley Reed to create a substantial seven member conservative bloc on the Supreme Court. This returned the court for a time to the conservatism of the Taft era.

In addition to his four Supreme Court appointments, Truman appointed 27 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 101 judges to the United States district courts.

In 1951, the U.S. ratified the 22nd Amendment, making a president ineligible to be elected for a third time, or to be elected for a second time after having served more than two years of a previous president's term. The latter clause would have applied to Truman in 1952, except that a grandfather clause in the amendment explicitly excluded the current president from this provision. However, Truman decided not to run for reelection.

At the time of the 1952 New Hampshire primary, no candidate had won Truman's backing. His first choice, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, had declined to run; Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson had also turned Truman down; Vice President Barkley was considered too old; and Truman distrusted and disliked Senator Estes Kefauver, whom he privately called "Cowfever."

Truman's name was on the New Hampshire primary ballot but Kefauver won. On March 29, Truman announced his decision not to run for re-election. Stevenson, having reconsidered his presidential ambitions, received Truman's backing and won the Democratic nomination.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, now a Republican and the nominee of his party, campaigned against what he denounced as Truman's failures regarding "Korea, Communism and Corruption" and the "mess in Washington," and promised to "go to Korea." Eisenhower defeated Stevenson decisively in the general election, ending 20 years of Democratic rule. While Truman and Eisenhower had previously been good friends, Truman felt betrayed that Eisenhower did not denounce Joseph McCarthy during the campaign.

Truman returned to Independence, Missouri, to live at the Wallace home he and Bess had shared for years with her mother. Four months after leaving office, Truman was invited to address the Reserve Officers Association in Philadelphia. Refusing official transportation, Truman instead drove his brand new Chrysler New Yorker, with Bess accompanying him in the passenger seat. The trip, which included stops in Washington, D.C., New York City, and smaller towns, caused a media sensation, especially when the former President was pulled over by a policeman for driving too slowly in a passing lane.

Truman's predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had organized his own presidential library, but legislation to enable future presidents to do something similar had not been enacted. Truman worked to garner private donations to build a presidential library, which he donated to the federal government to maintain and operate — a practice adopted by all of his successors.

Once out of office, Truman quickly decided that he did not wish to be on any corporate payroll, believing that taking advantage of such financial opportunities would diminish the integrity of the nation's highest office. He also turned down numerous offers for commercial endorsements. Since his earlier business ventures had proved unsuccessful, he had no personal savings. As a result, he faced financial challenges. Once Truman left the White House, his only income was his old army pension: $112.56 per month. Former members of Congress and the federal courts received a federal retirement package; President Truman himself ensured that former servants of the executive branch of government received similar support. In 1953, however, there was no such benefit package for former presidents.

He took out a personal loan from a Missouri bank shortly after leaving office, and then set about establishing another precedent for future former chief executives: a book deal for his memoirs of his time in office. Ulysses S. Grant had overcome similar financial issues with his own memoirs, but the book had been published posthumously, and he had declined to write about life in the White House in any detail. For the memoirs, Truman received only a flat payment of $670,000, and had to pay two - thirds of that in tax; he calculated he got $37,000 after he paid his assistants.

Truman's memoirs were a commercial and critical success; they were published in two volumes in 1955 and 1956 by Doubleday (Garden City, N.Y) and Hodder & Stoughton (London):Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Year of Decisions and Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Years of Trial and Hope.

Truman was quoted in 1957 as saying to then House Majority Leader John McCormack, "Had it not been for the fact that I was able to sell some property that my brother, sister, and I inherited from our mother, I would practically be on relief, but with the sale of that property I am not financially embarrassed."

In 1958, Congress passed the Former Presidents Act, offering a $25,000 yearly pension to each former president, and it is likely that Truman's financial status played a role in the law's enactment. The one other living former president at the time, Herbert Hoover, also took the pension, even though he did not need the money; reportedly, he did so to avoid embarrassing Truman. Hoover may have been remembering an old favor: shortly after becoming President, Truman had invited Hoover to the White House for an informal chat about conditions in Europe. This was Hoover's first visit to the White House since leaving office, as the Roosevelt administration had shunned Hoover. The two remained good friends for the remainder of their lives.

In 1956, Truman traveled to Europe with his wife. In Britain, he received an honorary degree in Civic Law from Oxford University and met with Winston Churchill. On returning to the U.S., he supported Adlai Stevenson's second bid for the White House, although he had initially favored Democratic Governor W. Averell Harriman of New York.

Upon turning 80, Truman was feted in Washington and to address the United States Senate, as part of a new rule that allowed former presidents to be granted privilege of the floor. He also campaigned for senatorial candidates. After a fall in his home in late 1964, his physical condition declined. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare bill at the Truman Library and gave the first two Medicare cards to Truman and his wife Bess to honor his fight for government health care as president.

On December 5, 1972, he was admitted to Kansas City's Research Hospital and Medical Center with lung congestion from pneumonia. He developed multiple organ failure and died at 7:50 am on December 26 at the age of 88. His wife died nearly ten years later, on October 18, 1982. They are buried at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. Bess Truman opted for a simple private service at the library for her husband rather than a state funeral in Washington. Foreign dignitaries attended a memorial service at Washington National Cathedral a week later.

When he left office in 1953, Truman was one of the most unpopular chief executives in history. His job approval rating of 22% in the Gallup Poll of February 1952 was lower than Richard Nixon's was in August 1974 at 24%, the month that Nixon resigned. American public feeling toward Truman grew steadily warmer with the passing years, and the period shortly after his death consolidated a partial rehabilitation among both historians and members of the public. As early as 1962, a poll of 75 distinguished historians conducted by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. ranked Truman among the "near great" presidents. Since leaving office, Truman has fared well in polls ranking the presidents among Americans. He has never been listed lower than ninth, and most recently was fifth in a C-SPAN poll in 2009.

Truman has been honored on two U.S. postage stamps, the first issued in 1973 and the second stamp in 1984.

He has also had his critics. After a review of information available to Truman on the presence of espionage activities in the U.S. government, Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan concluded that Truman was "almost willfully obtuse" concerning the danger of American communism. As early as the late 1960s, revisionist historians began attacking Truman. Today, the consensus among historians is that "Harry Truman remains a controversial president."

Truman died during a time when the nation was consumed with crises in Vietnam and Watergate, and his death brought a new wave of attention to his political career. In the early and mid 1970s, Truman captured the popular imagination much as he had in 1948, this time emerging as a kind of political folk hero, a president who was thought to exemplify an integrity and accountability many observers felt was lacking in the Nixon White House. Truman has been portrayed on screen many times, several in performances that have won wide acclaim, and the pop band Chicago recorded a nostalgic song, "Harry Truman" (1975).

Due to Truman's critical role in the U.S. government's decision to recognize Israel, the Israeli village of Beit Harel was renamed Kfar Truman.

Despite Truman's attempt to curtail the naval carrier arm, which led to the 1949 Revolt of the Admirals, the navy decided to name an aircraft carrier after him. The USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) was christened on September 7, 1996. The ship, sometimes known as the 'HST', was authorized as USS United States, the same as the carrier that Truman had cancelled in 1949, but her name was changed before the keel laying.

129th Field Artillery Regiment is designated "Truman's Own" in recognition of Truman's service as commander of its D Battery during World War I.

The Truman Scholarship, a federal program that seeks to honor U.S. college students who exemplified dedication to public service and leadership in public policy, was created in 1975. The President Harry S. Truman Fellowship in National Security Science and Engineering, a distinguished postdoctoral three year appointment at Sandia National Laboratories was created in 2004. The University of Missouri established the Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs to advance the study and practice of governance. The university's Missouri Tigers athletics programs have an official mascot named Truman the Tiger. To mark its transformation from a regional state teachers' college to a highly selective liberal arts university and to honor the only Missourian to become president, Northeast Missouri State University became Truman State University on July 1, 1996. A member institution of the City Colleges of Chicago, Harry S Truman College in Chicago, Illinois, is named in honor of the president for his dedication to public colleges and universities. The headquarters for the United States Department of State, built in the 1930s but never officially named, was dedicated as the Harry S Truman Building in 2000.

In 1991, Truman was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians, and a bronze bust depicting him is on permanent display in the rotunda of the Missouri State Capitol. Thomas Daniel, grandson of the Trumans accepted a star on the Missouri Walk of Fame in 2006 to honor his late grandfather. John Truman, Truman's nephew, accepted a star for Bess Truman in 2007. The Walk of Fame is in Marshfield, Missouri, a city Truman visited in 1948.

He was honored by the United States Postal Service with a 20¢ Great Americans series postage stamp.