April 11, 1951: President Harry S Truman fires General of the Army Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Commander of United Nations forces in the Korean War.
MacArthur's offense: Insubordination. Truman had given him orders not to further engage the Chinese forces in Korea. MacArthur had sent a letter to Representative Joseph W. Martin of Massachusetts, the Republican Party's leader in the U.S. House of Representatives -- he had been Speaker in the 1947-48 session, and would be again in that of 1953-54 -- objecting to Truman's orders.
Had Martin not mentioned this letter to the media of the time, MacArthur probably would have gotten away with it. But Truman was incensed, and decided to give MacArthur, a 5-star General and perhaps the most popular American, military or civilian, a lesson that every American needs to learn: One of the guiding principles of the country is civilian control of the military.
The reaction from America's right wing, as Truman knew it would be, was apoplectic. They believed that MacArthur was the one thing standing between planet Earth and a complete takeover by Communism, with its godless atheism and its takeover of private property. They believed that, if South Korea fell, Japan would be next, and then all of Asia, and then Europe, what became known as the "domino theory."
Telegrams came pouring into Congress, 44,358 of them, all but 334 taking MacArthur's side -- about 132 pro-MacArthur telegrams for every 1 that was pro-Truman. Leader Martin said, "We might want the impeachments of 1 or 50." Senator Richard Nixon of California demanded MacArthur's immediate reinstatement. Senator William Jenner of Indiana spoke on the Senate floor: "Our only choice is to impeach President Truman, and find out who is the secret invisible government which has so cleverly led our country down the road to destruction." The people watching from the Senate gallery broke into applause.
In supposedly liberal New York, 2,000 longshoremen went on strike to support MacArthur. The legislatures of the States of Florida, Michigan, Illinois and California -- between them, with 89 Electoral Votes, or 1/3rd of the 266 then needed to win the 1952 Presidential election -- voted resolutions condemning the firing.
The Chicago Tribune, the biggest newspaper in the Midwest, run by the archconservative Robert R. McCormick, always referred to by his World War I rank as "Colonel McCormack," wrote:
President Truman must be impeached and convicted. His hasty and vindictive removal of Gen. MacArthur is the culmination of a series of acts which have shown that he is unfit, morally and mentally, for his high office...
The American nation has never been in a greater danger. It is led by a fool who is surrounded by knaves.
Oddly, none of the people publicly calling for Truman's impeachment were recommending a specific charge that met the definition, set by the Constitution of the United States, for removal: "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." None of them were alleging that Truman had committed an actual crime.
Truman did, however, have a unanimous recommendation from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that MacArthur be removed from command. His staff, including Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall, accepted that it had to be done, and the only question was to how to announce it.
Truman had some other notable supporters, including former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, United Auto Workers Chairman Walter Reuther, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and, interestingly enough, Paul Hume, the Washington Post music critic whose harsh criticism of a musical performance by the President's daughter, Margaret Truman, at Constitution Hall in Washington 4 months earlier had led to a nasty response in a letter.
The Post, The New York Times, the New York Post (considered a liberal paper until its 1976 purchase by Rupert Murdoch), The Boston Globe, the Baltimore Sun, the Atlanta Journal, the Miami Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times (McCormick's main competitor), the Milwaukee Journal, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (not always friendly to Truman, a former Senator from Missouri), the Denver Post, the Seattle Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Des Moines Register and Tribune, then a staunch Republican paper, all printed editorials supporting Truman. Even the New York Herald Tribune, then symbolic of Northeastern Republicans, wrote:
The most obvious fact about the dismissal of General MacArthur is that he virtually forced his own removal. In high policy there is no room for a divided command...
He is the architect of a situation which really left the President with no other course. With one of those strokes of boldness and decision which are characteristic of Mr. Truman in emergencies, a very difficult and dangerous problem has been met in the only way it could have been met.
MacArthur returned home, and was treated as a hero. The City of New York gave him the biggest ticker-tape parade in its history, breaking the record set for Charles Lindbergh in 1927, and lasting until the Mets won the 1969 World Series.
Martin talked his opposite number in the Democratic Party, Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas, into letting MacArthur speak before a Joint Session of Congress on April 19. There was nothing Truman could do: He did not control Congress, and had already sent Mac into forced retirement. (Mac shouldn't still have been on active duty, anyway: He was 71 years old.)
He reminisced about his time as a young soldier, and quoted "one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day, which proclaimed, most proudly, that 'Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.' And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty, as God gave him the light to see that duty. Good Bye."
For the record, the line is, "Old soldiers never die, they simply fade away."
MacArthur was more popular than ever, and people began to speculate that he would run for the Republican Party's nomination for President in 1952 -- and that he would win, easily.
He refused to campaign for that nomination, figuring he didn't need to work for it, because a popular groundswell would lead to his nomination. He was wrong: It was the man he had once called "the best clerk I ever had," Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was nominated due to a popular groundswell, the closest thing to a "draft" any Presidential candidate has ever had.
The move to Truman went nowhere, as the Democrats maintained control of Congress for the rest of 1951 and all of 1952. Truman could have run for what would have amounted to a 3rd term -- due to the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution having been ratified a few weeks earlier, he was the last President who could have done so -- but he chose not to. He would have lost badly, as Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, who turned out to be the Democratic nominee, did.
The Republicans also won control of both houses of Congress, taking office in the majority on January 3, 1953. For 17 days, they could have moved to impeach Truman, though any trial would likely not have happened before he left office on January 20. They made no such move, as it was now pointless: Repudiation of the Democratic Party at the polls, the Republicans believed, was punishment enough for Truman, his Party, and their policies.
MacArthur lived until 1964. By that point, Truman's reputation, in the dumps when he left office, had recovered. He lived until 1972.
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April 11, 1951 was a Wednesday. The Major League Baseball season was a few days away from starting. The NFL was in its off-season. The NHL began the Stanley Cup Finals on that night, and the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Montreal Canadiens 3-2, on an overtime goal by Sid Smith.
Sid Smith
As it turned out, the Leafs won the Cup in 5 games, and all 5 went to overtime, including the clincher on April 21 by Bill Barilko, who was soon killed in a plane crash. So he didn't get to enjoy being to hockey what Bobby Thomson became to baseball on October 3 of that year.
April 11 also saw Game 3 of the NBA Finals. Playing at the 69th Regiment Armory, on Lexington Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets, because the old Madison Square Garden was being used by the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus (at the time, a bigger moneymaker for the MSG Corporation), the New York Knicks beat the Rochester Royals 79-73.
Knick Hall-of-Famer Harry Gallatin
That series was also decided on April 21, in a Game 7 that went to overtime. At the Edgerton Park Arena in Rochester, the Royals won 79-75. This would be the 1st of 3 straight trips to the Finals for the Knicks, but they would lose them all, and not win one until 1970.
At least the Knicks still exist. The Royals moved to Cincinnati in 1957, became the Kansas City Kings in 1972, and the Sacramento Kings in 1985. That 1951 title remains their only trip to the NBA Finals.
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