Harry S. Truman photo

Remarks at a Supper for Democratic Senators and Representatives.

January 12, 1950

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, and fellow Democrats:

It is a very great pleasure for me to be here again on this occasion. I was here last year and discussed with you certain experiences of mine as a Member of the Senate of the United States, and the difficulties I had had in being elected at various times--in 1934, 1940, 1944, and I think I said something about the election of 1948.

But you have heard excellent advice from the Speaker of the House, and from the Vice President. And I hope that all of you will remember that the Democratic Party is the party of the people of the United States, and has been ever since Thomas Jefferson.

The president of Princeton University was in to see me yesterday, and told me that Princeton is publishing all the writings of Thomas Jefferson, and that there will be 51 volumes of it, and that they have been to France, and to England, and to the Library of Congress, and to various places in the United States. They have found a letter down in Oklahoma from Thomas Jefferson to the Cherokee Indians, which is a classic. They are going to publish all those writings of Jefferson, and I hope someday somebody will publish all the writings of Jackson, and of Lincoln, and of Woodrow Wilson, and of Franklin D. Roosevelt in that same way in which Princeton is working on the writings of Jefferson.

If they do that, they will find out why the Democratic Party never dies. It is the party of the people!

Now, the Democratic Party has a program. You were all at Philadelphia, and you know what that program is. I believe that a party platform means what it says, and I am doing everything I can to carry out the platform of the Democratic Party of the United States, and I am going to keep fighting for that as long as I live.

It has been a pleasure to be here with you tonight. It has been a pleasure to listen to Sam Rayburn, who has been a friend of mine ever since I have been in Washington, and to listen to my boss here, the Vice President of the United States. He used to be the leader in the Senate, and as he said, I don't think he ever had to call on me or look around to find out whether I was going to support him as leader of the Senate.

And I hope that the Democrats in the Senate of the United States will do that same thing for my friend Scott Lucas.

I can't thank you enough for asking me to come here, and I hope that next year, after these fall elections, that we will have a Democratic Party that represents the people of the United States, in the House of Representatives and in the Senate--and you will have it in the Executive Office.

Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 8:30 p.m. at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. In his opening words he referred to William M. Boyle, Jr., Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Albert W. Barkley, Vice President of the United States, and Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House of Representatives. Later in his remarks the President referred to Scott Lucas, Democratic Senator from Illinois and Senate majority leader.

Harry S Truman, Remarks at a Supper for Democratic Senators and Representatives. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/230483

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