Prologue

Prologue: The Senate Voting Record of Harry S. Truman The early careers of presidents often have been probed by biographers and historians seeking insights into the later political behavior of their subjects. Dumas Malone, for example, wrote three volumes of his biography of Thomas Jefferson before reaching Jefferson's presidential years. Frank Friedel also used three volumes to analyze Franklin Roosevelt's early career; and the prepresidential years of such figures as George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson have been closely scrutinized.' Despite a favorablejudgment of his presidency by historians,2 however, the early career of Harry S. Truman remains an enigma. Most historians, despite a paucity of sources, have viewed the young Truman as a loyal machine Democrat and a New Dealer.3 Truman's well-publicized connection with the Pendergast organization in Kansas City excited considerable contemporary comment and has intrigued historians since, but the definitive account of that relationship

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