The study begins with an overview of the 1948 political situation, followed by the evaluation of Truman's use of ethical appeal using criteria developed by Thonssen, Baird, and Braden. Each of their three constituents of ethical appeal--character, sagacity, and good will--is applied to four speeches. Results of the analysis establish that Truman utilized a strong ethical appeal during the campaign. Conclusions are that his use of ethical appeal probably had a significant effect on the voters of America. Regardless of the quality of his use of pathos or logos, a less capable use of ethical appeal would probably have had a fatal effect on his campaign.

You can't judge a book by its cover. The cliche may be trite, nonetheless it is applicable to Harry s. Truman. The feisty Missourian wrested greatness from the hands of his challengers who would have denied it to him because of his background. His lack of a college degree seemed to rankle the press, and as far as they were concerned disqualified him as President of the United States. Based largely on contemporary accounts, this thesis traces the color and drama of Truman's 1948 campaign. In order to appreciate fully the triumph of the President’s victory, it was necessary to follow his career from the time of his unexpected ascendancy to the highest office in the land to his ultimate triumph in 1948. The developments on the international and domestic scene, fraught with danger and anxiety for the American public, provided the backdrop which enabled Truman to prove his resourcefulness and courage. This thesis does not pretend to solve the mystery of the 1948 election. Rather it has proven to be an exercise in research instead of a revealing analysis of the presidential campaign. No new material has been made available to the public which would help answer the question of why the press was so consistently wrong in its analysis of the outcome. Nor has the press admitted to an unreasonably biased view of Harry Truman. They maligned him unmercifully, still he prevailed. He was indeed the "uncommonest of common men."

This thesis examines the factors affecting the outcome of the 1948 presidential election. The factors which will be take up are not a complete list of all those influences on the election but will be those which appeared most frequently in writings on the subject and those which, in the writer's opinion, exerted the strongest influence. By combining specific studies of the tree large pivotal states, with the investigation of general factors affecting the election, it is believed that certain rather definite conclusions can be drawn concerning what happened in the country as a whole.

In the sprint of 1948, President Harry S. Truman's chances of being re-elected to the presidency of the United States seemed very dubious. It was uncertain that he would even secure the Democratic nomination for that office. Truman's pre-convention Western trip. In the early summer of 1948 President Truman left the Capitol on a supposedly non-political Western trip. Although his aids insisted the journey was to be non-political, the fiction deceived no one. However, it enabled the President to charge off the cost of the excursion to his $30,000 a year travel allowance instead of sending the bill to a poverty-stricken Democratic National Committee. But it was not to hear non-political speeches that forty-two newspaper and magazine writers, five radio correspondents, four newsreel men, four still photographers, and a bevy of Western Union telegraphers, for whom an entire car had been turned into a press room, were aboard. The itinerary covered more than 8,500 miles from the Capital to Seattle, to Los Angeles, and back to Washington, D. C. He was to make five major speeches and nearly fifty back platform appearances. His objective was to put his program and his personality before the voters, and his plans before the politicians. So clear was Truman's purpose that he quickly found himself unable to maintain his non-political pose. He made only one feeble attempt when his train stopped in Crestline, Ohio, but a sturdy housewife in the crowd, which had gathered to see him, interrupted, "Aw, we don't want to hear that, we're all Democrats here."1 Laughing at himself, the President declared, "On this non-partisan, bipartisan trip we are making here, I understand there are a lot of Democrats too."2 After that Truman made little effort to hide the political nature of his trip.