[Truman, Harry S., & Thomas Dewey] | Dewey Defeats Truman?

The Passion of American Collectors: Property of Barbara and Ira Lipman

[Truman, Harry S., & Thomas Dewey]

Chicago Daily Tribune reporting the results of Truman-Dewey presidential election. Vol. CVII, No. 264. Chicago, Wednesday, November 3, 1948

Large folio newspaper (600 x 425 mm). "Home" edition. No. 264, the complete two-section paper; browned, creased at central fold, minor fraying at spine, some short marginal tears. 

"Dewey Defeats Truman": the most notorious journalistic blunder in the history of American newspapers.

Most Americans, including President Truman's own campaign staff, were certain that the incumbent was going to lose to New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. The majority of the nation's newspapers had endorsed him and even a slight drop in the polls late in the campaign would be of little or no concern. Truman and his family voted in Independence, Missouri, on 2 November 1948, and retired early, unaware that the Tribune was going to press with two alternate headlines: "Dewey Defeats Truman" and "G.O.P. Wins White House." The erroneous headlines resulted from a series of missteps. The returns were coming in slowly and the paper was fast approaching its deadline. Moreover, most of the editors on Col. Robert C. McCormick's rabidly anti-Democratic paper were convinced that Dewey already had one foot inside the White House door. After delivery of the paper, the gap between Truman and Dewey started to close, as the old New Deal coalition all came out for Truman. As the tally shifted in favor of the Democrats, panic seized Tribune officials. They sent staffers out to stop delivery trucks, even to swipe copies from people's porches, and tens of thousands of copies were pulped. A framed copy of this issue was hung in the Truman White House. "Mr. Truman always looked at that headline as if he had never seen it before. He never said anything about it. No need to. He just stood there and grinned" (Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman, p. 406).