The origins of Henry A. Wallace’s Progressive Party occasioned heated debate among political partisans throughout the presidential campaign, and they remain a topic of some controversy. Beginning in 1948, critics of the Progressive Party contended that the Communists, on orders from Moscow, had conceived the idea, organized the party according to a “detailed time-table,” chosen Wallace as the candidate, and pressured him relentlessly until he accepted his predetermined role. In their view, the Wallace candidacy was an entirely synthetic, top-down venture that the Communists had created with the sole purpose of serving Soviet foreign policy. Accordingly, they portrayed non-Communist Progressives...

After reading aNew York Timestranslation of the Zhdanov manifesto in mid-October 1947, Michael Straight, the young publisher of theNew Republic, grew worried. As he would reveal thirty-five years later, Straight was no stranger to the international communist movement. During the 1930s, he had been involved with Soviet espionage as an associate of the infamous “Cambridge spies,” Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, and Anthony Blunt. Disillusioned, he quietly broke with the Party in 1940 and thereafter remained wary of any entanglements with the Communists. He now sensed that the establishment of the Cominform would precipitate a major...

Before February 17, 1948, few people outside of New York City had even heard of Leo Isacson, the American Labor Party (ALP) nominee for Congress who was running in a special election to be held that day in the Bronx. The next morning, however, news of Isacson’s astonishing two-to-one victory grabbed front-page headlines across the country. In trouncing “boss” Edward J. Flynn’s Democratic organization, Isacson, the candidate backed by Henry Wallace and his third party movement, sent shock waves through the political establishment. Pundits claimed that his victory would have national, even international repercussions, while jubilant Wallace supporters proclaimed that...

As the New Party’s fortunes appeared to be on the upswing, Wallace’s views, particularly on foreign policy, came under closer scrutiny. Since late 1947, the former vice president had been denouncing the Marshall Plan in particular as an imperialist plot hatched by Wall Street bankers. Wallace had initially supported Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s proposals for European aid, but when the Soviets refused to participate, he concluded that “warlords and moneychangers” had perverted the plan’s good intentions and planned to use it to divide Europe. Thereafter, Wallace sharpened his critique of the Truman administration’s “bipartisan reactionary war policy” while...

On the morning of July 23, 1948, Henry Wallace arrived by day coach at Philadelphia’s Broad Street Station. Senator Glen Taylor of Idaho, his intended running mate, and a crowd of some fifteen hundred ardent supporters welcomed their standard-bearer with songs, cheers, and waving banners. Acknowledging their adulation, a beaming Wallace declared, “I’m mighty glad to be here in Philadelphia. This convention is going to mark a great turning point not only in the history of the New Party, but also in the history of the world.” Wallace came to Philadelphia convinced that the independent liberals who had heretofore withheld...

On the evening of Friday, July 24, attention shifted from press conferences, platform writing, and other preliminaries to the opening of the convention itself. With great fanfare, some thirty-two hundred delegates and alternates crowded into steaming Convention Hall to baptize their new “people’s party.” Under blazing television lights—a new attraction in 1948—they shouted out the catchy lyrics of the Wallace campaign songs with an evangelistic fervor. On average, observers noted, the Progressives were twenty years younger and thirty pounds lighter than their Democratic and Republican counterparts. One reporter covering the convention spoke of a “soda parlor atmosphere, not...

“It was a great convention,” Frederick Schuman wrote to Beanie Baldwin three days after leaving Philadelphia. “You did a magnificent job. It’s a good platform. The extent of the smear campaign encourages me. The boys are afraid we are going places. Let’s go!” Henry Wallace shared Schuman’s unbridled optimism. Referring to the third party’s previous high point—the Isacson victory in February—Wallace told supporters, “I was going on faith in those days. But since this convention I’m not going on faith. I know we’ve just begun to roll. . . . We’re getting rolling now and they simply can’t...

Though the quarrels within state and local party organizations raised some concern, the national leaders of the Progressive Party focused primarily on mobilizing two core constituencies—youth and organized labor—as they prepared for the fall campaign. From the outset, the Wallace crusade had demonstrated a special appeal to young people. Not surprisingly, the candidate’s outspoken plea for peace resonated with those who would be called on to fight the next war. College campuses provided fertile ground for recruiting supporters and often served as the launching point for establishing new local Wallace organizations. By late spring, “Students for Wallace” claimed...

On August 29, 1948, Henry A. Wallace boarded a plane to Norfolk, Virginia, thereby launching a weeklong, seven-state southern tour that would provide his third party crusade with many of its most dramatic moments. Wallace’s decision to challenge segregation in the heart of the Jim Crow South grabbed front-page headlines throughout the country, winning the Progressive Party the most sustained media coverage it would receive during the campaign. Had it not been for President Truman’s dramatic comeback, one veteran reporter later recalled, the Wallace tour would have been the biggest political story of the year.¹ Expectant Progressives’ hopes ran high....

As he made the long walk from the Yankee Stadium home-team dugout to the podium erected at second base, the deafening cheers and shouts from the throng of nearly fifty thousand people struck a stark contrast to the less welcoming salutations Henry Wallace had received throughout most of Dixie. If nowhere else, the Progressive Party’s standard-bearer could still get a standing ovation in the Bronx. His devoted disciples, at least two-thirds of them teenagers and young men and women in their early twenties, had turned out in great force and full voice to welcome their hero returned. As with most...

The final election results proved a devastating blow to the Progressive Party and all those associated with it. The presidential ticket finished an embarrassing fourth behind the Dixiecrats, polling only 1.1 million votes, 2.37 percent of those cast. The narrowness of Wallace’s appeal was equally striking. Thirty-seven percent of his nationwide total came from New York City. In California, his second strongest state, 53 percent of the votes came from Los Angeles County. Few had anticipated such a poor showing. The last preelection Roper survey had put Wallace at 3.6 percent, a figure the Progressives fiercely disputed, charging that the...