Leeds nostalgia: YEP report on 1946 mid term US elections...

Today we should finally find out who has won the US election but turn the clock back 60 years and the country was once again on a knife edge.

A report in the Yorkshire Evening Post said that the Republicans were assured a majority of at least 55 in the House of Representatives and of at least six in the Senate and it was being widely discussed that President Truman should resign to make way for a Republican successor.

Truman was vice president in 1945 but succeeded to the presidency in that year following the death of President Franklin D Roosevelt.

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Truman was responsible for approving the plan to drop the atom bombs on Japan.

Elections to the United States House of Representatives for the 80th United States Congress took place in 1946. These midterm elections occurred 19 months after President Harry S. Truman assumed office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

They were seen very much as a referendum on Truman, whose popularity was at an all time low.

The suggestion he should resign was first mooted by Senator Fulbright, a member of the president’s own Democrat party, who said: “Mr Truman should appoint a Republican as Secretary of State and resign from office.”

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At the time, the White House refused to comment. In the event, Truman remained in post and was re-elected in 1948.

In other news, burglars in Leeds carried out two daring robberies, in one case removing the roof slates of a clothiers on Duncan Street and forcing their way in, before making off with £200 worth of goods. In the other incident, a detached house on Street Lane, Roundhay was broken into and a safe ransacked.