September 18, 1948 – President Harry S. Truman makes a Presidential Whistlestop in Iowa City. This is one of the first stops in his 1948 election campaign. A heavy under-dog vs. New York governor, Thomas Dewey, it’s stops like this one that convinced America to stick with Harry.
In 1836, William Henry Harrison became the first presidential candidate to give speeches from the back of a train. However, it was Theodore Roosevelt who, over six decades later (1900), launched the practice that would become known as the whistlestop campaign. Roosevelt’s high-energy succession of rapid-fire, trackside rallies reached deep into America’s heartland and fundamentally changed the way candidates interact with the electorate.
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