The Southern Manifesto, from the History of the Federal Judici.docx

The Southern Manifesto, from the History of the Federal
Judiciary, comprises
public domain material from the Federal Judicial Center, US
Courts.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board and the Desegregation of
New
Orleans Schools
Historical Documents
The Southern Manifesto
On March 12, 1956, in response to the Supreme Court’s
decisions in Brown v. Board of Education, 101
U.S. Senators and Members of the House of Representatives
from the eleven states of the old
Confederacy—including the entire Louisiana congressional
delegation—signed this “Southern
Manifesto.” The manifesto characterized the “unwarranted”
Brown decision as a “clear abuse of judicial
power.” South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, the
presidential candidate of the Dixiecrat Party in
1948, played a major role in drafting the manifesto.
[Document Source: U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, 84th
Cong., 2d sess., 1956, 102, pt. 4: 4515–
16.]

Declaration of Constitutional Principles
The unwarranted decision of the Supreme Court in the public
school cases is now bearing the fruit
always produced when men substitute naked power for
established law.
The Founding Fathers gave us a Constitution of checks and
balances because they realized the
inescapable lesson of history that no man or group of men can
be safely entrusted with unlimited
power. They framed this Constitution with its provisions for
change by amendment in order to secure
the fundamentals of government against the dangers of
temporary popular passion or the personal
predilections of public officeholders.
We regard the decision of the Supreme Court in the school cases
as a clear abuse of judicial power. It
climaxes a trend in the Federal judiciary undertaking to
legislate, in derogation of the authority of
Congress, and to encroach upon the reserved rights of the States
and the people.
The original Constitution does not mention education. Neither
does the 14th amendment nor any other
amendment. The debates preceding the submission of the 14th
amendment clearly show that there was
no intent that it should affect the systems of education
maintained by the States.
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The very Congress which proposed the amendment subsequently
provided for segregated schools in the
District of Columbia.
When the amendment was adopted, in 1868, there were 37
States of the Union. Every one of the 26
States that had any substantial racial differences among its
people either approved the operation of
segregated schools already in existence or subsequently
established such schools by action of the same
lawmaking body which considered the 14th amendment. . . .
In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, in 1896, the Supreme Court
expressly declared that under the 14th
amendment no person was denied any of his rights if the States
provided separate but equal public
facilities. This decision has been followed in many other cases.
. . .
This interpretation, restated time and again, became a part of
the life of the people of many of the
States and confirmed their habits, customs, traditions, and way
of life. It is founded on elemental
humanity and commonsense, for parents should not be deprived
by Government of the right to direct
the lives and education of their own children.
Though there has been no constitutional amendment or act of
Congress changing this established legal
principle almost a century old, the Supreme Court of the United
States, with no legal basis for such
action, undertook to exercise their naked judicial power and
substituted their personal political and
social ideas for the established law of the land.

This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to
the Constitution, is creating chaos and
confusion in the States principally affected. It is destroying the
amicable relations between the white
and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of
patient effort by the good people of both
races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been
heretofore friendship and
understanding.
Without regard to the consent of the governed, outside agitators
are threatening immediate and
revolutionary changes in our public-school systems. If done,
this is certain to destroy the system of
public education in some of the States.
With the gravest concern for the explosive and dangerous
condition created by this decision and
inflamed by outside meddlers:
We reaffirm our reliance on the Constitution as the fundamental
law of the land.
We decry the Supreme Court’s encroachments on rights
reserved to the States and to the people,
contrary to established law and to the Constitution.
We commend the motives of those States which have declared
the intention to resist forced integration
by any lawful means.
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We appeal to the States and people who are not directly affected
by these decisions to consider the
constitutional principles involved against the time when they,
too, on issues vital to them, may be the
victims of judicial encroachment.
Even though we constitute a minority in the present Congress,
we have full faith that a majority of the
American people believe in the dual system of Government
which has enabled us to achieve our
greatness and will in time demand that the reserved rights of the
State and of the people be made
secure against judicial usurpation.
We pledge ourselves to use all lawful means to bring about a
reversal of this decision which is contrary
to the Constitution and to prevent the use of force in its
implementation.
In this trying period, as we all seek to right this wrong, we
appeal to our people not to be provoked by
the agitators and troublemakers invading our States and to
scrupulously refrain from disorders and
lawless acts.
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower: Message to the Congress on
the Situation in the Middle East,
January 5, 1957, “The Eisenhower Doctrine”, from Sage
American History, is available under a Creative

Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
License. © 2014, Henry J. Sage.
PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS ON THE SITUATION IN THE
MIDDLE EAST
January 5, 1957
“The Eisenhower Doctrine”
To the Congress of the United States:
In my forthcoming State of the Union Message, I shall review
the international situation generally. There
are worldwide hopes which we can reasonably entertain, and
there are worldwide responsibilities which
we must carry to make certain that freedom—including our
own—may be secure. There is, however, a
special situation in the Middle East which I feel I should, even
now, lay before you.
Before doing so it is well to remind ourselves that our basic
national objective in international affairs
remains peace—a world peace based on justice. Such a peace
must include all areas, all peoples of the
world if it is to be enduring. There is no nation, great or small,
with which we would refuse to negotiate,
in mutual good faith, with patience and in the determination to
secure a better understanding between
us.…

The Middle East has abruptly reached a new and critical stage
in its long and important history. In past
decades many of the countries in that area were not fully self-
governing. Other nations exercised
considerable authority in the area and the security of the region
was largely built around their power.
But since the First World War there has been a steady evolution
toward self-government and
independence. This development the United States has
welcomed and has encouraged. Our country
supports without reservation the full sovereignty and
independence of each and every nation of the
Middle East.…
Russia's rulers have long sought to dominate the Middle East.
That was true of the Czars and it is true of
the Bolsheviks. The reasons are not hard to find. They do not
affect Russia's security, for no one plans to
use the Middle East as a base for aggression against Russia.
Never for a moment has the United States
entertained such a thought.
The Soviet Union has nothing whatsoever to fear from the
United States in the Middle East, or anywhere
else in the world, so long as its rulers do not themselves first
resort to aggression.
That statement I make solemnly and emphatically. …
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The reason for Russia's interest in the Middle East is solely that
of power politics. Considering her
announced purpose of Communizing the world, it is easy to
understand her hope of dominating the
Middle East.
This region has always been the crossroads of the continents of
the Eastern Hemisphere. The Suez Canal
enables the nations of Asia and Europe to carry on the
commerce that is essential if these countries are
to maintain well-rounded and prosperous economies. The
Middle East provides a gateway between
Eurasia and Africa.
It contains about two thirds of the presently known oil deposits
of the world and it normally supplies the
petroleum needs of many nations of Europe, Asia and Africa.
The nations of Europe are peculiarly
dependent upon this supply, and this dependency relates to
transportation as well as to production!
This has been vividly demonstrated since the closing of the
Suez Canal and some of the pipelines.
Alternate ways of transportation and, indeed, alternate sources
of power can, if necessary, be
developed. But these cannot be considered as early prospects.
These things stress the immense importance of the Middle East.
If the nations of that area should lose
their independence, if they were dominated by alien forces
hostile to freedom, that would be both a
tragedy for the area and for many other free nations whose

economic life would be subject to near
strangulation. Western Europe would be endangered just as
though there had been no Marshall Plan,
no North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The free nations of Asia
and Africa, too, would be placed in
serious jeopardy. And the countries of the Middle East would
lose the markets upon which their
economies depend. All this would have the most adverse, if not
disastrous, effect upon our own nation's
economic life and political prospects.…
International Communism, of course, seeks to mask its purposes
of domination by expressions of good
will and by superficially attractive offers of political, economic
and military aid. But any free nation,
which is the subject of Soviet enticement, ought, in elementary
wisdom, to look behind the mask.
Soviet control of the satellite nations of Eastern Europe has
been forcibly maintained in spite of solemn
promises of a contrary intent, made during World War II.
Stalin's death brought hope that this pattern would change. And
we read the pledge of the Warsaw
Treaty of 1955 that the Soviet Union would follow in satellite
countries “the principles of mutual respect
for their independence and sovereignty and non-interference in
domestic affairs.” But we have just seen
the subjugation of Hungary by naked armed force. In the
aftermath of this Hungarian tragedy, world
respect for and belief in Soviet promises have sunk to a new
low. International Communism needs and
seeks a recognizable success.
Thus, we have these simple and indisputable facts:

• The Middle East, which has always been coveted by Russia,
would today be prized more
than ever by International Communism.
2
• The Soviet rulers continue to show that they do not scruple to
use any means to gain
their ends.
• The free nations of the Mid East need, and for the most part
want, added strength to
assure their continued independence. ...
There is general recognition in the Middle East, as elsewhere,
that the United States does not seek
either political or economic domination over any other people.
Our desire is a world environment of
freedom, not servitude. On the other hand many, if not all, of
the nations of the Middle East are aware
of the danger that stems from International Communism and
welcome closer cooperation with the
United States to realize for themselves the United Nations goals
of independence, economic well-being
and spiritual growth.
If the Middle East is to continue its geographic role of uniting
rather than separating East and West; if its
vast economic resources are to serve the well-being of the
peoples there, as well as that of others; and if
its cultures and religions and their shrines are to be preserved
for the uplifting of the spirits of the
peoples, then the United States must make more evident its
willingness to support the independence of

the freedom-loving nations of the area.
Under these circumstances I deem it necessary to seek the
cooperation of the Congress. Only with that
cooperation can we give the reassurance needed to deter
aggression, to give courage and confidence to
those who are dedicated to freedom and thus prevent a chain of
events which would gravely endanger
all of the free world.
… It is nothing new for the President and the Congress to join
to recognize that the national integrity of
other free nations is directly related to our own security.
We have joined to create and support the security system of the
United Nations. We have reinforced
the collective security system of the United Nations by a series
of collective defense arrangements.
Today we have security treaties with 42 other nations which
recognize that our peace and security are
intertwined. We have joined to take decisive action in relation
to Greece and Turkey and in relation to
Taiwan.
Thus, the United States through the joint action of the President
and the Congress, or, in the case of
treaties, the Senate, has manifested in many endangered areas
its purpose to support free and
independent governments-and peace-against external menace,
notably the menace of International
Communism. Thereby we have helped to maintain peace and
security during a period of great danger. It
is now essential that the United States should manifest through
joint action of the President and the
Congress our determination to assist those nations of the Mid
East area, which desire that assistance.

The action which I propose would have the following features.
• It would, first of all, authorize the United States to cooperate
with and assist any nation
or group of nations in the general area of the Middle East in the
development of
economic strength dedicated to the maintenance of national
independence.
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• It would, in the second place, authorize the Executive to
undertake in the same region
programs of military assistance and cooperation with any nation
or group of nations
which desires such aid.
• It would, in the third place, authorize such assistance and
cooperation to include the
employment of the armed forces of the United States to secure
and protect the
territorial integrity and political independence of such nations,
requesting such aid,
against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by
International
Communism. These measures would have to be consonant with
the treaty obligations of
the United States, including the Charter of the United Nations
and with any action or
recommendations of the United Nations. They would also, if
armed attack occurs, be
subject to the overriding authority of the United Nations
Security Council in accordance

with the Charter.
• The present proposal would, in the fourth place, authorize the
President to employ, for
economic and defensive military purposes, sums available under
the Mutual Security
Act of 1954, as amended, without regard to existing limitations.
The legislation now requested should not include the
authorization or appropriation of funds because I
believe that, under the conditions I suggest, presently
appropriated funds will be adequate for the
balance of the present fiscal year ending June 30. I shall,
however, seek in subsequent legislation the
authorization of $200,000,000 to be available during each of the
fiscal years 1958 and 1959 for
discretionary use in the area, in addition to the other mutual
security programs for the area hereafter
provided for by the Congress.
This program will not solve all the problems of the Middle East.
Neither does it represent the totality of our policies for the area.
There are the problems of Palestine
and relations between Israel and the Arab States, and the future
of the Arab refugees. There is the
problem of the future status of the Suez Canal. These
difficulties are aggravated by International
Communism, but they would exist quite apart from that
threat.…
The proposed legislation is primarily designed to deal with the
possibility of Communist aggression,
direct and indirect. There is imperative need that any lack of
power in the area should be made good,
not by external or alien force, but by the increased vigor and

security of the independent nations of the
area.…
It is my hope and belief that if our purpose be proclaimed, as
proposed by the requested legislation, that
very fact will serve to halt any contemplated aggression. We
shall have heartened the patriots who are
dedicated to the independence of their nations. They will not
feel that they stand alone, under the
menace of great power. And I should add that patriotism is,
throughout this area, a powerful sentiment.
It is true that fear sometimes perverts true patriotism into
fanaticism and to the acceptance of
dangerous enticements from without. But if that fear can be
allayed, then the climate will be more
favorable to the attainment of worthy national ambitions.
4
And as I have indicated, it will also be necessary for us to
contribute economically to strengthen those
countries, or groups of countries, which have governments
manifestly dedicated to the preservation of
independence and resistance to subversion. Such measures will
provide the greatest insurance against
Communist inroads. Words alone are not enough.
Let me refer again to the requested authority to employ the
armed forces of the United States to assist
to defend the territorial integrity and the political independence
of any nation in the area against
Communist armed aggression. Such authority would not be
exercised except at the desire of the nation
attacked. Beyond this it is my profound hope that this authority

would never have to be exercised at all.
Nothing is more necessary to assure this than that our policy
with respect to the defense of the area be
promptly and clearly determined and declared. Thus the United
Nations and all friendly governments,
and indeed governments which are not friendly, will know
where we stand.
In the situation now existing, the greatest risk, as is often the
case, is that ambitious despots may
miscalculate. If power-hungry Communists should either falsely
or correctly estimate that the Middle
East is inadequately defended, they might be tempted to use
open measures of armed attack. If so, that
would start a chain of circumstances which would almost surely
involve the United States in military
action. I am convinced that the best insurance against this
dangerous contingency is to make clear now
our readiness to cooperate fully and freely with our friends of
the Middle East in ways consonant with
the purposes and principles of the United Nations. I intend
promptly to send a special mission to the
Middle East to explain the cooperation we are prepared to give.
The policy which I outline involves certain burdens and indeed
risks for the United States. Those who
covet the area will not like what is proposed. Already, they are
grossly distorting our purpose. However,
before this Americans have seen our nation's vital interests and
human freedom in jeopardy, and their
fortitude and resolution have been equal to the crisis, regardless
of hostile distortion of our words,
motives and actions.
Indeed, the sacrifices of the American people in the cause of

freedom have, even since the close of
World War II, been measured in many billions of dollars and in
thousands of the precious lives of our
youth. These sacrifices, by which great areas of the world have
been preserved to freedom, must not be
thrown away.
In those momentous periods of the past, the President and the
Congress have united, without
partisanship, to serve the vital interests of the United States and
of the free world.
5
President Eisenhower on “The Domino Theory”
From a Presidential News Conference of April 7, 1954
In this press conference President Eisenhower answered various
questions about foreign policy. It is
worthwhile recalling that 1954 was the year of the fall of the
French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in
North Vietnam, and that Senator Joseph McCarthy (the "certain
senator" referred to in a question)
was still conducted his anti-Communist witch hunts. The names
of the questioners and most questions
on domestic issues have been omitted.
The President. We will go right to questions this morning,
ladies and gentlemen.
Q. Mr. President, concerning the hydrogen bomb, are we going

to continue to make bigger and bigger H-
bombs and, as the H-bomb program continues or progresses, are
we learning anything that is directly
applicable to the peacetime uses of atomic energy?
No, we have no intention of going into a program of seeing how
big these can be made. I don't know
whether the scientists would place any limit; and, therefore, you
hear these remarks about "blow-out,"
which, I think, is even blowing a hole through the entire
atmosphere. We know of no military
requirement that could lead us into the production of a bigger
bomb than has already been produced.
Now, with respect to the potentiality of this development for
peace-time use, our people study, I think
in almost every aspect of human affairs, how this whole atomic
science, this nuclear science, can be
applied to peacetime uses. It would be rash to say that the
hydrogen bomb doesn't add to the
possibilities; yet, at the moment, I know of no direct connection
or direct application of the hydrogen
bomb principle to peacetime power. I asked that very question
of the scientists, and they gave an
answer as nearly as I have just stated it as I can recall.
Q. Sir, on that subject, a certain Senator said last night there
had been a delay of 18 months in the
production of the hydrogen bomb, and suggested it was due to
subversion in Government. Do you know
anything about that?
No, I know nothing about it. I never heard of any delay on my
part, never heard of it.
Q. Mr. President, aren't you afraid that Russia will make bigger

hydrogen bombs before we do?
No, I am not afraid of it. I don't know of any reason for building
a bigger bomb than you find to
represent as great an efficiency as is needed or desirable, so I
don't know what bigger ones would do.
...
Q. Mr. President, would you mind commenting on the strategic
importance of Indochina to the free
world? I think there has been, across the country, some lack of
understanding on just what it means to
us.
6
You have, of course, both the specific and the general when you
talk about such things. First of all, you
have the specific value of a locality in its production of
materials that the world needs. Then you have
the possibility that many human beings pass under a
dictatorship that is inimical to the free world.
Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what
you would call the “falling domino”
principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over
the first one, and what will happen to the
last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you
could have a beginning of a disintegration
that would have the most profound influences.
Now, with respect to the first one, two of the items from this
particular area that the world uses are tin

and tungsten. They are very important. There are others, of
course, the rubber plantations and so on.
Then with respect to more people passing under this
domination, Asia, after all, has already lost some
450 million of its peoples to the Communist dictatorship, and
we simply can't afford greater losses.
But when we come to the possible sequence of events, the loss
of Indochina, of Burma, of Thailand, of
the Peninsula, and Indonesia following, now you begin to talk
about areas that not only multiply the
disadvantages that you would suffer through loss of materials,
sources of materials, but now you are
talking really about millions and millions and millions of
people.
Finally, the geographical position achieved thereby does many
things. It turns the so-called island
defensive chain of Japan, Formosa, of the Philippines and to the
southward; it moves in to threaten
Australia and New Zealand.
It takes away, in its economic aspects, that region that Japan
must have as a trading area or Japan, in
turn, will have only one place in the world to go-that is, toward
the Communist areas in order to live. So,
the possible consequences of the loss are just incalculable to the
free world.
Q. Mr. President, what response has Secretary Dulles and the
administration got to the request for
united action in Indochina?
So far as I know, there are no positive reactions as yet, because
the time element would almost forbid.
The suggestions we have, have been communicated; and we will

have communications on them in due
course, I should say.
Q. Mr. President, do you agree with Senator Kennedy that
independence must be guaranteed the people
of Indochina in order to justify an all-out effort there?
Well, I don't know, of course, exactly in what way a Senator
was talking about this thing. I will say this:
for many years, in talking to different countries, different
governments, I have tried to insist on this
principle: no outside country can come in and be really helpful
unless it is doing something that the local
people want.
Now, let me call your attention to this independence theory.
Senator Lodge, on my instructions, stood
up in the United Nations and offered one country independence
if they would just simply pass a
resolution saying they wanted it, or at least said, “I would work
for it.” They didn't accept it. So I can't
7
say that the associated states want independence in the sense
that the United States is independent. I
do not know what they want. I do say this: the aspirations of
those people must be met, otherwise there
is in the long run no final answer to the problem.
Q. Do you favor bringing this Indochina situation before the
United Nations?
I really can't say. I wouldn't want to comment at too great a

length at this moment, but I do believe this:
this is the kind of thing that must not be handled by one nation
trying to act alone. We must have a
concert of opinion, and a concert of readiness to react in
whatever way is necessary. Of course, the
hope is always that it is peaceful conciliation and
accommodation of these problems.
Here we have a situation for which I have stood for a long time,
Hawaiian statehood. I thought there
were certain considerations of national security, and so on, that
made the other case a separate one. If
these bills are put together, I will have to take a look at them at
the time and study and decide what I
believe to be right at that moment. I just can't predict.
Q. Secretary Dulles has said that the Chinese Communists are
awfully close to open aggression in
Indochina. Can you tell us what action we are prepared to take
if their intervention reaches the point of
open aggression?
No, Mr. Clark, I couldn't answer that one for the simple reason
that we have got this whole troublous
question now under study by a group of people. The only thing I
can say is that here is a problem that is
of the utmost moment to all of us, not only the United States, to
the free world. It is the kind of thing to
which there is more attention given, I guess, at the given
moment of real acute occurrence than almost
any other thing. It is getting study day by day, and I can't tell
you what would be the exact reaction.
Q. Sir, I found many Senators and House members this week
who said that while you were allaying their
fears, that Secretary Dulles was making them fear more, and I

wonder if he is going to clear his
statements on Indochina with you?
So far as I know, Secretary Dulles has never made an important
pronouncement without not only
conferring and clearing with me, but sitting down and studying
practically word by word what he is to
say. Now, I am not aware of any antagonism between the
statements he has made and I have made. I
have plead with America to look facts in the face; I have plead
with them not to minimize what the
possibilities of the situation are, but to realize that we are 160
million of the most productive and the
most intelligent people on earth; therefore, why are we going
around being too scared? Now, on the
other hand, we would be completely foolish not to see what
these facts are and what their potentialities
are. I see those two statements a completely compatible, not as
incompatible.
Q. Mr. President, you have touched on this, but I wonder if you
could tell us whether there is any truth to
these reports in the last couple of days that the United States is
asking some of the other free nations to
join in a joint declaration warning Communist China against
any aggression in Southeast Asia?
8
No; in approach, Mr. Arrowsmith, you call attention to the
problem and say that this looks like a place
where the interests of all of us are involved, and now let us talk
this over. You don't propose the answer
before you study it, put it that way.

Q. Mr. President, would you say that the last statement of the
Secretary of State of last week about
Indochina has improved the chance of reaching a negotiated
solution at Geneva of the Indochinese
controversy?
Your question is really, do I think there is a good chance of
reaching a negotiated solution? [“That is
right.”] Well, I wouldn't class the chances as good, no, not one
that the free world would consider
adequate to the situation. I must say, let me make clear again, I
am certain the United States, as a
whole, its Congress and the executive portions of its
Government, are ready to move just as far as
prudence will allow in seeking any kind of conciliation or
negotiated agreement that will ease any of the
problems of this troubled world. But one thing: we are not
going to overstep the line of prudence in
keeping ourselves secure, knowing that the agreements we made
have some means of being enforced.
We are not simply going to take words. There must be some
way of making these things fact and deed.
Q. Does the executive branch want any action by Congress now
about Indochina?
Not at this moment. I should point out, with all the sincerity I
have, there is nothing partisan about this
problem. There is nothing, so far as I know, in which the
executive branch and the Congress are apart.
We not only must confer upon the broadest scale with the
leaders of Congress as we proceed toward a
decision, we go just as far as they would think it would be
necessary in such a conference. If some
specific authority or anything else were necessary, it would be

asked for after the leaders had already
agreed on a bipartisan basis this is what we should do. I know
of nobody that is trying to escape his
responsibility in this whole business, because we realize that it
is America and the free world we are
talking about, and nothing else.
Q. Mr. President, in response to the question about whether you
knew anything of Senator McCarthy's
charge that the building of the H-bomb had been delayed for 18
months as a result of Communist
influence in our Government, you replied you didn't know
anything about that. That might leave the
implication, sir, that there is some possibility of truth in that
charge. It is a very serious charge, of
actually high treason in Government.<
I don't know. As a matter of fact, I don't know of any speech,
first of all; I get from here the first
knowledge that there was a speech. But, secondly, I have been
very close to the Chairman of the Atomic
Energy Commission. He tries to keep me informed not only of
present developments but of history. He
has never mentioned such a thing as you speak of, and I gave a
perfectly honest answer: I never heard of
it.
Q. Mr. President, as the last resort in Indochina, are we
prepared to go it alone?
Again you are bringing up questions that I have explained in a
very definite sense several times this
morning. I am not saying what we are prepared to do because
there is a Congress, and there are a
9

number of our friends all over this world that are vitally
engaged. I know what my own convictions on
this matter are; but until the thing has been settled and properly
worked out with the people who also
bear responsibilities, I cannot afford to be airing them
everywhere, because it sort of stultifies
negotiation which is often necessary.
10
Post-World War II Domestic Issue: The Truman-Eisenhower-
Kennedy Years, from Sage American
History, is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
License. © 2014, Henry J. Sage.
Post-World War II Domestic Issues
The Truman-Eisenhower-Kennedy Years
Post World War II America saw changes in everyday life
scarcely imaginable in the 1930s. The military
requirements of war had generated enormous advances in
technology, medicine, communications and
the implements of war. Medicines such as penicillin, antibiotics
and techniques for the treating of injuries

and diseases were greatly stimulated by the demands of warfare
and its impact upon civilian
populations. The research that went into the development of the
atomic bomb also produced
information about the phenomenon of radiation and how it
applied to such things as x-ray technology.
The first jet aircraft were developed by Germany during the
Second World War, and all-purpose vehicles
such as the famous Jeep (general purpose vehicle) fostered
advances in automotive design. Radar and
other sophisticated technology devices had uses that would later
be applicable in the civilian arena for
civil air control. Methods developed by companies such as
Kaiser advanced the technology necessary for
building ships of all sorts. The Kaiser-Permanente health plan
was created by that corporation in the
World War Two era.
The Legacy of World War II
As typified by the mythical figure of Rosie the Riveter, the
roles of American women had changed
dramatically during the world war. Approximately 800,000
women served in the Armed Forces in a
variety of capacities. For the 13 million men who served, the
military experience was also eye opening:
farm boys, city dwellers, college students, businessmen,
teachers, musicians, artists, laborers and skilled
technicians serving together—not to mention an unparalleled
mixing of racial and ethnic groups, and
men from different geographic areas—brought new perspectives
to the men who served in the armed
forces during the World War II era.
The difficulty was that when those men returned, they had
changed, often drastically, and so had the

women they had left behind. The younger soldiers and sailors
had gone off as boys of 18 and returned
as old men of 21. The girls had gone to work in factories,
businesses, USOs and Red Cross or other
patriotic agencies and were now independent-minded women,
not necessarily ready to resume the
status quo. The end of the war was indeed a time for
celebration, and the returning GIs were treated as
heroes. But getting back to a “normal” life was difficult. Many
men and women who had married during
whirlwind courtships of weeks or even days before the men left
discovered that their spouses were
strangers; the person they remembered had changed. The result
of all these changes was that marriage,
birth and divorce rates all rose dramatically in the postwar
years.
Domestic Issues and the Cold War. Nothing happens in a
vacuum in the real world. In post-World War II
America, Cold War issues and domestic issues overlapped
significantly. As citizens of the most powerful
nation in the world, the people of the United States were not
ready to reembrace the posture of prewar
isolationism; indeed, most Americans probably felt that the
United States had a responsibility to help
order things in the rest of the world. Programs like the Marshall
Plan, which provided massive economic
1
stwarpart1.html
stwarpart1.html

aid to the recovery of the devastated nations of Europe, was a
measure of that sense of responsibility.
The development of the interstate highway system, a project
that had an enormous effects on the
domestic lives of Americans, was nevertheless justified in part
by national security needs. The space
race, which began with the launching of the Soviet satellite
Sputnik, might be viewed as a domestic
initiative. Yet part of the motivation for the massive effort to
conquer space was clearly the fact that, as
one political figure put it, “I do not want to sleep at night under
the light of a Russian moon.”
The civil rights movement was perhaps the most significant and
important domestic development in
post-World War II America, at least until the end of the 20th
century. Yet even that issue was propelled
to a certain extent by concerns about how segregation in
American society might be used against us in
the competition among nations. It was difficult for Amerficans
to point fingers at nations that ruled their
citizens with an iron fist while millions of Americans lacked
full freedom at home.
Economic issues certainly resonated with respect to the
international position of America. President
Eisenhower's warning in his farewell address of the “military-
industrial complex” illustrated the fact that
our industries, and the research being down in our universities,
were focused heavily on the
development of weapons and tools for the waging of war.
American movies and television, created
primarily for domestic consumption, nevertheless provided a
window on American society to the rest of

the world, and that view did not always portray America in a
favorable light. Indeed, one recent
Secretary of Defense pointed out that a certain American
international spy drama might well have
unfortunate propaganda uses for America's enemies.
The treatment of Cold War issues and domestic issues will,
therefore, require some back-and-forth.
Where appropriate, links will be provided to issues that straddle
historic events in both the international
and domestic arenas.
The Postwar Economy. Another thing that was obviously true
after the war was that the Depression was
over. Massive government spending during the war—twice as
much as in all of America’s prior history
combined—had ended unemployment and created tens of
thousands of new jobs for men and women.
Dust bowl farmers who had arrived in California destitute in the
1930s had found jobs in aircraft and
ship building plants and were well off by 1943. Soldiers with
families sent their paychecks home; there
was little to spend them on in many places where they were
stationed. Instead those paychecks went
into savings accounts because their wives were working and
also had little on which to spend the extra
income: no appliances, no new cars, and very few luxury items,
for industry had devoted its full
attention to the war effort.
The post-war era was a time of economic boom. Soldiers
returned with hundreds of dollars in back pay,
and wives who had been working had been able to save because
there were few luxuries on which to
spend income. Many consumer products had been mostly
unavailable; companies that had made

appliances had been building the implements of war. American
labor had prospered; by 1945 union
membership was at almost 15 million, over 35% of the
nonagricultural labor force, an all-time high. In
1946 President Truman recommended measures to Congress
designed to help the economy recover.
With the huge demand for consumer goods and new homes, anti-
inflation measures were instituted to
2
keep the overheating economy under control. Life did not return
to what it had been in 1940—it took
off in exciting and often confusing new directions.
Fears that the returning GIs would cause economic hardships
did not materialize, for the need to shift
the economy back to peacetime production demanded a lot of
labor. Although local conflicts occurred
over hiring priorities and preferences for veterans, there was
plenty of work to go around. Americans
spent, but not wildly, for memories of the Depression returned
as those of the war began to fade.
Though the economy boomed, it did not get out of control, and
fear of another depression gradually
waned. The postwar agonies historically faced by many
nations—rampant inflation, rioting, labor
disorders—were not completely absent in the U.S. from 1945-
1955, but they did not rise above
manageable proportions. For one thing, the demands of the Cold
War and other factors kept
government spending at high levels, and the demand for
consumer goods and new homes kept the
economy moving upward. Americans had never had it so good.

They knew it and were proud, feeling
they had earned it.
The Truman Years, 1945-1950
One of the great American films of all time, “The Best Years of
Our Lives” (1947), explores the
readjustments that had to be made by returning veterans. The
ex-Army master sergeant who goes back
to his position as a banker views loan applications from his
fellow ex-servicemen very differently from
the bank officials who had stayed behind. The sailor who
returns with metal hooks instead of the hands
he lost in a shipboard fire discovers that his family has even
more trouble adjusting to his injury than he
had in adjusting to the mechanical devices. The former Army
Air Corps bomber pilot discovers that the
skills required in leading 10 men in a complex machine over
enemy territory do not translate readily into
the postwar workplace. He also discovers that his bride, whom
he had known for only days before his
departure, is a total stranger; he can’t wait to get out of
uniform, but she wants to parade him around in
it to show him off to her friends.
The Best Years of Our Lives, directed by William Wyler,
starred Fredric March, Myrna Loy, and Dana
Andrews. Harold Russell played the part of a sailor who had
lost his hands. The film won 7 Academy
Awards, including a special Oscar for Harold Russell, whose
handicap was real.
I was nine years old when the war ended, but the memories
remain vivid. My best friend and I each lost a
brother. In the village of Pleasantville, New York, where I
lived, every year on Memorial Day a parade

began and ended at the village plaza near the railroad station. A
scroll of honor had been erected there
with the names of all the young men from Pleasantville who had
served in the war. Next to the name of
each one killed was a gold star. As part of the ceremony ending
the parade, the names of all those who
had died were read over a loudspeaker. While I do not recall the
names or numbers, I remember vividly
the weeping of many of the people in the crowd, for everyone in
the village knew at least one person
who had been killed.
Looking back, it is hard to imagine how many things we now
take for granted were different in 1945. To
mail a first-class letter cost three cents; air mail was extra.
Practically no homes had a television set;
even by 1949 less than 3% of residences had one. There were no
pushbutton or dial telephones; you
3
would pick up the receiver and wait until an operator, inevitably
female, said, “Number, please?”—and
you gave her the number. You had to ask for a special operator
for long-distance. A significant
percentage of farm homes were still without electricity or
indoor plumbing; appliances such as
refrigerators and washing machines and dryers were luxuries
which many working-class families could
not yet afford.
As virtually no automobiles had been manufactured from 1943
to 1945 because the auto companies
were busy building tanks, jeeps, 5-ton trucks and military

aircraft, the old 1940 and 41 models were
brought out again until designs could be revamped. The Singer
company went back to making sewing
machines instead of machine guns, and silk was once again used
for stockings instead of parachutes.
Butter, sugar, meat and gasoline were no longer rationed.
People took their old cars down off the blocks
where they had sat during the war because of tire and gasoline
rationing, and the top half of headlights
no longer had to be painted black for air defense.
The Housing Boom. The critical need for the returning men
starting families was housing. University
campuses provide an interesting glimpse of how different
effects of the war came together. The GI Bill
of Rights, which included provisions for college tuition
assistance, as well as job training and help with
home loans, helped create a new phenomenon. Veterans who
might never have thought about going to
college decided that it was worth a try, since Uncle Sam was
footing part of the bill. Men who chose to
attend college on the GI Bill did not necessarily delay marriage,
as they had postponed their lives long
enough while at war. They often delayed having children so that
their wives could work, but they were
still families, and around the fringes of college campuses
makeshift structures such as tin Quonset huts,
old military barracks or other temporary buildings were
converted into cheap apartments. The married
college student—until 1945 an oddity for the most part—was
now a fixture on the campus.
Elsewhere the demand for housing was equally strong, and
thousands of young families were willing to
move into new suburban communities such as Levittown, Long
Island, (left) where prefabricated houses

were constructed from one set of plans in row after row, even to
the placing of a single tree in the same
place in every yard. Some social critics found such communities
appalling in their sameness. But the
occupants, who perhaps remembered growing up in the
Depression 1930s, found that paint, do-it-
yourself landscaping and other improvements could create some
sense of personal identity. All the
same, cartoonists and song writers had fun with this “ticky-
tacky” life style.
The Age of the Automobile.
One extra that did not come with suburban houses but which
was often indispensable to this new
suburban way of life was the automobile. In the immediate
postwar years, Ford, GM, Chrysler, Kaiser,
Studebaker, Hudson, Packard and the other manufacturers
retooled their plants from making trucks,
tanks and jeeps. They dusted off prewar designs and began
producing cars that looked very much like
1939 and 1940 models. But within two or three years newer,
sleeker, more streamlined and modern
designs appeared, and the automobile age took off. Cars and
gasoline were cheap—in fact the gas war
became a roadside feature in the 1950s, as did the drive-in
restaurant with curbside service, the drive-in
movie theater, and a new form of temporary lodging, the motel.
At first few new cars had air-
4
conditioning, fancy radios or automatic transmissions, which
through the 1950s were often expensive

extras. But they were bright, shiny and colorful, and when the
interstate highway system was begun
under President Eisenhower in the 1950s, they would take you
almost anywhere in unprecedented
comfort and speed.
American labor had also prospered during World War II. By
1945 union membership was at almost 15
million, over 35% of the nonagricultural labor force, an all-time
high. In 1946 President Truman
recommended measures to Congress designed to help the
economy recover. With the huge demand for
consumer goods and new homes, anti-inflation measures were
instituted to keep the overheating
economy under control. This attempt was made despite the fact
that the Office of Price Administration,
which had kept a lid on inflation during the war, was abolished
in 1947. Life did not return to what it had
been in 1940, it took off in exciting and often confusing new
directions.
As Franklin Roosevelt’s successor, President Harry Truman
faced enormous challenges. Truman had not
even wanted to be vice president, and when he received the
shocking news of the president’s death
from Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House, his first words
were, “Mrs. Roosevelt what can we do for
you?” Maintaining her composure, the president’s widow
answered, “No, Harry, what can we do for
you? For you are the one in trouble now.”
Truman initially promised to carry on with Franklin Roosevelt’s
policies, but he eventually designed his
own legislative program. Although President Truman did
succeed in overseeing a reasonably orderly
transition to a healthy peacetime economy, his ambitious

political program ran into difficulty with the
Republican Congress elected in 1946. Opponents of Roosevelt’s
New Deal had used the war to get rid of
many of Roosevelt’s measures, and conservative Democrats and
Republicans were not prepared for a
second new deal.
By 1947 the Armed Forces had been reduced to a size of 1.5
million, and the discharged veterans were
eager to take advantage of the GI Bill. Veterans were entitled to
financial support for education and
vocational training, medical treatment, unemployment and loans
for building houses or starting
businesses. They were eager to marry and start families, and by
1946 the well-known baby-boom was
underway; the birth rate in 1946 was 20% higher than in 1940
and continued at a high rate until the
1960s.
President Truman made significant advances in the area of civil
rights. Because Congress was not
prepared for major civil rights legislation, President Truman
used the power of his office to desegregate
the Armed Forces and forbid racial segregation in government
employment. (See Executive Order 9981,
Appendix.)
With a strong labor flexing its muscle, and with the huge
demand for consumer goods, the American
economy was vibrant. But workers were in a position to make
demands, and they did. President Truman
was at the center of the struggle between labor and
management, and in order to strengthen his
position with labor, a natural Democratic constituency, he
vetoed the controversial Taft-Hartley Act of
1947. It was called by some the “slave labor act” because it was

seen as unfriendly to labor and unions.
Truman’s veto was overridden, and the act banned the closed
shop (union only shop.) It also prohibited
5
union contributions to political campaigns, required union
leaders to swear that they were not
Communists, and included other stern measures.
Despite conflict between President Truman and the Republican
Congress, much was accomplished in the
postwar years. The National Security Act of 1947 revised the
Armed Forces, creating the Department of
Defense, a separate United States Air Force and the new
National Security Council. In addition the law
made the Joint Chiefs of Staff a permanent entity and
established the Central Intelligence Agency, an
outgrowth of the wartime Office of Strategic Services, or OSS,
to coordinate intelligence gathering
activity. In 1951, in a reaction against the extended term of
Franklin Roosevelt, Congress passed and the
states ratified the 22nd Amendment, which limited all
presidents after Truman to two terms.
The 1948 Election. The 1948 presidential election was one of
the most memorable in American history.
The Republican candidate, Governor Thomas Dewey of New
York, had gained fame for his anti-crime
work and had run against Roosevelt in 1944. Because of Harry
Truman’s support for civil rights, including
the integration of the Armed Forces and the United States Civil
Service, a number of Southern
Democrats left the Democratic Party. They nominated South

Carolina Governor J. Strom Thurmond on a
States’ Rights Democratic ticket; they were called the
“Dixiecrats.” Meanwhile the left wing of the
Democratic Party nominated Henry A. Wallace on a Progressive
Party ticket. Those two defections from
the Democratic ranks seemed to doom President Truman's
chances for reelection.
By mid-September the polls were predicting a sure victory for
Governor Dewey, and taking the polls
seriously Dewey conducted a lethargic campaign, assuming that
he had the election in hand. President
Truman, however, went on a whistle-stop campaign by train in
which he covered 31,000 miles and made
speeches all along the way. He criticized the “do-nothing
Congress,” and people in the audience yelled,
“Give 'em hell, Harry!” The President responded, “I don't give
them hell—I just tell the truth and they
think it's hell!” His supporters would roar with laughter and
applause. Post-election analyses later
showed that Truman was closing the gap rapidly in the last few
days before the election. Without the
assistance of modern computers, however, the pollsters were
unable to keep up with the changes. Thus
on election night everyone still assumed that Governor Dewey
could rest easy.
In one of the most famous journalistic gaffes in American
political history, the Chicago Tribune came out
with its famous headline, “Dewey defeats Truman.” The next
morning a victorious Harry Truman held up
the paper grinning broadly—he had won 49% of the vote and
had achieved a 303 to 189 margin in the
Electoral College. Harry Truman had won his second term and
was president in his own right. The blunt,
plain-spoken Missourian, who had a famous sign on his desk—

“The Buck Stops Here”—would serve four
more years.
In 1949, President Truman, inspired by his stunning upset
victory in the election, introduced a new
legislative agenda, which he called the “Fair Deal.” It sought to
take up where the New Deal had left off
and included repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, raising the
minimum wage and expanding social security.
Conservatives, however, feeling that they had seen government
programs advance more than far
enough under Roosevelt, gave lukewarm support at best to
Truman’s ideas, although some bills were
passed. Congress had also passed the 22nd Amendment, which
was ratified in 1951. Although it did not
6
apply to President Truman, his election in 1948 was the fifth
straight Democratic victory. Had he chosen
to run again in 1952, he probably would have met the same fate
as Adlai Stevenson, who lost in a
landslide to World War II hero General Dwight Eisenhower.
For more on the political career of Harry Truman see David
McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1992) and Harry S Truman, Memoirs of Harry S.
Truman: 1945 Year of Decisions (New York:
Doubleday, 1955) & Years of Trial and Hope, 1946-1952 (New
York: Doubleday, 1956). See
also Truman (1995), starring Gary Sinise & Diana Scarwid,
directed by Frank Pierson, based on
McCullough's book.

The 1950s: The Eisenhower Years
The 1950s were a decade of both stability and change. Inflation
was tamed even as the economy
continued to grow; for example government workers and
military personnel received no pay raises from
1955 to 1963 because inflation remained at near zero. The civil
rights revolution in the South got started
in 1954 and 55 with the Supreme Court decision in Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka and the
Montgomery bus boycott begun by the courageous Rosa Parks.
For most of middle America, however,
the 1950s were a time of flashier cars, the expansion of
television, the rise of rock 'n roll, mass
production, the accelerated movement to suburbia, and a rising
but strangely dissatisfied middle class.
Underneath the somewhat tranquil exterior of American society
the beat generation brought a foretaste
of the rebellious 1960s.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president in 1952.
He was nominated over conservative
Senator Robert Taft of Ohio following a lively contest at the
Republican convention. He selected as his
vice president Senator Richard Nixon of California. By election
day it was clear that everyone liked Ike,
and he was elected in a landslide. Eisenhower was better
prepared for the Presidency than many
imagined, for in his job as Supreme Allied Commander in
Europe during the war he had had to deal with
both political and military matters. But that experience did not
quite prepare him for all the political
machinations of Washington. (See Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Crusade in Europe, New York: Doubleday,
1949.)

Along with the civil rights turmoil in the South that increased
during the 1950s, an undercurrent of fear
and anxiety persisted because of the nuclear arms race. With the
growing threat from the Soviet Union,
the military was enlarged, and military spending helped
stimulate the economy. One project begun by
President Eisenhower as a national defense measure was the
creation of the interstate highway system.
Within a decade Americans could drive almost literally from
coast to coast without encountering a stop
light. American life became ever more focused on the
automobile. Although a significant number of
families still did not own a car, and few families had two cars,
the automobile had become a necessity
rather than a luxury for most Americans.
By the mid 1950s the Depression years seemed far away. Most
Americans were enjoying a standard of
living that was unprecedented. Not all of the economic news
was good, however. Americans had
benefited in the immediate postwar years because their
industrial facilities had been untouched by the
war. But as the European nations built new factories to replace
the ones that had been bombed out,
7
American industries faced obsolescence. As farming methods
continued to improve, farmers were able
to produce more and more, driving the prices of agricultural
goods down. The federal government
initiated various price supports to prop up farm commodities.
The struggles of American farmers never
seemed to cease, from the Populist era through the twenties and

the Depression and into the late 20th
century.
Suburban life centered around the family, and most Americans
felt that life was pretty good. However,
an undercurrent of frustration persisted. One tale about the
apparent sameness of the suburbs had a
man getting off his commuter train, walking absently toward his
home, accidentally walking a block too
far, entering a house that seemed to be just like his own, to be
greeted by a wife who seemed familiar.
Only after the couple had sat down to dinner and started to talk
did everyone realize that the man had
arrived at the wrong house. Sloan Wilson’s novel, The Man in
the Grey Flannel Suit, and the film of the
same name starring Gregory Peck reveal the pressures of 1950s
conformity and the haunting memories
of the Second World War. Although the modern feminist
movement had not yet begun, its seeds were
being planted among bright, educated women who were finding
that being a housewife and mother
were not always fulfilling. (The recent AMC TV series Mad
Men covers the same era and has won awards
for historic authenticity.)
Although he had suffered a heart attack in 1955, President
Eisenhower felt fit and competent to run for
reelection in 1956, and he won by another landslide.
Recognizing that that many people still “liked Ike,”
the Democrats decided to stay with their 1952 candidate,
Governor Adlai Stevenson. The rather dull
Democratic convention suddenly came to life when Stevenson
announced that he would not designate
his own candidate for vice president, but opened the nomination
to the convention. A lively contest
ensued, pitting Senator Estes Kefauver and others against the

young Senator John F. Kennedy of
Massachusetts. Although Kefauver won, Kennedy made a very
graceful concession speech, which
Democrats in 1960 obviously remembered.
For all the subliminal discontent, Americans were generally
self-assured and confident in their ability to
meet life challenges, both domestic and international. That
certitude was ruptured, however, with the
startling announcement in 1957 that the Soviet Union had
launched the first orbital satellite. It was
called Sputnik. While fascinating to scientists, the Russian
satellite struck fear in the hearts of many who
believed that the Soviets would convert their successes in outer
space into military advantage. Before
the United States could get its first satellite aloft, the Russians
had sent a cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, into
orbit. While Soviet rockets seemed capable of sending large
payloads into space, American rockets often
blew up on the launch pad. It was not until President Kennedy
announced a national goal of landing an
astronaut on the moon and returning him safely to Earth before
the end of the decade of the 1960s that
America began closing the gap in the space race.
In reaction to the launching of Sputnik Congress passed a bill
creating the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA) and another, the National
Defense Education Act, to improve American
education by beefing up programs in mathematics and science.
While Americans continued to like and
respect President Eisenhower, he seemed like a grandfather
figure to many. By the time of the election
8

of 1960, Americans sought a younger more vigorous president,
whom they got in John Fitzgerald
Kennedy.
Life in the 1950s in America had about it rather glaring
inconsistencies. On the surface, much seemed
well. People were making more money than ever before; men
and women were going to college in far
greater numbers than ever before; television was a new form of
entertainment, which by the mid-1950s
was a feature of a majority of households, though most
households had only one small black-and-white
set (left). Sports were more popular than ever, popular music
was going off in new directions with the
emergence of Elvis Presley and rock and roll, and industries
like aircraft changed people’s transportation
habits almost as much as the train or automobile. The St.
Lawrence Seaway connecting the Great Lakes
with the Atlantic Ocean was also opened in 1959. Ceremonies in
Chicago and elsewhere were attended
by President Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II. Nostalgic
films have shown the 1950s to be good,
comfortable, at least, and free from turmoil, although some
might say they were bland and often
uninteresting, maybe even boring. But overall, the “nifty
fifties” were still good.
But there were dark sides. In the South, and in parts of the
North as well, racial tensions that had been
smoldering since Reconstruction began to emerge with the birth
of the modern civil rights movement.
And while the world was relatively at peace, various crises in
Europe, Asia and the Middle East kept
tensions high. And above all-there was the bomb. Until 1949 the

U.S. was the only nation that had
produced (and used) atomic weapons. When Soviet Union
scientists, whom many believe were aided by
secrets stolen from the U.S., exploded its first atomic device,
the atomic (later nuclear) arms race was
on.
The two superpowers established what became known as the
balance of terror as more and more
powerful weapons were produced and tested. School children
were drilled on what to do in case of a
nuclear attack, subterranean bomb shelters were built
(sometimes in people’s back yards), and for a
long time the assumption was that sooner or later World War
III—more horrible than World Wars I and
II put together—was bound to start. One did not have to be a
pessimist to think the unthinkable, that it
was not a matter of “if,” but “when.” It was for understandable
reasons that the Cold War was also
known as the balance of terror.
The Kennedy Years
The 1960 election was a milestone in terms of the impact of
television on electoral politics. Richard
Nixon, who had been vice president under President Eisenhower
for eight years, and who had a number
of notable achievements on his record, was a formidable,
intelligent candidate with broad experience
and a sophisticated understanding of foreign affairs. Although
he received only lukewarm support from
the outgoing president, Richard Nixon was not to be taken
lightly.
Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts, on the other hand, had many
visible assets, including a charming

young wife and family, a Harvard education, a record of
heroism in World War II, and the backing of a
wealthy and powerful family. Yet his years in Congress and the
Senate had been undistinguished, and
when Adlai Stevenson opened the nomination for vice president
during the 1956 Democratic
convention, Kennedy lost his bid to Estes Kefauver. Kennedy
also had to reckon with the fact that he was
9
attempting to become the first elected Irish Catholic president
in American history. If he won, he would
also be the youngest man ever elected president of the United
States.
In retrospect the outcome of the election and seems to have
turned on the first televised debate
between Senator Kennedy and Vice President Nixon. Kennedy's
movie star good looks and smooth
performance overshadowed the haggard, pale appearance of
Richard Nixon, who had recently been
hospitalized, and who looked far less appealing to the television
audience, having declined to use
makeup. Those who heard the debate on the radio and did not
see it divided their sentiments regarding
the winner 50-50 between the two candidates. For those who
saw the debate on television, Kennedy
came out ahead by a substantial margin. The vote was one of the
closest in American history; Kennedy's
margin was 118,000 votes out of 68 million cast.
The 1960 election was also notable in that for the first time,
citizens in Hawaii and Alaska were able to

vote in a presidential election; both had become states in 1959.
JFK Inaugural address.
Probably because of his assassination and the nonstop television
coverage of all of events during the
weekend leading up to the funeral, including the heroic
performance by Jacqueline Kennedy and the
tragic image of the her two young children saying farewell to
their father on camera, Kennedy's
popularity was probably even greater after his death than during
his administration, and people without
a deep knowledge of politics considered him to have been a
great president. In fact, Kennedy's domestic
record was quite modest. He was unable to persuade Congress
to follow his lead in a number of his
initiatives, and most of his proposals, especially in the civil
rights area, were finally realized under the
powerful Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy after his
death. Congress did support Kennedy's
creation of the Peace Corps and passed economic programs for
urban renewal, raising the minimum
wage, and increasing Social Security benefits. Critics have
claimed that Kennedy's performance in office
had more style than substance, but there is no question that the
White House seemed a far more
glamorous place with the Kennedy family in residence. There is
also little doubt that his handling of the
Cuban missile crisis was his finest hour.
See also Cold War.
The question still discussed about President Kennedy’s foreign
policy—one for which there is no
satisfactory answer—is: “What would Kennedy have done in
Vietnam if he had not been assassinated?”

Some believe that he was prepared to end what he saw as a
misguided venture; however, advisers close
to the Kennedy administration have indicated that if his intent
was to begin a full withdrawal from
Vietnam, they had seen little evidence that he would carry it
further. True, he had drawn down the
number of advisers in Vietnam slightly during the last months
of his presidency, but some believe that
that was just preparation for the election of 1964.
In the end, Kennedy followed the path of Presidents Truman and
Eisenhower as a leader determined to
prevent the further spread of Communism in the world and to
use all reasonable means to keep the
Soviet Union from taking advantage of any perceived American
weakness. He had campaigned on the
10
issue of a missile gap between United States and the Soviet
Union, and even his plan to place a man on
the moon in the decade of the 1960s was, to a large extent,
aimed at defeating the Russians in space.
The military implications were obvious. It was, of course,
during Kennedy's administration that the most
dangerous point in the Cold War was reached: the Cuban
Missile Crisis of October 1962.
The Space Race. During the mid 1950s most Americans were
aware that the government was doing
research on the exploration of space and that one day, probably
in the far distant future, men would go
to the moon and beyond. But when the Soviet Union launched
Sputnik, an artificial satellite, into Earth

orbit in 1957, Americans were stunned. Russian scientists had
been portrayed as less capable than their
American counterparts, and Soviet successes were supposedly
based on borrowing of western ideas.
But when the Soviets leaped out in front in space exploration,
even with a primitive vehicle, Americans
reacted with a combination of disbelief and panic. Articles with
titles like “Why Johnny Can’t read-And
Why Ivan Can” began to appear, and the entire U.S. educational
system was hauled into court and
placed under scrutiny. Reflecting people’s attitudes, Congress
passed legislation that created the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration and passed
additional laws meant to improve American
science and math curricula. The space race was seen as part of
the cold war, and Americans felt they
had to win.
No one played this theme more strongly than President
Kennedy. Early in his administration he
dedicated that nation to putting a man on the moon and
returning him safely by the end of the decade,
defined as January 1, 1970. The seven Mercury astronauts made
flights in the early 1960s, and then the
Gemini and Apollo programs began to prepare for an eventual
lunar landing. With the assistance of
former German V-weapon rocket scientists and an aviation
industry with much talent, the Americans
caught up with and passed the Soviets and reached Kennedy’s
goal: Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz
Aldrin walked on the moon in July, 1969.
NASA eventually oversaw six landings on the moon, the last
one on December 11, 1972. Since then all
space flights have been limited to low orbits. The Space Shuttle
program, which followed Apollo,

accomplished much but was plagued by accidents, as the
Challenger shuttle was destroyed during a
launch in 1986, and the Columbia was destroyed during re-entry
to the Earth’s atmosphere in 2003.
NASA plans to retire the remaining shuttle craft in 2010 and
replace them with a new vehicle, the Orion,
designed to take astronauts back to the moon and perhaps
beyond.
See Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff and the film of the same title;
Norman Mailer, Of A Fire on the Moon;
Also dramatic and historically sound are the Tom Hanks film
Apollo 13 and his HBO series, From the
Earth to the Moon. The NASA web site is one of the most
popular and frequently visited on the World
Wide Web.
11
Entrenchment of a Bi-Polar Foreign Policy, from Milestones
1953-1960, comprises public domain
material from the Office of the Historian, US Department of
State.
Entrenchment of a Bi-Polar Foreign Policy
MILESTONES: 1953–1960
1953–1960: Entrenchment of a Bi-Polar Foreign Policy

Concerns about the international spread of communism and the
growing power of the Soviet Union
dominated most foreign policy decisions during the
administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
U.S. foreign policymakers observed with concern as the Soviets
tightened their hold on Eastern Europe.
In Africa and Asia nationalist movements challenged colonial
governments. U.S. officials suspected that
communists dominated these movements and received support
directly from the Soviet Union. In order
to counterbalance the Soviet threat, President Eisenhower
supported a doctrine of massive retaliation,
which called for the development of technology necessary to
match and even surpass Soviet nuclear
capability. Recognizing that nuclear war was a last resort, U.S.
officials supported engaging in
conventional limited wars. In an effort to prepare for potential
military conflicts, President Eisenhower
exercised unprecedented executive authority in deploying the
U.S. military abroad, without specific
authorization from the U.S. Congress. These Cold War policies
served to increase the foreign
policymaking power of the presidency and to expand U.S.
international obligations.
1
http://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960
America and the Cold War: The Truman, Eisenhower and
Kennedy Years, from Sage American History, is

available under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. ©
2014, Henry J. Sage.
McCarthyism
McCarthyism: The Cold War at Home. As the Cold War
progressed, and as the presence of Soviet spies
operating in the West, including in the United States, became
known, many Americans began to see
Communism is an immediate threat to their way of life. With
revelations of the spying of Klaus Fuchs,
who had smuggled atomic bomb secrets out of New Mexico, and
as Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg were revealed to be spies, a fear gripped much of
America. Thus by 1950 the time was ripe
for a demagogue to seize the issue of anti-Communism and turn
it to his own ends. What resulted was
one of the most disgraceful episodes in American politics. That
trend had already begun with the
blacklisting of anyone in Hollywood or other areas of the
country about whom it could be claimed that
they had the slightest degree of sympathy for the Communist
movement. Hundreds of lives were
disrupted. (See Guilty by Suspicion starring Robert De Niro,
1991.)
Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who had served with
the Marines in World War II, though he
had seen no combat, was elected to the Senate in 1946. (He later
lied about his military record, claiming
to have seen action.) Looking for an issue on which to run for
reelection in 1952, McCarthy hit on the
idea of anti-Communism, which he certainly did not have to

invent. He launched his “project” with a
speech in February, 1950. The press zeroed in on McCarthy's
charges, which sounded serious (though
they were in fact fabricated), and McCarthyism was born.
Taking the already present suspicion and fear of the Soviets to
new levels, McCarthy went on a frantic
chase after Communist conspirators, who he claimed existed in
virtually every corner of American life.
With little or no evidence, he carried out what can only be
called a witch hunt, ruining lives and
reputations in the process and eventually bringing himself into
disgrace.
McCarthy attacked all branches of government, including the
State Department and the U.S. Army, the
latter of which proved more than a match for McCarthy’s
recklessness. In a series of televised hearings,
McCarthy and aide Roy Cohn (many called him McCarthy’s
hatchet-man) tangled with a tough Army
lawyer named Joseph Welch. Welch put Cohn on the spot over
some doctored photographs. When
McCarthy tried to protect his protégé by slandering a lawyer in
Welch’s law firm, Welch turned on
McCarthy with a withering indictment. He accused the Senator
in front of television cameras of being
shameless and dishonorable, as spectators applauded.
The first Senator to attack McCarthyism on the floor of the
Senate was Republican Margaret Chase
Smith of Maine. She called for an end a smear tactics in her
“Declaration of Conscience” speech,
although she did not mention McCarthy by name. McCarthy was
eventually censured by the Senate. An
alcoholic, McCarthy died in 1957, but much of the damage done
by the Senator and his aides such as

Roy Cohn could not be repaired. One such casualty was J.
Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic
1
http://www.sageamericanhistory.net/coldwar/topics/coldwar.htm
l#mccarthy
bomb, whose top-secret security clearance was suspended in
1953 because of his alleged leftist
sympathies during the 1930s.
2
America and the Cold War: The Truman, Eisenhower and
Kennedy Years, from Sage American History, is
available under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. ©
2014, Henry J. Sage.
The Eisenhower Years
Dwight David Eisenhower was born in Texas in 1890, one of six
brothers who grew up in Abilene, Kansas.
He entered West Point in 1911 and served in the Army during
the 1920s and 30s under such illustrious
officers as George Patton and Douglas MacArthur. Recognized
early for his powerful intelligence and

devotion to duty, he held important positions in the years
preceding World War II and helped develop
doctrine for armored warfare. When World War II broke out, he
was brought to Washington to work for
General George C. Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, serving
as Chief of the War Plans Division.
In 1942 General Eisenhower went to Europe to take command of
American forces for the invasion of
North Africa, Operation Torch, in 1942. He was subsequently
named Supreme Commander Allied Forces
Europe and planned and oversaw Operation Overlord, the Allied
invasion of Normandy on D-Day, June
6, 1944. As Supreme Commander, he dealt with many
challenging personalities, including Winston
Churchill, French General Charles de Gaulle, British Field
Marshal Bernard Montgomery, senior Soviet
Russian officials and his military and civilian superiors in
Washington.
A measure of Eisenhower’s character is revealed in a message
he prepared in advance of the landings in
Normandy on D-Day:
Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a
satisfactory foothold and I have
withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and
place was based on the best
information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all
that bravery and devotion to duty
could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is
mine alone.
Fortunately, the general never had to release that message.
When World War II ended in Europe, General Eisenhower

accepted the surrender of German leaders
and took steps to reveal the horrors of the Nazi concentration
camps. (He accurately predicted that at
some future time people would deny that the events called the
Holocaust ever occurred. His quotation
about that prediction is inscribed on the rear wall of the
Holocaust Memorial in Washington, DC.)
Following the war, General Eisenhower replaced George C.
Marshall as Chief of Staff of the Army. Partly
as a reward for his service, and mostly because of his
demonstrated leadership skills, Eisenhower held
several important positions following his retirement from active
duty. In 1948 he became president of
New York’s Columbia University, a position which allowed him
to be involved in high-level discussions of
American foreign policy. In the process, he made many useful
contacts and learned more about the
workings of the American political system. (He once claimed to
have been so little involved in politics
that he had never even voted.) Until President Harry Truman
decided to run for reelection in 1948, the
Democrats had been considering Eisenhower for their candidate.
In 1952 a movement began among
senior Republicans to nominate General Eisenhower as their
candidate for president.
1
http://www.sageamericanhistory.net/coldwar/topics/coldwar.htm
l#mccarthy
Eisenhower faced a strong challenge from conservative Senator
Robert Taft of Ohio, the front runner for

the nomination, who was known as “Mr. Republican.”
Following a tough battle at the Republican
Convention, Eisenhower won the nomination on the first ballot.
He selected California Senator Richard
Nixon for vice president. With his grandfatherly image and the
slogan “I like Ike,” he comfortably
defeated Democratic candidate Democratic Governor Adlai
Stevenson of Illinois with almost 58% of the
popular vote. Eisenhower thus became the first former general
to enter the White House since Ulysses
S. Grant.
When Dwight D Eisenhower assumed the presidency on January
20, 1953, twenty years of Democratic
Party occupancy of the White House ended. President
Eisenhower was the only former general to
occupy that office in the 20th century, and he was extremely
well prepared for the position. What
served the former soldier well as he entered office when Cold
War tensions threatened was his
experience in dealing with other world leaders during the
Second World War. He dealt with future
adversaries such as top generals of the Russian Army, prickly
allies like France's Charles de Gaulle, and
powerful Allied leaders like Winston Churchill. As leader of the
largest and most complex military
operation ever undertaken by Americans—the invasion of
Europe and conquest of Nazi Germany—he
had management experience of the highest order.
President Eisenhower and the Cold War. President Eisenhower's
most significant challenges came in
the area of foreign-policy. Tensions had begun to arise between
the Soviet Union and the West even
before World War II was over. The Soviets had recently
developed a powerful nuclear arsenal, and the

death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 heightened the uncertainty of
relations with the communist world. Thus,
by the time Eisenhower took office in January 1953, the Cold
War, which had been underway for
practically a decade, had reached a dangerous level. Anti-Soviet
feelings ran deep; the McCarthy era was
in full swing. Americans, enjoying products that had sprung
from the technologies and events during
World War II and dealing with civil rights issues, were not
completely focused on foreign affairs.
Those who have examined the political career of General
Eisenhower (as he preferred to be called even
after becoming president) have generally agreed that he was a
shrewd observer of the world scene. Yet
he was sometimes naïve in his understanding of American
political practice. He seemed to some to be
working too hard to appease his political opponents, lacking the
experience of having dealt with a “loyal
opposition.” At the same time, he guided American foreign
affairs in a cautious, measured fashion.
No American politician could ignore the threat posed by the
Soviet Union, especially as the nuclear arms
race had begun to produce weapons of stupefying power,
thousands of times more powerful than the
bombs which had destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Assisting
in the formulation of Eisenhower's
foreign policy was Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who
took a stern view of the Soviets. Dulles’s
brother, Allen Dulles, was Director of Central Intelligence
(CIA) and contributed to the administration's
harsh view of the Soviets.
Like all postwar presidents, including his predecessor, Harry
Truman, President Eisenhower felt that the

greatest threat to America came from an expansive, monolithic
communism centered in the Soviet
Union. He stated in his first inaugural address that, “Forces of
good and evil are massed and armed and
2
opposed as rarely before in history. Freedom is pitted against
slavery, lightness against dark,” those
being reasons why he named John Foster Dulles as Secretary of
State. The Eisenhower-Dulles foreign
policy was, at least in its rhetoric, harsher than that of President
Truman; Dulles coined the phrase
“massive retaliation,” which was to be used if the Soviets
became aggressors.
Eisenhower was comfortable allowing Secretary Dulles to heat
up the rhetoric of the Cold War while he
himself worked more quietly behind the scenes to reduce
international tension. The new president was
far more clever than his critics at the time realized. An avid
golfer, Eisenhower had a putting green
installed on the south lawn of the White House, and a popular
ditty had the president “putting along” as
the world around him seethed. In fact, the president was deeply
engaged in monitoring foreign affairs
and was well aware of how dangerous the world had become.
When the Hungarians revolted against their Soviet oppressors in
1956, there were calls for the United
States to intervene to help the freedom fighters. Even if
Eisenhower had been tempted to act, however,
getting aid to landlocked Hungary would have been a
monumental undertaking. The Soviets quickly

repressed the revolt in any case. Yet the episode led some to
believe that the United States under
President Eisenhower was slow to respond to calls from
assistance by those beleaguered by
international communism.
In 1954 when the French Army found itself in a critical
situation in Indochina, President Eisenhower
declined to support the French at Dien Bien Phu with military
assistance. He did, however, offer military
and economic aid to South Vietnam. He defended his action by
describing what became known as the
Domino theory—that if one nation fell to communism, other
nations would certainly follow.
An additional crisis erupted in the Middle East in 1956. In 1955
the Soviet Union had begun arms
shipments to Egypt. In response, Israel strengthened its
defenses and requested arms from the United
States, a request that president Eisenhower rejected, fearing a
Middle East arms race. When United
States canceled a loan offer of $56 million to Egypt for
construction of the Aswan Dam, Egyptian leader
Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had grown closer to the Soviet Union,
took action to nationalize the Suez
canal and extract tolls from users. Israel responded by
advancing troops toward the Suez Canal, and
Britain and France began airstrikes against Egypt. British and
French leaders called for assistance from
the United States, but president Eisenhower refused on the
grounds that he did not support the use of
force in the settlement of international conflicts.
Fearing that the Soviets would come to dominate the Middle
East, Eisenhower and his Secretary of State
Dulles requested a resolution from Congress authorizing the

president to extend economic and military
aid to Middle Eastern nations. He based his request on the
following principle:
We have shown, so that none can doubt, our dedication to the
principle that force shall not be
used internationally for any aggressive purpose and that the
integrity and independence of the
nations of the Middle East should be inviolate. Seldom in
history has a nation's dedication to
principle been tested as severely as ours during recent weeks. …
3
Let me refer again to the requested authority to employ the
armed forces of the United States
to assist to defend the territorial integrity and the political
independence of any nation in the
area against Communist armed aggression. Such authority
would not be exercised except at the
desire of the nation attacked. Beyond this it is my profound
hope that this authority would
never have to be exercised at all. (Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Message to Congress, January 5,
1957.)
Congress responded by granting the president the authority to
use force to protect nations threatened
by communism. This policy became known as the “Eisenhower
Doctrine.” While deploring the use of
force, Eisenhower recognized that the threat of force could be a
deterrent to its use. In response to a
request from the President of Lebanon, President Eisenhower
sent 5,000 Marines into that country to

protect Lebanon’s territorial integrity. They remained there for
three months.
Although criticized in some quarters for his inaction in the Suez
Crisis, Eisenhower was as aware as
anyone on the planet of the horrors that could be unleashed by
another widespread war, now made an
even more terrifying prospect because of the spread of nuclear
weapons. With new and more powerful
hydrogen bombs being built, the Eisenhower administration
followed a policy designed to use the threat
of nuclear war only as a deterrent to the Soviet Union in case
vital United States interests should be
threatened. Eisenhower also rejected any possible use of atomic
or nuclear weapons in defense of
French Indochina or Taiwan. In retrospect, Eisenhower's
cautious policy has been deemed wise and
prudent, given the volatility of international relations in the
1950s. The rhetoric of “massive retaliation”
was strong, but a first use of nuclear weapons probably never
entered President Eisenhower’s
consciousness; like General MacArthur, he abhorred the use of
atomic or nuclear weapons. His recent
biographer, Jim Newton describes Eisenhower in these words:
Shrewd and patient, moderate and confident, Ike guided
America through some of the most
treacherous moments of the Cold War. He was urged to take
advantage of America’s military
advantage in those early years—to finish the Korean War with
nuclear weapons, to repel
Chinese aggression against Taiwan, to repulse the Soviets in
Berlin, to rescue the French
garrison at Dien Bien Phu. … Eisenhower was not complacent,
nor was he reckless or unhinged.
(See Jim Newton, Eisenhower: The White House Years(New

York: Doubleday, 2011.)
Dwight Eisenhower might be considered a great American for
things he did not do as well as for those
he did. Later in his life he reflected: “The United States never
lost a soldier or a foot of ground in my
administration. We kept the peace. People ask how it
happened—by God, it didn't just happen, I'll tell
you that.”
Sputnik: The Space Race Begins. In the years following World
War II blustering Soviet propaganda had
provided ammunition for comedians who suggested that the
Russians were all talk and no action. When
they exploded their first nuclear device in 1949, however, the
jokes quickly fell flat. When the Soviet
Union launched the first Earth satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, the
reaction among many Americans was close
to panic. Fears of the military use of space ran rampant, and the
United States was placed on a crash
course to match the Soviet achievement. The American
educational system came under severe criticism
4
suggesting that “Ivan” was far better educated than “Johnny,”
especially in math, science and
engineering.
With the knowledge that the missiles used by the Soviets to
launch satellites into space could also be
used to rain warheads on the United States, Eisenhower
authorized surveillance flights by U-2 aircraft
over the Soviet Union. The high flying spy planes were thought

to be invulnerable to anti-air missiles,
but in 1959 a U-2 aircraft (left) piloted by Major Francis Gary
Powers was shot down over the Soviet
Union. The administration initially issued denials, but when
pictures of the U.S. airman and the downed
aircraft were shown on Soviet television, it was clear that the
story was real. When President
Eisenhower refused to issue an apology, Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev canceled a scheduled summit
meeting with the president, which further heightened tensions.
Despite President Eisenhower’s caution,
the world was still a dangerous place.
Shortly before his departure from the White House, President
Eisenhower, following the example first
set by George Washington, delivered a farewell address to the
nation on radio and television, in which
he cautioned the American people of the forces that threatened
to take over the direction of American
foreign policy. The speech has become known as his “Military-
Industrial Complex Speech.” In the
course of his remarks he said:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
… We must never let the weight
of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic
processes. …
Today … the free university, historically the fountainhead of
free ideas and scientific discovery,
has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly
because of the huge costs
involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute
for intellectual curiosity. … The

prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal
employment, project allocations, and
the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be
regarded.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of
time. As we peer into society’s
future, we—you and I, and our government—must avoid the
impulse to live only for today,
plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious
resources of tomorrow. We cannot
mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without
risking the loss also of their political
and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all
generations to come, not to
become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.…
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a
continuing imperative. Together we must
learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with
intellect and decent purpose.
Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay
down my official responsibilities
in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one
who has witnessed the horror and
the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war
could utterly destroy this
civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over
thousands of years, I wish I could
say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.…
5

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