President Eisenhower
Nitya Chivukula
The Presidential Election of 1952
- Democrats reluctantly nominated Adlai E. Stevenson
- Republicans enthusiastically nominated General Dwight D. Eisenhower
- The convention also nominated Richard M. Nixon, a red-hunter, to be the running vice president for Eisenhower in order to satisfy the anticommunist wing of the party
- Eisenhower was loved by many: his personality, appearance, war credentials, and brief time as president of Columbia University made him favorable by the citizens
- Also, his campaign to go to Korea to end the war = made many of the Americans love him
- Nixon: rough campaigning while Eisenhower: struck a grandfatherly pose for the citizens
- After a scandal about Nixon came out, he saved his chance of winning with his Checkers Speech
- Eisenhower then started appearing on the television by simulating fake discussions
- He won by a landslide
- Eisenhower got 33,936,234 votes while Stevenson got 27,314,992 votes
- Eisenhower also gained 442 electoral votes while Stevenson only got 89
- He also managed to get many Republicans into office with him
- first supreme commander of NATO, the North American Treaty Organization, from 1950-1952
Eisenhower goes on to 1956
- This election faced the same two opponents against each other
- Republican Eisenhower against the returned Democratic Adlai Stevenson
- While voters still loved Eisenhower, Democrats were trying hard to find anything to taint Eisenhower's presidency
- Once again Eisenhower won by a landslide
- He gained 35,590,472 popular votes and 457 electoral votes
- Stevenson only got 26,022,752 popular votes and only 73 electoral votes
- Unlike the last election, this time Eisenhower was unable to either Senate of the House of Representatives for the Republicans
- While he won strongly, he was unable to bring his party with him and he started his term in poor, sickly health
The Cold War
- After World War 2, it became obvious that there were tow major powers vying for power and influence: the Soviet Union and the United States
- It became more apparent that the U.S. wanted to spread its ideology while the Soviet Union wanted to spread communism across the globe
- Thus tension grew, and from around 1947-1991, both major powers entered a period of tension, both militarily and economically'
- While no actual fighting took place, the hostility between the two nations was quite tangible
- As both countries started creating dangerous war weapons, H bomb, which was deadlier than the atomic bomb, everyone feared of a destructive war
- The imaginary iron curtain, where Eastern Europe disappeared behind due to Stalin, created much tension as well
Eisenhower and the Cold War
- 1952: The United States bombs its first hydrogen bomb: Soviet Union later follows adding to tension
- 1953: CIA places the shah of Iran
- 1954: The French defeat the Vietnamese
- 1955: The Warsaw Pact is signed: this was a collective defense treaty among the 8 communist States of Central and Eastern Europe = the Soviet Union wanted to maintain military control over this area in Europe
- 1955: The Geneva Summit Meeting takes place between the Big Four
- 1956: The Suez Crisis explodes: The United States needs to deal with the Hungarian Revolt while Egypt's meets Britain, France, and Israel head on
- 1956: Soviet Union crushes the Hungarian Crisis
- 1957: Sputnik satellites are launched by the Soviet Union
- 1957: Eisenhower Doctrine- a speech where Eisenhower singles out the threat of the Soviets and how it is the duty of Americans to keep the threat of communism away
- 1958: Berlin Crisis
- 1959: Cuban Revolt lead by Castro
- 1960: U-2 Incident
Joseph McCarthy
- "Tailgunner Joe"
- junior senator in Wisconsin
- became popular after claiming that many communists worked in the State Department
- Speech in February 1950: accused Secretary of State Dean Acheson of employing about 200 communists
- although his efforts were futile, his speech won him national visibility = his Republican colleagues believed that this kind of attack would benefit the Democratic administration
- after Republican victory in 1952: saw the threat of communism everywhere
- not the most effective but the most ruthless
- ruined many writers, officials, and actors = damaged fair play and free speech
- despised by Eisenhower
- final straw = attacked the U.S. army
- spring of 1954: army fought down days of trial
- few months later, Senate condemns him
- dies three years later due to alcoholism
- name goes down in history as the dangerous forces of fear and unfairness that even a democratic nation could release
Desegregation:
Little Rock crisis
- September of 1957: Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, brought together the National Guard in order to prevent nine black students from enrolling at Little Rock's Central High School
- Eisenhower in retaliation sent troops in to escort the children to the classes
Brown v. Board of Education
- May 1954
- decision of the Warren court
- ruled that segregation in schools was unequal and so unconstitutional
- reversed the Plessy v Ferguson case
- startled the conservatives
- civil rights progress due to Chief Justice Earl Warren
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
- December 1955
- Rosa Parks, a black woman, boards a bus and sits in the section for whites
- she refused to give up her seat and thus was arrested
- also helped Reverend Martin Luther King get popularized while enabling him to start his own revolutionary racial equality campaign
The Civil Rights Act of 1957
- 1957
- set up a Civil Rights Commission
- it investigated violations of civil rights for people, especially blacks, while also protecting the voting rights of everyone
- represented a "the mildest of civil rights as possible" by Eisenhower
Eisenhower and his views
- entered with the philosophy of "dynamic conservatism"
- believed in all the things to do with people = be liberal and be human
- BUT when it came to other's money or economy or government = be conservative
- tried to balance federal budget as well as guard the Republic form from creeping socialism
- stopped Truman's military expansion
- small-government philosophy
- = supported transfer of oil fields to states from the government
- = encouraged a private company to build a generating plant and compete with a bigger plant
- condemned free distribution of a anti polio vaccine
- Operation Wetback = gather up the illegal immigrants
- wanted to cancel the tribal preservation policies and the Indian New Deal
- wanted assimilation of the Native Americans instead
- did not oppose all of the New Deal programs = unemployment reforms and social security etc
- Might have even implemented the New Deal in a better way = Interstate Highway Act
- while he tried his best= there was the biggest peacetime deficit in American History
= Economic troubles revived the Democrats
Vietnam War: The Start
- many nationalistic movements to get rid of the French influence
- leader Ho Chi Minh has tried asked for aid in the self-determinism of the people as early as with Woodrow Wilson
- Cold War made Ho Chi Minh increasingly communist
- America gave much money to France in order to aid their effort in the war = the French were still not able to stand ground
- 1954: a French troop were trapped at a fortress
- Nixon wanted intervention while Eisenhower was against it and so he held back
The Race for Space
- 1957: Soviet Union sends a satellite to orbit around the globe = Sputnik
- then they sent another satellite that not only was bigger, but it carried a dog in it as well
- the Sputniks highlighted a claim that the Soviets had been makine = they had superior industrialization and technology
- made Americans look bad
- military problems: with this technology the Soviet Union could easily launch something at the United States
- "Rocket Fever" spreads through the country
- Eisenhower establishes NASA- National Aeronautics and Space Administration- as well as poured billions of dollars into the programs developing missiles
- many embarrassing incidents: Vanguard missile
- February 1958: finally U.S. is able to a small satellite in orbit
- Sputnik incident: the education in America vs the education in the Soviet Union
- leads to the National Defense and Education Act- gives $887 in loans to colleges students as well as for the improvement of science and language curriculum