UNIT
The Troubled Years
9
1960–1980
HISTORY
YOU
&
The Vietnam War ushered in an era of conflict among the American
people. Disagreement over the war in Southeast Asia created
seemingly insurmountable rifts. The Watergate crisis during the
waning years of the war weakened the nation’s trust in its elected
leaders. The two events deeply shook the nation’s selfconfidence and imposed a new sense of limits on the actions
undertaken by the federal government both overseas and at home.
Historic America Electronic Field Trips
On November 13, 1982, a monument was dedicated in Washington, D.C.,
to honor Americans who served in the Vietnam War. It also helped to heal
the deep wounds caused by debate and protest over the war. To learn
more about the history of United States involvement in Vietnam and the
effect of protest on the troops who served there, view video Chapter 10:
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Historic America Electronic Field
Trips.
See pages 972–973 for
primary source readings
that accompany Unit 9.
UNITED STATES
1961 John F. Kennedy
becomes President.
1962 March on Washington
rallies civil rights support.
1960
1961 Berlin Wall is built.
THE WORLD
762
1965 Malcolm X is
assassinated.
1968 Martin Luther King Jr. and
Robert F. Kennedy are assassinated.
1960
1965
1962 Cuban Missile
Crisis occurs.
1966 China’s Cultural
Revolution begins.
1967 Six-Day
War is fought in
Middle East.
1968 Tet
Offensive
occurs.
1969 Richard Nixon
becomes President;
astronauts land
on the moon.
Private First Class Phillip Wilson was killed just a few days after this picture was taken of him.
His name is one of the many recorded on the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington, D.C.
LARRY BURROWS/© TIME, INC.
1970 National Guard troops
shoot students at Kent State
and Jackson State.
1973 Oil embargo
begins.
1970
1970 Henry Kissinger’s trip 1972 SALT arms limitation
agreement is signed.
to China begins détente.
1974 Nixon resigns; Gerald
Ford becomes President.
1977 Jimmy Carter
becomes President.
1979 Nuclear accident
occurs at Three Mile Island.
1975
1973 U.S. troops leave Vietnam;
Yom Kippur War is fought in Middle East.
1980
1979 Camp David
Agreement is signed.
763
LITERATURE
Born
Fo u r t h o f Ju l y
o
B Y
n
t
R O N
h
e
K O V I C
Some Americans tried to end the Vietnam War by protesting at home. Others
went to fight in Vietnam. After being shot and permanently paralyzed
in Vietnam, Ron Kovic began to question the war effort. This excerpt from his
personal narrative shows how Kovic’s experience at a peace rally in Washington, D.C., helped him decide to join the antiwar movement.
C O L L E C T I O N O F W H I T N E Y M U S E U M O F A M E R I C A N A R T, N Y,
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GEOFFREY CLEMENTS, NY
finally made it to
A young girl sat
Lafayette Park. On the
down next to me and
other side of the avehanded me a canteen
nue the government
of cool water. “Here,”
had lined up thirty or
she said, “have a
forty buses, making a
drink.” I drank it down
huge wall between the
and passed it to Skip
people and the White
who passed it to someHouse. I remember
one else. That was the
wondering back then
feeling that day. We all
why they had to put
seemed to be sharing
Three Flags Jasper Johns and other pop artists incorporated
all those buses in front
everything.
everyday objects into their paintings and sculptures. Johns’s
of the president. Was
We listened as the
Three Flags (1958) invites viewers to question their feelings
about the American flag.
the government so
speakers one after
afraid of its own peoanother denounced the
ple that it needed such a gigantic barricade? I’ll always
invasion of Cambodia and the slaying of the students
remember those buses lined up that day and not beat Kent State. The sun was getting very hot and Skip
ing able to see the White House from my wheelchair.
and I decided to move around. We wanted to get to
We went back to the rally for a while, then went
the White House where Nixon was holed up, probon down to the Reflecting Pool. Hundreds of people
ably watching television. We were in a great sea of
had taken off their clothes. They were jumping up and
people, thousands and thousands all around us. We
764
LITERATURE
LITERATURE
clubs. Two or three horses charged into the crowd at
down to the beat of bongo drums and metal cans. A
full gallop, driving the invading army into retreat toward
man in his fifties had stripped completely naked.
the Lincoln Memorial. A girl was crying and screamWearing only a crazy-looking hat and a pair of enoring, trying to help her bleeding friend. She was yelling
mous black glasses, he was dancing on a platform in
something about the pigs and kept stepping backward
the middle of hundreds of naked people. The crowd
away from the horses and the flying clubs. For the first
was clapping wildly. Skip hesitated for a moment,
time that day I felt anger surge up inside me. I was no
then stripped all his clothes off, jumping into the pool
longer an observer, sitting in my car at the edge of a demand joining the rest of the people. I didn’t know what
onstration. I was right in the middle of it and it was ugly.
all of this had to do with the invasion of Cambodia
Skip started pushing the chair as fast as he could up the
or the students slain at Kent State, but it was total freepath toward the Lincoln Memorial. I kept turning,
dom. As I sat there in my wheelchair at the edge
looking back. I wanted to shout back at the charging
of the Reflecting Pool with everyone running naked
police, tell them I was
all around me and
a veteran. When we
the clapping and the
got to the memorial, I
drums resounding in
I WANTE D TO SHOUT BAC K AT
remember looking at
my ears, I wanted to
Lincoln’s face and readTH E C HARG I NG POLIC E , TE LL
join them. I wanted to
ing the words carved
take off my clothes like
TH E M I WAS A VETE RAN .
on the walls in back of
Skip and the rest of
him. I felt certain that if
them and wade into
he were alive he would
the pool and rub my
be there with us.
body with all those others. Everything seemed to be
I told Skip that I was never going to be the same.
hitting me all at once. One part of me was upset that
The demonstration had stirred something in my mind
people were swimming naked in the national monuthat would be there from now on. It was so very difment and the other part of me completely underferent from boot camp and fighting in the war. There
stood that now it was their pool, and what good is a
was a togetherness, just as there had been in Vietnam,
pool if you can’t swim in it.
but it was a togetherness of a different kind of people
I remember how the police came later that day,
and for a much different reason. In the war we were
very suddenly, when we were watching the sun go
killing and maiming people. In Washington on that
down——a blue legion of police in cars and on motorcySaturday afternoon in May we were trying to heal
cles and others with angry faces on big horses. A tall
them and set them free.
cop walked into the crowd near the Reflecting Pool and
read something into a bullhorn no one could make out.
The drums stopped and a few of the naked people began to put their clothes back on. It was almost evening
R e s p o n d i n g t o L i t e r at u r e
and with most of the invading army’s forces heading
1. What do you think contributed most to
back along the Jersey Turnpike, the blue legion had
changing Ron Kovic’s attitude about the
decided to attack. And they did——wading their horses
Vietnam War?
into the pool, flailing their clubs, smashing skulls. Peo2. If you had been a teenager during the
ple were running everywhere as gas canisters began to
Vietnam War, what do you think your
pop. I couldn’t understand why this was happening, why
attitudes toward the war and war
protesters might have been? Why?
the police would attack the people, running them into
the grass with their horses and beating them with their
LITERATURE
765
CHAPTER
23
The Vietnam War
JANUARY 30, 1968: COMMUNIST GUERRILLAS
AT TA C K U N I T E D S TAT E S E M B A S S Y
It was nearly 3 a.m. on the first night of Tet, the
Vietnamese New Year. A small truck and a taxicab
filled with Vietcong guerrillas rolled through the
quiet city streets. As they turned onto Thong Nhut
Boulevard, a broad, tree-lined avenue that ran past
the American embassy, the guerrillas opened fire.
HISTORY
NAL
JOURNAL
R
E of thisO chapter, write briefly
Before you read the rest
what you know about the domestic turmoil caused by
the war in Vietnam and what you think this chapter
will be about.
766
By 1968 United States troops had been fighting for 3 years. Policy makers saw Vietnam as a
battle to prevent the spread of communism in
Southeast Asia. In pursuing this policy of containment, the United States had become entangled in
a tragic war thousands of miles from its shore.
This would be the nation’s longest war, claiming the lives of more than 58,000 United States
soldiers and more than 2 million Vietnamese. It
would leave Southeast Asia in ruins and divide
American society as had no other issue since the
Civil War. HISTORY
S E
UR
N
O
Two United States soldiers inside the
embassy grounds returned the fire. One soldier,
23-year-old Charles Daniel, shouted: “They’re
coming in! They’re coming in! Help me! Help me!”
Moments later Daniel and his companion, 20year-old William Sebast, lay dead.
Thus began a bloody 6-hour assault on the
United States embassy in Saigon, the capital of
South Vietnam. When the fighting was over, 19
guerrillas and 5 American soldiers had lost their
lives. According to one reporter, the embassy
grounds looked like “a butcher shop in Eden.”
Chapter Overview
Visit the American Odyssey Web site at
americanodyssey.glencoe.com and click on
Chapter 23—Chapter Overview to preview
the chapter.
UPI/BETTMANN
A surviving member of the guerrill a
t e a m t h at at tac k e d t h e U n i t e d S tat e s
e m b a s s y i n S a i g o n i s l e d away .
767
SECTION
1
War in Southeast Asia
SEPTEMBER 2, 1945: VIETNAM DECLARES ITS INDEPENDENCE
UPI/BETTMANN
Half a million Vietnamese
and the pursuit of happiness.”
filled Ba Dinh Square in
With those words borrowed
central Hanoi. Peasants in
from the American Declaration
straw hats, many of whom had
of Independence, Ho proclaimed
come on foot from distant vilthe independence of Vietnam
lages, mingled with Hanoi resifrom French colonial rule. The
dents on the grassy square. At
crowd roared its approval.
noon a frail figure with piercing
Later in the day, United States
black eyes and a wispy black
Army officers joined Vietnamese
beard climbed onto a wooden
leaders to celebrate Vietnam’s
platform set up at one end of the
liberation. During World War II
square. He was Ho Chi Minh,
Japan had occupied Vietnam.
the 55-year-old leader of the
The Americans and the VietVietnamese nationalist force
minh had fought side by side to
Independence
known as the Vietminh. The
drive out the Japanese. When the
Ho Chi Minh makes an appeal to the
crowd began chanting, “DocJapanese surrendered in August
United
States
for
support.
Lap, Doc-Lap” (“independence,
1945, the Vietminh took over the
independence”). For several mincapital of Hanoi and declared
utes Ho stood there smiling,
Vietnam independent.
buoyed by the crowd’s enthusiasm. Finally he raised his
Yet the warm friendship of that September day soon
hands, and the crowd grew still.
chilled, as Vietnam became a battleground in the cold
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
war that followed World War II. In just 20 years, Vietare created equal, that they are endowed by their creator
namese nationalists and the United States would
with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty,
become bitter enemies, embroiled in war.
Guide to Reading
768
Main Idea
Vocabulary
Read to Find Out . . .
After the French withdrew
from Indochina, U.S.
Presidents tried to stop the
spread of communism in the
region through increasing
involvement in a civil war
waged between Communists
and non-Communists in
Vietnam.
CHAPTER 23
national liberation
containment
domino theory
guerrilla warfare
pacification program
THE VIETNAM WAR
why most Vietnamese wanted a communist form of government.
what the United States feared would
happen if Communists took control of
Vietnam.
the experiences of U.S. troops and
military nurses sent to Vietnam.
United States Support for the French
The French War in Indochina
Ho Chi Minh Leads Vietminh Against the French
In 1950 the French, unable to crush the Vietminh,
appealed to Washington, D.C., for aid. President Truman
was not eager to support France’s colonial ambitions. Yet
the cold war had increased tensions in Europe. Truman
was afraid to lose France as an ally against the Soviets,
who in August 1949 had exploded their first atomic bomb.
Also Indochina had assumed a new importance.
The Communist victory in China in 1949 fed American
fears of Communist takeovers elsewhere in Asia.
If the United States failed to stop communism in
Indochina, Truman believed, it would sweep across the
rest of Asia. The United States policy of containment–—
opposing communism wherever it appeared in an effort
to “contain” its spread––would pull the United States
closer to war in Southeast Asia.
In 1950, just before the outbreak of the Korean War,
Truman agreed to send $20 million in direct military aid
to the French. Over the next 4 years, the United States
paid for most of the French war effort, pumping more
than $2.6 billion into the French attempt to “save” Vietnam from communism.
R.
inh Tra i l
Chi M
Ho
kong
Me
Although the Vietnamese had declared their independence, the French were unwilling to give up the
empire they had ruled for more than 60 years. The
colonies in Indochina—–the present-day nations of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam—–were among the richest
of France’s overseas colonies, supplying such valuable
resources as rice, rubber, and tin.
The French, however, faced a powerful foe in Ho Chi
Minh. Ho was a staunch, and at times ruthless, revolutionary committed to the struggle for Vietnamese independence. Ho founded the Vietminh in 1941 to drive
the French from Vietnam. Like Ho, most Vietminh leaders were committed Communists. Their primary goals
were extensive land reform and the creation of an
independent unified Vietnam. They were waging a war
of national liberation to free their country from
foreign control.
By 1945 the Vietminh army
numbered 5,000 and had a firm
VIETNAM, 1954–1967
CHINA
base of support in northern VietNORTH
nam. The French, meanwhile,
VIETNAM
Dien
R
tried to regain control of southed
Bien Phu,
1954
BURMA
R. Haiphong
ern Vietnam as the Japanese
Hanoi
Luang
withdrew. Tensions mounted,
Gulf
Prabang
20°N
of
and fighting broke out between
Tonkin
the French and the Vietminh.
LAOS
Gulf of Tonkin
Hainan
Incident, 1964 In November 1946, a French ship
Vientiane
shelled the city of Haiphong,
setting off a full-scale war.
Partition line, 1954 N
17°N
The French entered the war
Hue
Khesanh SOUTH
THAILAND
confident of victory. Ho, howCHINA
Danang
ever, predicted a different outSEA
15°N
come. “If ever the tiger [the
Vietminh] pauses,” he said, “the
Pleiku
elephant [France] will impale
Bangkok
SOUTH
150 mi.
0
75
him on his mighty tusks. But
VIETNAM
CAMBODIA
0 75 150 km
the tiger will not pause, and the
Nha Trang
Conic projection
elephant will die of exhaustion
Gulf
Phnom Penh and loss of blood.”
of
Major U.S. base
Thailand
Bienhoa
The French soon controlled
Saigon Battle
the major cities and towns, while
10°N
Capital city
the Vietminh retreated into the
Boundary of
French Indochina
countryside. There they waged
100°E
105°E
110°E
a relentless war—–avoiding major
battles, ambushing French troops,
The division of Vietnam left the North without its main source of rice in the South.
and staging hit-and-run raids on
Emergency imports from Burma prevented a famine. What United States military base is
French outposts—–while building
located near the partition line between North and South Vietnam?
support among the peasants.
SECTION ONE
769
HOWARD SOCHUEL/LIFE MAGAZINE, ©TIME, INC.
The End of French Rule
Despite American aid, France was losing the war.
When in May 1954 the Vietminh overran Dien Bien Phu,
a French outpost in northwestern Vietnam, it signaled the
end of French control of Vietnam.
The day after the French surrendered at Dien Bien
Phu, representatives of the United States, Great Britain,
France, the Soviet Union, China, Laos, Cambodia, and
the Vietminh met in Geneva to hammer out a peace
agreement. According to its terms, Vietnam would
be temporarily divided along the 17th parallel. The
Vietminh would withdraw north of that line, and the
French would withdraw to the south. Vietnam would
be reunified in 1956 after national elections. The
Vietminh agreed, confident that they would win the
promised elections.
The United States
Enters the War
Fear of the Spread of Communism Spurs Action
Fearful of just such a Communist victory, the United States refused to sign the agreement. President Eisenhower believed that the loss of South Vietnam would
deny the United States access to the resources and markets of all Southeast Asia. In 1954 Eisenhower explained
the domino theory to a group of reporters. “You have
a row of dominoes set up,” he said. “You knock over the
first one, and what will happen to the last one is a certainty that it will go over very quickly.” If South Vietnam fell to communism, the other nations of Southeast
Asia would fall in turn, just like dominoes.
The Diem Regime
Years of war and colonial rule had left South
Vietnam in disarray. A tiny ruling class controlled the
wealth, while millions of landless peasants toiled in
poverty. Political and economic reforms were desperately needed. The United States pinned its hopes on
Ngo Dinh Diem, a nationalist and fierce anti-Communist. From 1954 to 1961, the United States pumped more
than $1 billion into South Vietnam, but $4 out of every
$5 of the aid was spent on the military, leaving only a
fraction of the aid for economic development.
An aloof man who always dressed in white, Diem
was an aristocratic Catholic who had little in common
with the people he ruled, most of whom were Buddhist
peasants. He ran the country as if it were a personal
empire. Half his cabinet members were relatives, and he
imprisoned anyone who dared to speak out against his
autocratic rule.
770
CHAPTER 23
THE VIETNAM WAR
An Isolated Leader Diem did not understand the concerns
and needs of his people. Why did the United States support
Diem?
United States advisers urged Diem to try to win
peasant support by breaking up the huge estates of
wealthy landowners and handing out farming plots to the
landless peasants. Diem, however, rejected any reforms
that would weaken the ruling class.
Civil War
In 1957, with American support, Diem canceled the
elections promised by the Geneva Accords. As even
Eisenhower admitted, if the elections had been held, Ho
Chi Minh would have won.
Instead of elections Diem held a “referendum” to
prove he had the support of the people in South Vietnam. American advisers assured Diem that they would
be satisfied if he had 60 percent approval, but he rigged
the vote so that he won by a whopping 98 percent. In
Saigon, for example, he claimed 605,000 votes even
though the city had only 405,000 registered voters.
E V E N T S L E A D I N G T O U N I T E D S TAT E S I N V O LV E M E N T I N V I E T N A M , 1 9 4 5 – 1 9 6 4
1 9 5 0 Truman sends
$20 million to aid
French war effort.
1 9 4 9 China
becomes
Communist.
1 9 5 4 Diem
assumes power.
1958
1960
1962
1 9 5 7 Diem cancels
elections promised by
Geneva Accords.
1964
1 9 6 4 North Vietnamese
attack the American destroyer
the Maddox. Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution passes in Congress.
of corrupt Saigon officials. Despite United States aid,
the ineffective South Vietnamese army failed to score
major victories against the Vietcong.
The Overthrow of Diem
The crisis in Vietnam deepened in the spring of
1963. As a crowd of Buddhists gathered in the city of
Hue on May 8 to protest a government ruling forbidding
the display of Buddhist flags, government troops fired
on them. The attack stirred new and powerful protests.
A month after the attack at Hue, a Buddhist monk
set himself on fire as a protest against the Diem regime.
Other monks soon followed his example. A horrifying
photograph of a monk engulfed in flames appeared in
newspapers and on television screens around the world.
Almost overnight, world opinion turned against Diem.
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
Diem’s brutal policies and his refusal to hold elections
angered many Vietnamese. Their discontent proved
fertile ground for the Vietminh. As one Vietminh soldier
later said, the peasants were “like a mound of straw ready
to be ignited.”
In late 1960 the Vietminh and other groups opposed
to Diem united in South Vietnam to form the National
Liberation Front (NLF). Like the Vietminh, most of the
NLF leaders were Communists. They promised economic reform, reunification with the North, and genuine
independence. They also waged a campaign of terror,
assassinating 2,000 government officials in 1960. The
NLF, also known as the Vietcong, had close ties to the
government of Ho Chi Minh. Over the years the NLF
would get increasing support from North Vietnam
and, indirectly, from China and the Soviet Union as well.
The new President of the United States, John F.
Kennedy, faced a difficult choice: abandon Diem or deepen American involvement in Vietnam.
1956
➤
1954
➤
1952
➤
➤
1950
➤
1 9 4 5 Ho Chi Minh
declares Vietnamese independence from France.
1948
1 9 6 3 Diem killed as
South Vietnamese army
assumes power.
➤
1946
➤
➤
1944
1 9 5 4 French surrender
at Dien Bien Phu. Geneva
Accords divide Vietnam.
➤
1 9 4 6 War between
France and Vietminh
begins.
The Kennedy Years
Like Truman and Eisenhower, President Kennedy
saw Vietnam as part of the global struggle in the fight
against communism. “Vietnam represents the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia,” he declared.
Despite some misgivings, Kennedy greatly expanded the
United States’s role in Vietnam. Kennedy’s plan was
twofold. The first part was to strengthen the South Vietnamese army with United States technology and military advisers to help them win the war against the
Vietcong. The second was to pressure Diem to make
political and economic reforms to eliminate the conditions that had allowed communism to take root in the
first place. By 1963 Kennedy had tripled the amount of
aid and increased the number of United States military
advisers to 16,000.
Once again, however, Diem refused to go along.
Instead of paying for new schools, health clinics, or land
reform, American funds often ended up in the pockets
Ultimate Protest The Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc sacrificed himself to protest the government persecution of Buddhists. Other monks lay in front of nearby fire trucks to
prevent their moving to assist Duc. What caused the crisis in
Vietnam to deepen?
SECTION ONE
771
By early August the Diem regime teetered on
the brink of collapse; yet Kennedy feared he had no
alternative to Diem. In late August, however, a group
of South Vietnamese army generals met secretly with
United States officials to propose the overthrow of Diem.
With United States support, the plan went forward.
On the night of November 1, 1963, South Vietnamese army officers seized control of the government.
In the confusion surrounding the takeover, Diem was
killed. Just three weeks later, Kennedy himself was
assassinated, and the war in Vietnam now troubled his
successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Johnson’s War
Involvement Expands in 1964
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
In early August Johnson announced that North
Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked two United
States destroyers patrolling in the Gulf of Tonkin off the
coast of North Vietnam. Johnson angrily declared
that Americans had been the victims of “unprovoked”
attacks. He urged Congress to pass a resolution giving
him authority to “take all necessary measures to repel
any armed attack against the forces of the United States
and to prevent further aggression.” An alarmed Congress
almost unanimously passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The resolution was not a declaration of war, but it
authorized Johnson to widen the war. The resolution, he
said, “was like grandma’s nightshirt—–it covered everything.”
Few Americans questioned the President’s account
of the incident. Years later, however, it was revealed that
Johnson had withheld the truth from the public and
Congress. The American warships had been helping
South Vietnamese commandos raid two North Vietnamese islands the night of the attacks.
772
CHAPTER 23
THE VIETNAM WAR
LARRY BURROWS, LIFE MAGAZINE ©TIME WARNER, INC.
Like his predecessors, President Johnson believed
that Vietnam was a key battle in the cold war. He rejected
any settlement of the war that did not guarantee a
non-Communist government in South Vietnam.
Operation Rolling Thunder
Also like Truman, Johnson was haunted by the loss
Six months later a second incident provided another
of China. “I am not going to be the president who
excuse for deeper involvement. In February 1965 Vietcong
saw Southeast Asia go the way China went,” he
forces attacked a United States military base at Pleiku,
vowed. Johnson also believed he had to take a strong
South Vietnam, and killed eight Americans. Johnson
anti-Communist stand to fend off the 1964 election
retaliated by ordering the first American bombing
challenge by conservative Republican Barry Goldwater.
of North Vietnam. Code-named Operation Rolling
Also like Truman, Johnson took over the presidenThunder, the bombing would continue almost nonstop
cy with little experience in international affairs. He surfor three years.
rounded himself with the same team that had guided
In addition to bases, roads, and railways in North VietKennedy’s foreign policies—–Secretary of State Dean
nam, the air attacks targeted the so-called Ho Chi Minh
Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara,
and National Security Adviser
McGeorge Bundy—–the architects of
the United States war in Vietnam.
Johnson, like Kennedy, hoped to
keep the Vietcong from overrunning
South Vietnam. By 1964, however,
Diem’s successors had proved just
as unsuccessful in waging the
war and just as unpopular with the
South Vietnamese. Only massive
economic and military aid from the
United States would keep the regime
from toppling.
Johnson did not want to lose
Vietnam, but he did not want to
be seen as recklessly plunging the
nation deeper into war. He needed
the support of Congress and of the
American public to expand United
The Pain of War The sheer horror of the fighting is captured in this photo taken durStates involvement. He got it in
ing Operation Prairie. How did President Johnson respond to the attack on Pleiku?
August 1964.
© MARC RIBOUD/MAGNUM PHOTOS
Trail, a tangled network of dirt roads and muddy trails
along which soldiers and supplies flowed from North
Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam. Yet the raids failed to cut off North Vietnamese aid
to the NLF. The South Vietnamese army continued to
suffer heavy losses at the hands of the Vietcong.
Meanwhile in 1967 a new regime had taken power
in South Vietnam under General Nguyen Van Thieu.
Like Diem, Thieu lacked popular support. As a result,
the NLF continued to grow, soon controlling the
majority of villages in the countryside. Johnson believed
that the Saigon government would fall without direct
American support. In March of 1965, he made a fateful decision.
United States Troops in Vietnam
One month after the attack on Pleiku, two battalions
of American Marines waded ashore at Da Nang, South
Vietnam. General William Westmoreland, the commander of United States forces in Vietnam, had asked
Johnson to send the troops to guard the United States
air base at Da Nang. Johnson agreed, assuring Americans that peace was on the horizon.
The trickle of United States troops soon swelled to
a torrent. By the end of 1965, more than 180,000 American troops were fighting in South Vietnam. By the end
of 1966, that number had doubled; and by the end of
1967, nearly 500,000 soldiers had been sent to Vietnam–—
more than all the United States troops in Korea at the
height of that conflict.
Fighting the War
Early Optimism Turns to Frustration
The first United States troops to land in Vietnam
shared the optimism of policy makers at home. As
Marine Lieutenant Philip Caputo wrote, “When we
marched into the rice paddies on that damp March
afternoon, we carried, along with our packs and rifles,
the . . . conviction that the Vietcong would be quickly
beaten.” Within just two years, however, that optimism
had turned to bitter frustration.
Through relentless bombing and combat, the United States hoped to destroy the Vietcong’s will to fight
in order to force them to the bargaining table. The measure of the United States’s success in the war was not
territory gained but body counts––a tally of the number
of enemy killed. Optimistic reports of body counts from
the field led many at home to believe the United States
was winning the war.
American officials, however, underestimated the
Vietcong and their North Vietnamese allies. As Ho Chi
Vital Supply Line The North Vietnamese kept the Vietcong
in the South resupplied by sending men, equipment, and
ammunition down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Why did the United
States bomb this trail?
Minh had warned the French, “You can kill ten of my men
for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you
will lose and I will win.” Although United States forces
claimed to have killed 220,000 Communists by the end
of 1967, the war raged on.
The Air War
Because bombing cost fewer American lives than
ground combat, the United States relied more and more
on air power. Once Johnson unleashed Operation
Rolling Thunder, the air war over Vietnam escalated
dramatically—–from 25,000 bombing raids in 1965 to
more than 108,000 in 1967.
At first the attacks were limited to military targets
and supply routes in North Vietnam, but soon the B-52s
hammered roads, railways, factories, and homes in South
SECTION ONE
773
Vietnam and neighboring Laos and Cambodia. By 1967
the United States had dropped more bombs on Vietnam
than the Allies dropped during all of World War II.
The air raids leveled dozens of cities, killed thousands
of civilians, and turned the once lush rice fields and
forests into a moonscape pitted with craters.
Yet the immense firepower of the United States Air
Force failed to rout the Vietcong. To evade the bombers,
the Vietcong used and expanded a vast network of
underground tunnels dug during the conflict with the
French in the 1940s. Soldiers and supplies continued to
flow south from North Vietnam through more than
30,000 miles of tunnels.
and-destroy” missions. To the inexperienced United
States troops, the first challenge was simply finding the
enemy in these unfamiliar jungles. Flying into Vietnam
for the first time, Philip Caputo described the terrain:
n unbroken mass of green stretched westward,
one ridgeline and mountain range after another,
some more than a mile high and covered with
forests that looked solid enough to walk on. It had
no end. It just went on to the horizon.
A
I could see neither villages, nor fields, roads, or anything but endless rain forests the color of old moss.
. . . “Out there” they called that humid wilderness
where the Bengal tiger stalked and the cobra coiled
beneath its rock and the Viet Cong lurked in
ambush.
—Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War, 1977
The Ground War
While United States bombers rained terror on
Vietnam from above, United States ground forces
attempted to wipe out the Vietcong through “searchAP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
Routing Out the Enemy A chemical defoliant, Agent Orange,
was used to eliminate Vietcong staging areas. The top photo
shows a forest before spraying in 1965; the lower photo shows
the same area in 1970. What happened to the vegetation?
774
CHAPTER 23
THE VIETNAM WAR
Once on the ground, the troops slogged through the
countryside on endless patrols—–plagued by suffocating
heat, clouds of mosquitoes, razor-sharp jungle grasses,
and hungry leeches. Soaked in sweat and weighed down
by 50 to 70 pounds of equipment, United States soldiers
waded knee-deep along muddy trails and through
flooded rice fields. Cautiously they inched along. Each
rock, each clump of weeds, might hide a mine that
would cripple or kill in an instant. American soldiers
called one especially lethal booby trap a “Bouncing Betty.” It leaped out of the ground just before it exploded.
All South Vietnam became a war zone, as United
States troops searched the fields, forests, and villages for
Vietcong. Yet how could they be sure whether a peasant was friend or enemy? They were all Vietnamese.
As one soldier explained, “The Vietcong would be the
farmer you waved to from your jeep in the day who
would be the guy with the gun out looking for you at
night.” The enemy was everywhere and nowhere.
Guerrilla Tactics
The Vietcong employed guerrilla warfare tactics,
using small bands of fighters to harass United States
troops. Unlike conventional forces, guerrilla fighters
avoid open battles. Instead they try to wear down
the enemy—–with ambushes, hit-and-run raids, and
sabotage—–and force them to withdraw. As one observer
noted, “The guerrilla wins if he does not lose; the
conventional army loses if it does not win.” By that
definition, the United States was losing the war.
The Vietcong guerrillas had two advantages over the
United States forces. First, they knew the terrain and
could move unseen through the mountains and jungles.
Second, through a combination of terrorism and the
genuine appeal of their nationalist struggle, they had
the support of many peasants who supplied food and
I
The Endless War
For Americans fighting a seemingly unwinnable war,
Vietnam was a frustrating and terrifying nightmare.
Nurses working in mobile army surgical hospital
(MASH) units near the front and on hospital ships off
the coast probably had a better feeling for the Vietnam
tragedy than anyone. They saw the wounded every day,
day after day. Ruth Sidisin of the Air Force Nurse Corps
said: “Vietnam was not John Wayne. In Vietnam, every
day was disaster day.” Most of the United States troops
were young and inexperienced; the average soldier was
just 19 years old, 7 years younger than the average
soldier in World War II. These young people were miles
from home in a steamy jungle filled with daily horrors–—
mud, heat, booby traps, and an invisible enemy. They
fought bravely, but the war seemed endless. Some turned
to drugs to escape. Some snapped under pressure, no
longer able to tell friend from foe. David Ross, a 19-yearold army medic, had volunteered to fight in Vietnam, but
2 years of war had shaken his faith in his country’s goals.
1. Use a diagram like this one to show the steps
leading to United States military involvement in
the war in Vietnam.
U.S.
Troops
to
Vietnam
Vocabulary
2. Define: national liberation, containment, domino
theory, guerrilla warfare, pacification program.
Checking Facts
3. Why did the United States support the French
war effort in Vietnam?
4. How did the war escalate under Johnson?
Critical Thinking
5. Recognizing Biases In what ways did the United States military planners fail to understand the
Vietnamese culture? How did this affect pacification programs in South Vietnam?
SECTION ONE
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© R AY C R A N B O U R N E , E M P I R E / B L A C K S TA R
shelter and kept them informed of American troop movements.
To deprive the Vietcong of their peasant support, United States troops undertook
a pacification program, uprooting entire
villages and forcing the people to move to
cities or refugee camps. The soldiers then
burned the fields and empty villages.
The program, however, failed to stop
the Vietcong, who simply moved elsewhere.
Moreover, the pacification program alienated the peasants who were forced to leave
the beloved land of their ancestors. “I have
to stay behind to look after this piece of garden,” one grandfather pleaded with Americans evacuating his village. “Of all the
property handed down to me by my anNurses Battle More than 7,500 nurses served during the war in Vietnam.
cestors, only this garden now remains. . . .
What is a MASH unit?
If I leave, the graves of my ancestors, too,
volunteered, you know. Ever since the American
will become forests. How can I have the heart to leave?”
Revolution my family had people in all the different
The United States tried to offset these policies
wars, and that was always the thing—when your
through development projects in which teams of voluncountry needs you, you go. You don’t ask a lot of
teers visited villages offering medical care and farming
questions, because the country’s always right. This
advice. United States bombs and bullets, however, untime it didn’t turn out that way.
dercut any efforts to win Vietnamese “hearts and minds.”
—David Ross, in Everything We Had, 1981
Meanwhile American losses in Vietnam continued
to mount. By 1967 more than 14,000 United States
soldiers had been killed. Yet United States military
power still failed to crush the Vietcong. As one reporter
Section Assessment
observed, every powerful blow from the American
war machine “was like a sledgehammer on a floating
Main Idea
cork. . . . Somehow the cork refused to stay down.”
SECTION
2
1968: A Year of Crises
N O V E M B E R 2 1 , 1 9 6 7 : G E N E R A L W E S T M O R E L A N D R E P O RT S E N D I S N E A R
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
Faced with growing opposiVietnam. Within 24 hours about
tion to the war at home,
84,000 Communist soldiers had
President Johnson brought
stormed more than 100 South
General William WestVietnamese cities and towns, a
moreland back from Saigon
dozen United States military
to reassure the American
bases, and even the United States
public about the war. On
embassy in Saigon.
November 21, 1967, in an address
to the National Press Club in
Washington, D.C., Westmoreland delivered an upbeat report:
“I am absolutely certain that
The War’s General
whereas in 1965 the enemy was
General William Westmoreland was an architect
Losses High on Both Sides
winning, today he is certainly
of United States military action in Vietnam
from 1964 to 1968.
losing,” he said. “There are indiThough United States and
cations that the Vietcong and
South Vietnamese forces retook
even Hanoi know this. . . . We
most of the targets within hours or days, a bitter battle
have reached an important point when the end begins
over the ancient city of Hue raged for nearly three
to come into view.”
weeks. To recapture the city, United States forces hamJust 10 weeks later, however, General Westmoremered its streets with bombs and artillery fire. The fightland’s words rang hollow. On January 30, 1968, the first
ing left the beautiful city of old temples and palaces a
day of the Vietnamese New Year, or Tet, Communist
“shattered, stinking hulk, its streets choked with rubble
forces launched a massive attack, striking without warnand rotting bodies.”
ing at civilian and military targets throughout South
Tet Offensive:
A Turning Point
Guide to Reading
776
Main Idea
Vocabulary
Read to Find Out . . .
The ongoing war in Vietnam
and political turmoil within the
United States made the year
1968 a turning point in
American history.
CHAPTER 23
conservative era
liberal era
THE VIETNAM WAR
how the Tet offensive and the 1968
presidential campaign altered the
political direction of the United
States.
how the assassinations of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., and Robert F.
Kennedy affected the civil rights and
antiwar movements.
CHINA
BURMA
ed
R.
Hanoi
LAOS
Langson
NORTH
VIETNAM
R
Haiphong
1971–1973
20°N
Luang
Thanhhoa
Prabang
Gulf
of
Tonkin
Vinh
Hainan
Vientiane
Nakhon
Partition line, 1954 N
Khesanh Quangtri
Hue
Lang Vei Phubai
Ashau
Danang
Hoi An
Kham Chulai
Duc
Udon
THAILAND
Ratchasima
Dakto
Kontum,1972
Don Muang
Bangkok
1969–1973
Zone C
1972
Phnom Penh 75
Camau
150 mi.
0 75 150 km
Conic projection
SOUTH
CHINA
SEA
Nha Trang
Dalat SOUTH
VIETNAM
Mekong
Delta
Camranh Bay
Area of U.S. and South
Vietnamese control, 1968
Area of Vietcong
control, 1968
Battle of
Tet offensive, 1968
Other battle
100°E
Pleiku Ankhe
Quinhon, 1972
Bienhoa
Tan Son
Chau Doc Nhut Saigon
Vungtau
Vinh Long Cantho, 1969 0
CAMBODIA
Gulf
of
Thailand
15°N
R.
Ubon
kong
Me
Takhli
Critics of United
States Policy
VIETNAM WAR, 1968–1973
United States forces routed
the Vietcong, killing an estimated
33,000 enemy troops in the
first 2 weeks of the month-long
Tet offensive. The cost was
high, however. More than 1,100
American soldiers, 2,300 South
Vietnamese troops, and 12,500
Vietnamese civilians were killed.
More than 1 million Vietnamese
became refugees. Dozens of
towns and villages lay in ruins.
As one American army officer
said of the battle for the village of
Ben Tre, “We had to destroy the
town to save it.”
General William Westmoreland quickly claimed Tet as a
victory for the United States and
boasted that “the enemy is on
the ropes.” Even the Communists admitted that Tet had not
achieved their major goal,
“to spur uprisings throughout
the South.” Tet also marked a
turning point in the war. It
showed that no place in South
Vietnam——not even the American embassy——was safe from
attack. It shattered American
confidence and raised grave
doubts about Johnson’s policies
in Vietnam.
Major U.S. bombing raid
Capital city
U.S. base
Ho Chi Minh Trail
105°E
110°E
The United States depended heavily on the use of air power in the war in Vietnam because it cost fewer American lives. Why did the United States stage so many bombing
raids in Laos and Cambodia, just west of Vietnam?
“What the hell is going on?”
asked Walter Cronkite, the
respected CBS newscaster. “I thought we were winning
the war!” After returning from a trip to Saigon after the
Tet offensive, Cronkite reported that “it seems now more
certain than ever that the bloody experience in Vietnam
is to end in a stale-mate . . . [and] that the only rational
way out . . . will be to negotiate.”
“If I’ve lost Walter,” lamented President Johnson,
“then it’s over. I’ve lost Mr. Average Citizen.” Editorials
in Newsweek, Time, and the Wall Street Journal also called
for a negotiated settlement of the war and a prompt
withdrawal of American troops.
Televised reports challenged official statements and
brought home the brutality and hopelessness of the war.
The desperate struggle to regain the United States
embassy and the destruction of Hue stunned Americans.
The brutality of the United States’s ally shocked millions
as they watched a South Vietnamese police chief draw
his revolver, place it against the head of a young Vietcong prisoner, and pull the trigger. Such images
prompted Americans to question United States policy:
Was the United States really defending democracy in
Vietnam? If so, at what cost?
The horrifying images of Tet contradicted the rosy
picture of the war Westmoreland had painted the
previous fall. Public opinion polls showed that in the 6
weeks after the Tet offensive, the percentage of Americans who approved of Johnson’s handling of the war
plunged from 40 to 26; Johnson’s overall approval
ratings dropped from 48 to 36 percent. The massive
antiwar protests of the previous year grew even larger.
Crowds of angry demonstrators chanted, “Hey, hey, LBJ.
How many kids did you kill today?”
SECTION TWO
777
© DONALD MCCULLIN, MAGNUM PHOTOS
swarmed across New Hampshire, knocking on doors and
urging residents to vote for McCarthy. On March 12
McCarthy surprised everyone by winning nearly half
the popular vote as well as 20 out of 24 state delegates
to the national nominating convention.
Not all of those who voted for McCarthy favored
United States withdrawal from Vietnam; many favored
stepping up the United States effort to win the war.
Whatever their politics, New Hampshire voters agreed
that Johnson’s policies had failed.
On March 16 another antiwar candidate entered the
race——Robert Kennedy. His challenge, however, embittered many of McCarthy’s supporters, who feared that
McCarthy and Kennedy would split the antiwar vote.
With a promise to carry on the goals of his brother’s New
Frontier, Kennedy attracted widespread support from minorities, the poor, and the working class, as well as
wealthier mainstream Democrats. As the Vietnam War
drained more and more money from social reform at
home, the ranks of Kennedy’s supporters swelled.
Johnson’s Decision
The Horror of War Three marines in flak jackets drag a
sniper victim out of the line of fire during the battle of Hue.
What effect did Tet have on the 1968 presidential campaign?
Shaken by Tet, McCarthy’s success in New Hampshire, and Kennedy’s entry into the presidential race,
President Johnson faced a further dilemma. Following
the Tet offensive, General Westmoreland and the Joint
Chiefs of Staff had requested an additional 206,000
American troops——a 40 percent increase. Westmoreland
claimed that Tet losses had weakened the Vietcong.
With additional troops, he argued, the United States
© J A M E S P I C K E R E L L / B L A C K S TA R
Democratic Challengers
As President Johnson’s popularity took a nosedive,
he faced another crisis. The liberal Minnesota Senator
Eugene McCarthy had entered the New Hampshire
Democratic primary. Running on an antiwar platform,
McCarthy challenged Johnson for the presidential
nomination.
Since the summer of 1967, antiwar Democrats had
been searching for a candidate to replace President Johnson. They first tried to recruit New York Senator Robert
Kennedy, a vocal critic of the war and the brother of slain
President John Kennedy. Reluctant to challenge the
President and split the party, Kennedy at first refused.
The antiwar Democrats then turned to McCarthy.
At the beginning of January, with support from just
17 percent of the Democratic party, McCarthy had
seemed to pose little threat to Johnson’s reelection bid.
Then came Tet.
McCarthy’s antiwar stand attracted thousands of
college students. With the motto Be clean for Gene, the
students trimmed their hair, dressed in suits and ties, and
778
CHAPTER 23
THE VIETNAM WAR
The War Touches Both Sides The Tet offensive brought
widespread destruction and affected thousands of civilians.
What did Westmoreland want to do to follow up the Tet offensive?
Tragedy and Turmoil
O
On the other side, the inflationary economy was
booming out of control. Up ahead were dozens of
dangerous signs pointing to another summer of
riots in the cities. . . . And then the final straw. The
thing I feared from the first day of my presidency
was actually coming true. Robert Kennedy had
openly announced his intention to reclaim the
throne in the memory of his brother. . . . The whole
situation was unbearable to me.
—Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson
and the American Dream, 1976
Two days later, McCarthy swept the Wisconsin
Democratic primary.
King’s Assassination
A nation still reeling from the shock of Tet and
Johnson’s refusal to run for reelection suffered another
blow in April——the assassination of civil rights leader
Martin Luther King, Jr. One of the earliest critics of
United States involvement in Vietnam, King had linked
the struggle for racial equality and economic justice to
the struggle for peace. “The black revolution is much
more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes,” he
declared. “It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws——racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism.”
The news of King’s murder stunned the nation. Thousands of his admirers took part in peaceful marches and
SECTION TWO
779
UPI/BETTMANN
could take advantage of their weakness
and score a military victory. Uneasy
about the request for additional
troops, Johnson asked his new secretary of defense, Clark Clifford, to make
a recommendation.
After questioning the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Clifford became convinced that
“the military course we were pursuing
was not only endless but hopeless.” The
top military commanders could give him
no reason to believe the Communists
could be beaten by “an additional
200,000 American troops, or double or
triple that quantity.”
As a result Clifford recommended
that the President reject Westmoreland’s
request and instead encourage the South
Vietnamese to do more of the fighting.
A Surprise Announcement The day before Johnson withdrew from the presiBitterly Johnson accepted Clifford’s
dential race, his eldest daughter, Lynda, sent her husband, Charles Robb, off to
recommendation——he would send only
Vietnam. Why did Johnson decide not to run for reelection?
a few thousand additional troops to Vietnam. For the first time in three years of
war, Johnson refused to support Westmoreland.
On March 31, three years after the first American
troops landed in Vietnam, Johnson made a televised
Bloodshed and Political Upheaval Dominate 1968
speech. He announced that the United States would
limit the bombing of North Vietnam, and he appealed
According to Vietnamese tradition, the first guest
to Ho Chi Minh for a negotiated settlement to the war.
through the door during the Tet holiday serves as a sign
Then Johnson dropped his own bombshell: “I have
of the year to come. The Vietcong commandos who
decided that I shall not seek and I will not accept the
burst into the United States embassy in the early mornnomination of my party for another term as your presing hours of Tet ushered in a troubled year for Americans,
ident.”
a year of turmoil, frustrated hopes, and shattered dreams.
Unable to build a Great Society at home and wage
Tensions over the war in Vietnam and the civil rights
a war at the same time, Johnson got out of the race. He
struggle at home had been building for years. Now they
later confided to his biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin
exploded. The troubling events of 1968 would lead
the reasons why:
many Americans to reject the liberalism of the 1960s and
n one side, the American people were stamembrace a new conservatism in hopes of bringing an end
peding me to do something about Vietnam.
to the war and restoring peace at home.
memorial services, but the shock and grief soon turned
to rage. Within hours many African Americans stormed
through the streets of cities around the country. Their
anger and frustration exploded in rioting, looting, and
burning. In Chicago fires raged through a 20-block area
of the city’s heavily African American West Side. In
Washington, D.C., soldiers armed with rifles and machine
guns stood guard outside the White House and the Capitol as African Americans looted and burned.
The Democratic Primaries
While the nation agonized over unrest at home
and war abroad, the presidential race picked up speed.
Three candidates now scrambled for the Democratic
nomination: Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, and
Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
Although Humphrey championed civil rights and
social reform, his ties to Johnson’s Vietnam policies
repelled the antiwar liberals. To line up convention support, Humphrey avoided the primaries and courted the
Democratic party bosses, who in some states chose the
delegates.
McCarthy waged a spirited crusade against the war
and social injustice, but his low-key, intellectual style
appealed mainly to educated middle-class liberals. “He
has wit, charm, and grace,” columnist I.F. Stone
observed, “but he seems to lack heart and guts.”
Robert Kennedy, on the other hand, made passionate appeals on behalf of the have-nots of American
society. Campaigning against poverty, racism, and the
war, Kennedy reached out to African Americans, Native
Americans, Hispanic Americans, and young protesters.
With Johnson out of the race, Kennedy quickly became
the front-runner.
Kennedy won early primary victories in Indiana and
Nebraska, but McCarthy rebounded and scored a victory in the Oregon primary. California, the nation’s most
populous state, was next. Both candidates campaigned
energetically, but when the polls closed on June 4,
Kennedy had won 46 percent of the popular vote and
McCarthy just 41 percent. California was a winner-takeall state, so Kennedy claimed all the convention delegates.
Kennedy’s Assassination
That evening, moments after the victorious Kennedy
spoke to cheering supporters at a Los Angeles hotel, he
lay dying, the victim of an assassin’s bullet. The nation
reeled in shock. Within two months two liberal
leaders——both critics of the war and advocates of civil
rights——had been killed. The deaths of King and
© D E C L A N H A H N , T R A N S W O R L D F E AT U R E S Y N D I C AT E / B L A C K S TA R
The Last Farewell Mourners lined the route as a special funeral train carrying the body of Robert F. Kennedy traveled from New
York City to Washington, D.C., for burial in Arlington National Cemetery. To what groups did the Kennedy campaign appeal?
780
CHAPTER 23
THE VIETNAM WAR
© D E N N I S B R A C K / B L A C K S TA R
Kennedy shattered the hopes of antiwar and civil rights
activists who had sought to work within the political
system. Many despaired that politics would ever be an
effective way to enact change. “I won’t vote,” one young
African American from New York declared. “Every good
man we get they kill.”
The Election of 1968
National Politics Become More Conservative
The simmering anger and frustration many Americans felt over the deaths of King and Kennedy would boil
over in the August heat, as Democrats met in Chicago
to nominate a candidate for President. The resulting
convention turmoil would shock the nation and splinter
the Democratic party. In the process, it would help pave
the way for a new conservative era in presidential
politics in which the role of government would
be limited and individuals would depend less on the
government for assistance.
The Democratic Convention
With Kennedy dead and McCarthy unable to rally
more than a few convention delegates, Hubert Humphrey
looked like a sure winner of the Democratic nomination.
Humphrey’s support for Johnson’s Vietnam policies,
however, angered many antiwar activists. Nearly 10,000
of them flocked to Chicago to protest, if they could not
prevent, Humphrey’s nomination.
Most of the demonstrators had come to pressure
delegates to adopt an antiwar platform. Some, however,
hoped to provoke violence that would discredit the
Democrats. With memories of the riots after King’s
death still fresh, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley mobilized 12,000 Chicago police officers and put 5,000 members of the National Guard on call. “As long as I am
mayor,” he vowed, “there will be law and order.”
Daley’s forces ringed the convention hall with barbed
wire. On August 28, as convention delegates cast their
ballots for Hubert Humphrey, helmeted police savagely
clubbed demonstrators and bystanders in downtown
Chicago. The protesters chanted, “The whole world is
watching.” As television cameras broadcast the brutal
scene to homes across the nation, the image of the
Democrats as the party of disorder was etched in the
minds of millions of Americans.
Nixon and the Republicans
The Republicans presented themselves as the
party of stability. According to writer Norman Mailer,
the Republican convention in Miami was a “convention
The Whole World Watched Democratic delegates, reporters,
and ordinary citizens, as well as demonstrators, were attacked by police and members of the National Guard. What
effect did the violence in Chicago have on Humphrey’s chances
in the coming presidential election?
of the clean, the brisk, the orderly, the efficient”——
a marked contrast to the Democratic convention.
Republican delegates quickly picked Richard Nixon,
the former Vice President, to once again be their candidate for President.
Just six years earlier, Nixon’s political career seemed
dead. In 1962 after losing the race for governor of California, Nixon had announced that he was retiring from
politics, telling reporters, “You won’t have Nixon to kick
around anymore.” Richard Nixon was a fighter, not a
quitter. Now he was making a comeback.
A shrewd politician, Richard Nixon saw that the
disorder and violence of the 1960s frightened many
Americans. They were impatient with urban violence and
campus unrest, and they resented the counterculture’s
challenge to traditional values. Nixon would try to
appeal to those who, as one reporter put it, yearned for
SECTION TWO
781
“a kind of Eisenhowerian calm, after the pains and
shocks and tragedies of the Democratic years.”
In his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, Nixon echoed that deep yearning:
domestic violence.” He attacked Johnson’s Great Society, declaring that it was “time to quit pouring billions
of dollars into programs that have failed.” To Americans
weary of the Vietnam War, he promised “peace with
honor.”
s we look at America, we see cities enveloped
in smoke and flame. We hear sirens in the
night. We see Americans hating each other; killing
each other at home. And as we see and hear these
things millions of Americans cry out in anger: Did
we come all this way for this?
—Richard M. Nixon, Republican convention, 1968
A
The Wallace Campaign
Nixon promised to end the turmoil and to protect
the “first civil right of every American . . . to be free from
© C H A R L E S B O N N AY / B L A C K S TA R
The only threat to Nixon’s presidential campaign
came from further right. The conservative governor of
Alabama, George Wallace, was running as the candidate
of the American Independent party. In his campaign for
the presidency, Wallace was attempting to capture the
same conservative voters that Nixon sought——those who
feared school integration, resented the Great Society’s
antipoverty programs, and despised antiwar protesters.
As governor of Alabama, Wallace had once pledged
to enforce “segregation now . . . segregation tomorrow
. . . segregation forever.” As a presidential candidate, he
tried to appeal to the fears and prejudices of blue-collar
workers around the country by lashing out at the “briefcase-totin’ bureaucrats, ivory-tower guideline writers,
bearded anarchists, smart-aleck editorial writers, and
pointy-headed professors looking down their noses at us.”
Wallace called for victory in Vietnam, and he
denounced the antiwar protesters. “If any demonstrator
ever lays down in front of my car,” he pledged to his supporters, “it will be the last car he will ever lay down in
front of.”
Wallace’s popularity climbed as his attacks grew
more shrill. By mid-September, polls showed that he
had won the support of 21 percent of the voters. His
campaign suffered a setback, however, when he picked
Curtis LeMay, a retired air force general, as his running
mate. LeMay frightened even devoted Wallace supporters when he argued that the United States should
“drop nukes on Vietnam.”
The Election
Nixon’s the One Sensing victory as Election Day drew near,
Nixon supporters were jubilant as their candidate arrived to
speak at a campaign rally. What did Nixon pledge to do if he
was elected?
782
CHAPTER 23
THE VIETNAM WAR
By the end of September, polls showed Humphrey
trailing Nixon by 15 percentage points and leading
Wallace by only 7 points. Crippled by his loyalty to
Johnson’s Vietnam policy, Humphrey was falling
further and further behind. In mid-October he tried
to salvage his campaign by calling for a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam. Johnson tried to help by ordering a complete halt to the bombing on October 31.
Humphrey managed to close in on Nixon, but it was
too late. On Election Day Nixon won 43.4 percent of the
popular vote, edging out Humphrey by less than 1 percent. Nearly 14 percent of the voters rejected both the
Republican and Democratic parties and cast their votes
for Wallace.
The 57 percent of voters who supported Nixon or
Wallace signaled the rise of a new conservative major-
P R E S I D E N T I A L E L E C T I O N R E S U LT S, 1 9 6 8
50°N
CANADA
Wash.
9
Oregon
6
40°N
Nevada
3
PACIFIC
OCEAN
Calif.
40
Idaho
4
Wyoming
3
Utah
4
Colorado
6
New
Mexico
4
Arizona
5
30°N
N. Dak.
4
Montana
4
165°W
Oklahoma
8
0
155°W
120°W
La.
10
400 mi.
400 km
145°W
0
250 mi.
20°N
0 250 km
135°W
160°W
110°W
Mass. 14
Ind.
13
Ohio
26
Ky.
9
Tenn.
11
Miss. Ala.
10
7
R.I. 4
W.
Va.
N. J. 17
Del. 3
Md. 10
D.C. 3
Va.
12
N.C.
13
S.C.
8
Ga.
12
155°W
100°W
N
Conn. 8
Pa.
29
Nixon 12
Wallace 1
0
Fla.
14
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
600 mi.
300
0
300
600 km
Albers Equal-Area projection
Gulf of Mexico
Hawaii
4 22°N
0
Ark.
6
N.H. 4
3
@@
;;
Mich.
21
Ill.
26
Mo.
12
N.Y.
43
PARTY
60°N
20°N
55°N
Wis.
12
Iowa
9
Kansas
7
MEXICO
Alaska
3
Minn.
10
Nebraska
5
Texas
25
70°N
65°N
S. Dak.
4
Maine
4
Vt.
ELECTORAL VOTE
POPULAR VOTE
Republican: Nixon-Agnew
301
31,785,480
Democratic: Humphrey-Muskie
191
31,275,166
American Independent: Wallace-LeMay
46
9,906,473
90°W
80°W
70°W
Nixon defeated Humphrey by half a million votes, ushering in a new era of conservative presidential politics. “In city after city,”
one observer noted, “racial conflicts had destroyed the old alliance. The New Deal had unraveled block by block.” Where did Nixon
obtain most of his support? Where was Wallace particularly strong?
ity. Since the election of 1964, the Democrats had
lost nearly 12 million voters, including many in the
once solidly Democratic South. The New Deal coalition,
or alliance, of liberals, African Americans, and Southern
whites was finally shattered over two divisive issues——
civil rights and the war in Vietnam. Many of those
who abandoned the Democrats felt that the party’s
social reforms——particularly the push for civil rights——
had gone too far and that the Democrats had failed in
Vietnam.
Some observers interpreted the election as a sign
that the American political system was still alive and
healthy. One British journalist noted, “The enormous
power of the presidency passed peacefully from one man
to another [despite] the fear that the country was coming apart.”
The outcome of the 1968 election, however, disheartened others. For them, Nixon’s election signaled
more than just the end of a liberal era, a time when government power was used to promote social progress.
It marked a defeat for those who had tried to work within the American political system to bring about racial
equality, economic justice, and an end to the war in
Southeast Asia.
Section Assessment
Main Idea
1. Use a diagram like this one to show some of the
events in 1968 that made the year a turning point
in American history.
1968 Turning
Point in History
Vocabulary
2. Define: conservative era, liberal era.
Checking Facts
3. What was the Tet offensive?
4. What were some of the effects of the 1968
assassinations of King and Kennedy?
Critical Thinking
5. Synthesizing Information Why did Johnson
deny the request by General Westmoreland for
an additional 206,000 troops?
SECTION TWO
783
CULTURE
EXPRESS YOURSELF


Wearing buttons or patches
and attaching bumper stickers
to one’s car were popular and
visual ways to express opinions
on issues of the day.
FILE PHOTO BY DOUG
MINDELL
PHO
FILE
FF
Y JE
TO B
WILL
S
TIME
An Era of Consciousness
By the early 1970s, millions of Americans––especially
those on college campuses––were protesting the ills
of society. Attitudes concerning authority, politics, the
environment, and many traditional American values
shifted dramatically during this period. The entire
society, it seemed, was under siege.
© BILL PIERCE/SYGMA
© BERNARD GOTFRYD/WOODFIN CAMP
MUSIC AND POLITICS
The lyrics of many songs revealed strong antiwar and antiestablishment sentiments. “I-FeelLike-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag,” sung by Country
Joe and the Fish, described the threat of the
draft and service in Vietnam.
E A R T H D AY
A new awareness of the environment and the limits
of our natural resources was emerging. The first Earth
Day on April 20, 1970, celebrated this new national
consciousness and brought environmental concerns
into the political mainstream.
784
C U LT U R E O F T H E T I M E
PROM NIGHT
While thousands of students
protested on campuses and in
the streets, many other young
men and women were more
concerned about less political
issues such as going to school,
getting a job, and finding a date
for the prom.
THE SMALL SCREEN
In 1971 a brash new series,
All in the Family, debuted.
Many of the period’s conflicts
were highlighted by the show’s
characters: outspoken, bigoted
Archie Bunker, the husband;
conservative, peacemaking
Edith, his wife; and their
daughter, Gloria, and liberal
son-in-law, Michael.
MOVI
E ST
ILL
ARCH
IVES
C U LT U R E O F T H E T I M E
785
SECTION
3
The War at Home
FA L L 1 9 6 4 : B E R K E L E Y S T U D E N T S D E M A N D R I G H T T O F R E E S P E E C H
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
Mario Savio, a 21-year-old
United States corporations.
student at the Berkeley
Students were treated not as
campus of the University of
human beings but as products
California, sent a letter to
rolling off an assembly line, diploa friend in August of 1964.
ma in hand. He called on his
“I’m tired of reading about
fellow students to resist:
history,” he wrote. “I want to
here is a time when the
make it.” Savio got his chance
operation of the mathat fall when he returned to
chine becomes so odious,
Berkeley. Uneasy about student
makes you so sick to heart,
activism, university officials had
that . . . you’ve got to put
banned on-campus recruitment
your bodies upon the gears
for off-campus political activities.
Student Movement Launched
and upon the wheels . . . and
Led by Savio, a group of students
Mario Savio was suspended from school for
you’ve got to make it stop.
founded the Berkeley Free
organizing student protests.
—Mario Savio,
Speech Movement (FSM) to
December 2, 1964
protest the ban.
Inspired by Savio’s speech, more than 1,000
On December 2, nearly 6,000 students rallied on
students marched into Sproul Hall and staged a sit-in.
the steps of Sproul Hall, the administration building
This was the first, but by no means the last, time
of the university. Folksinger Joan Baez joined the
students would use civil disobedience to press their
throng, singing the civil rights anthem, “We Shall
demands on campus. Just after 3:00 A.M., police began
Overcome.” Savio stirred the students to action with
clearing the building, arresting nearly 800 demona fiery speech. Universities, he claimed, had become
strators.
vast knowledge factories serving only the interests of
T
Guide to Reading
786
Main Idea
Vocabulary
Read to Find Out . . .
Student protests and uncensored media coverage
brought the war in Vietnam
home to the United States as
internal dissent and government crackdowns rocked the
nation.
CHAPTER 23
draft
deferment
conscientious objector
hawk
dove
THE VIETNAM WAR
the causes and goals of the student
movement.
reasons the antiwar movement
became more diverse.
how the media shaped public opinion
on the war.
Making of an Activist Generation, 1946–1974
1946
First year in which
birthrates increased.
1945
1951
First baby boomers
enter first grade.
1957
Height of baby boom—
4.3 million births
1950
1955
Median Family Income
12
1964
First boomers
graduate from high
school.
1960
1965
The Baby Boomers
25–29 years old in 1974
Median Family Income (in thousands)
10
4.1%
2.8%
10.7%
1.2%
16.9%
8
6
1961
Peace Corps established
1962
John Glenn orbits the earth
1963
JFK assassinated
1964
Great Society programs
launched
1966
NOW established
1968
Robert F. Kennedy and
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
assassinated
1969
Highest numbers of troops in
Vietnam
1969
Moon Landing
1969
Woodstock Festival
4
49.6%
61.2%
36.5%
2
Less than 5 years of school
More than 5 years of school, but not high school graduate
0
1950
Years
1960
1970
High school graduate with some college
1970
Boomer’s Calendar
Highest Education Level Attained
Before the Boom
25–29 years old in 1960
1968
First boomers
graduate from
college.
Four years of college or more
The population increased by 19 million in the 1940s and by almost 30 million in the 1950s. The number of births per thousand
women peaked in 1957. How many babies were born in 1957?
In the days following the arrests, nearly 70 percent
of Berkeley students protested. They picketed administration buildings brandishing signs that read Shut This
Factory Down and I Am a U.C. Student: Do Not Fold,
Bend, or Mutilate.
University officials eventually backed down. In early
1965 they lifted the ban on campus political activity. By
1965, however, student protests had spread like wildfire
across the nation’s campuses. Unlike the “silent generation”
of the 1950s, the rebellious students of the 1960s became
outspoken critics of American society. At first, their protests
focused on students’ rights. Soon a new issue would arise
to fuel student passions—–the war in Vietnam.
The Student Movement
Student Activism Emerges in the Early 1960s
The students who protested at Berkeley were children of the post–World War II baby boom. Having
grown up in the 1950s, they were now attending college
in unprecedented numbers. In 1950 only 1 million young
Americans attended college. By 1960 that number had
jumped to 4 million. By the end of the decade, nearly 8
million students flooded the nation’s campuses.
Raised in the prosperity of the postwar years, the
college students of the 1960s had grown up in economic
security, free of the worries that had troubled their
Depression-era parents. Seventy-five percent of them
came from families with incomes above the national
average. Mostly white and middle class, student activists
could afford to be idealistic and rebellious.
A youthful President Kennedy, who appealed to
young Americans in 1961 to “ask not what your country
can do for you—–ask what you can do for your country,”
stirred their idealism. Thousands responded, joining the
Peace Corps and VISTA, its domestic counterpart.
Others, like Mario Savio, joined the civil rights movement. Inspired by African Americans who risked their
lives in the struggle for racial equality, nearly 1,000 Northern white students volunteered for SNCC’s Mississippi
Freedom Summer Project in 1964. As the white volunteers journeyed south, they got a firsthand look at racism
and poverty in the United States. They returned to
their Northern campuses that fall schooled in the techniques of nonviolent civil disobedience and determined
to fight injustice.
Only a minority of American college students joined
the protest movement. At the height of campus unrest
in 1970, only 12 percent identified themselves as part of
the radical New Left. The majority of students joined
SECTION THREE
787
© P. J O N E S G R I F F I T H S / M A G N U M P H O T O S
fraternities and sororities, cheered at football games, and
majored in subjects that they hoped would help them
earn a good living after college. Although they rejected
radical politics, many of these students still shared the
activists’ concerns about students’ rights, civil rights, and
the war in Vietnam.
Although the student rebels were a minority, they
were vocal and attended some of the nation’s top universities. Their protests would draw increasing attention
as the decade progressed.
Students for a Democratic Society
One of the earliest radical student groups was the
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Formed by a
small group of students at the University of Michigan in
1960, SDS formed the core of the New Left, a rebirth of
radical American politics. Disillusioned with liberalism,
members of the New Left believed that problems such
as racism and war could only be solved through sweeping changes in American society.
In June 1962, 60 members of SDS from a dozen
campuses met at Port Huron, Michigan, to draft what
they called an agenda for a generation. It began: “We are
people of this generation, bred in at least modest
comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.”
Written for the most part by Tom Hayden, a 22-yearold student from the University of Michigan, the document went on to spell out the ills afflicting the United
States. The United States, Hayden argued, was controlled
by massive government, corporate, and educational
bureaucracies that left individuals powerless. As a cure
SDS envisioned a radical movement to bring about
“participatory democracy,” in which citizens would seize
control over decisions affecting their lives.
The Port Huron Statement signaled the political
awakening of a generation of students and the beginning of an era of student activism. As SDS member
Sharon Jeffrey recalled, “It was exalting. We felt that
we were different, and that we were going to do things
differently. . . . It felt like the dawn of a new age.”
Protesting the War
At first SDS tackled domestic issues. In the summer
of 1964, SDS volunteers moved into poor urban neighborhoods and organized residents to fight for jobs,
better housing, schools, and community services.
By the fall of 1964, SDS had organized chapters on
nearly 50 campuses around the country. Then a new
issue loomed—–the war in Vietnam. At its December 1964
national convention, SDS members voted to protest the
war by organizing a march on Washington for the
following April. Because United States involvement in
Vietnam was still limited to military advisers and aid,
788
CHAPTER 23
THE VIETNAM WAR
A National Organization SDS members at Yale University
mobilized antiwar activities on campus. How many members
did SDS have in 1965?
opposition to the war remained muted. No one expected
more than a few thousand marchers. Then President
Johnson began to escalate the United States commitment to South Vietnam.
When Johnson ordered the large-scale bombing of
North Vietnam in 1965 and sent in the first combat
troops, the antiwar movement mushroomed. Some
Americans felt betrayed by Johnson, whom they
had considered a peace candidate in 1964. SDS now
led a crusade to end the war in Vietnam. Within a
single year, the ranks of SDS had swollen to more than
150 chapters with 10,000 members.
On April 17, more than 20,000 people crowded
around the Washington Monument for the SDS antiwar
march—–the first of increasingly massive, and eventually
more militant, protests. Folksinger Judy Collins sang
“The Times They Are A-Changin’.” The words seemed
prophetic:
ome senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall.
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled.
There’s a battle
Outside and it’s ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.
C
––Bob Dylan,
“The Times They Are A-Changin’,” 1963
During the Vietnam War, thousands of defiant young
men challenged the idea that citizens have a military
obligation to their country. “The war in Vietnam is criminal and we must act together, at great individual risk,
to stop it,” the resisters declared. They argued that without a draft, the government could not continue to wage
the war.
Some became conscientious objectors, claiming
that their moral or religious beliefs prevented them from
fighting in the war. Others, in defiance of federal law, refused to register for the draft or burned their draft cards.
Protesters harassed campus recruiters for the military
and disrupted campus Reserve Officers’ Training Corps
(ROTC) classes. Some went to jail for refusing to be
drafted. Thousands more fled the country.
As the number of young men called up by the draft
increased from 5,000 per month in 1965 to 50,000 per
month in 1967, the ranks of draft resisters swelled. By
the fall of 1966, more than 3 dozen draft resistance
groups had sprung up on college campuses around the
country.
That spring SDS also helped organize several university teach-ins. The first teach-ins took place at the
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. On March 24,
1965, shortly after the first United States ground combat troops landed in South Vietnam, more than 3,500
students and professors jammed into 4
lecture halls. They sang folk songs,
analyzed United States foreign policy,
The Draft in the Vietnam Era
and debated the war until dawn. In the
The Selective Service System was created in 1940 to administer the draft. Before that, the
following weeks, similar teach-ins sprang
United States had only a volunteer military in peacetime. During the Vietnam era a network of
up at campuses across the nation.
some 3,700 local draft boards classified and drafted nearly 2.5 million men.
Resisting the Draft
Opposition to the war led some
students to resist the draft, a system of
selecting individuals for military service.
Since the early 1950s, all 18-year-old
men had been required to register for
the draft. In theory all those who registered were eligible to serve in the armed
forces if needed. Individuals could be
given deferments, or postponements
of military service, however, due to their
health or occupation. College students
were among those who received deferments in large numbers during the
Vietnam War.
Critics of the draft pointed out that,
partly because of college deferments, the
burden of the war fell unfairly on the
poor, the working class, and minorities.
Poor and working-class men were twice
as likely to be drafted and, if drafted,
twice as likely to fight as men from the
middle class. African Americans made
up 18 percent of those drafted to fight in
Vietnam, although they were only 10 percent of the nation’s population.
Registration
All United States males had to register within 5 days of their 18th birthday.
Classification
Local draft board made
classification decisions
based on questionnaires
completed by registrants.
Eligible Classification
Main Ineligible
Classifications
1A-O: Conscientious
objector for noncombatant service only
2-S: Service deferred:
enrolled in college
2-A: Service deferred:
civilian occupation
3-A: Service deferred:
has children
4-A: Exempt: completed military duty
4-F: Disqualified:
physical or mental
reasons
Appeal
Registrants had the
right to appeal
classification at a
hearing.
Failure
Registrant failed
physical.
1-A: Available for military service
Physical Exam
Registrants were
given preinduction
physicals.
Induction
Based on quotas to
fill, draft boards sent
induction notices to
selected men.
A soldier had a 1-year tour of duty in Vietnam. What are 2 ways a young man
could avoid serving in the military?
SECTION THREE
789
VIETNAM TOUR OF DUTY
The largest generation in American history came of age during the Vietnam era. Many young
men enlisted in the military, while others sought to avoid service through deferments or draft
evasion. Most of those in the military were drafted through the Selective Service System.
28 million males came of draft age
Approximately
8 million
served in the
military
= 1 million men
Approximately
2.1 million
served in
Vietnam
1.6 million
served in
combat
57,000 were
killed
270,000 were
wounded
00 miles
10,0
Travis
AFB
Cam Ranh Bay
N.Y.
ximately 2,500 miles
appro
Pa.
To Travis AFB
in California
for transport
to Vietnam
Md.
Conn.
home
Fort Dix, N.J.
Va.
N.C.
Fort Jackson, S.C.
States from
which Fort Dix
drew trainees
COMBAT DUTY
TRAINING
Day 1
Arrive at Fort Dix, N.J., one of the army’s 6 basic
training centers, for 8 weeks.
Camouflaged
helmet or “pot”
Smoke grenade
Week 1
Orientation. Receive supplies, physical, inoculations,
haircut. Learn how to salute, make bed to military
specifications. Some physical training.
Weeks 2–4
Continue military and physical training.
Begin drilling.
Weeks 5–6
Combat squad assignment for final drills and
testing. Graduation.
Weeks 8–16
Advanced combat training at a site such as
Fort Jackson, S.C.
30-day leave. Report to assigned air force base.
Military or charter flight to Cam Ranh Bay,
Vietnam. Assignment to combat or other
division.
Week 1
Flak jacket
Canteen
Antipersonnel
mine
Rifle-range training.
Weeks 7–8
Day 1
Personal items:
photos, letters,
mementos, etc.
M16 rifle
Total: 50 pounds
or more of gear,
ammunition, food,
and water
Orientation. Assignment to company or
battalion within the division.
Weeks 2–52
Active combat (patrol, search and
destroy, reconnaissance) for several
weeks followed by short rest periods,
security operations, or training. One
week rest and recreation near end
of tour.
End of week 52
Sign up for additional 6-month tour
followed by stateside leave or ship out.
If 2-year military commitment is up,
return home. If not, assignment to other
duties, but not Vietnam.
A typical soldier was armed with an M16 rifle, a smoke grenade, and a claymore––an antipersonnel mine. How many men were
sent to Vietnam?
Opposition to the War
Protesters Become More Diverse
Along with the increasing number of United States
troops in Vietnam, the antiwar movement also grew.
Religious groups, peace groups, antinuclear groups,
civil rights groups, and women’s groups joined the students in protesting the war.
In February 1967, more than 2,500 members of
Women Strike for Peace, most of them middle-class
homemakers, stormed the Pentagon demanding to see
“the generals who send our sons to Vietnam.” When
refused entrance, the women began pounding on the
790
CHAPTER 23
THE VIETNAM WAR
doors with their shoes. Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara eventually ordered that the women be
allowed to enter and present their petition to an aide.
Huge antiwar rallies in the spring of 1967 drew hundreds of thousands of protesters to New York City and
San Francisco. Marching alongside the students were
Americans from all walks of life: priests, businesspeople, and mothers pushing children in strollers.
Antiwar protests grew as more and more Americans
demonstrated a willingness to risk arrest in acts of civil
disobedience protesting the war. The SDS rallying cry
became “From Protest to Resistance.” Thousands
responded in what organizers called a dramatic confrontation between the “people” and the “warmakers,”
the March on the Pentagon. On October 21, 1967, more
than 50,000 protesters crowded onto the Pendents rallied to protest university ties to miltagon steps where armed troops awaited.
itary research. They also objected to a uniScores of young men burned their draft
versity plan to build a gym on public
cards as supporters chanted, “Burn cards,
parkland in a nearby Harlem neighbornot people ! ” Some protesters, pleading
hood.
with the troops to join them, placed flowWhen university officials refused to lisers in the barrels of the rifles. Hunten to student demands, the protest
F
I
L
E
P
H
O
T
O
B
Y
R
A
L
P
H
J
.
B
R
U
N
K
E
dreds of protesters were arrested,
escalated. Led by the SDS and the
and many were beaten.
students’ Afro-American Society,
A Soldier’s Voice Opinions on the war
Key leaders, too, began to critithe protesters took over five univerwere visible at home and on the batcize the war in 1967. Senator William
sity buildings, including the office of
tlefield. What message was this soldier
Fulbright, once a supporter of the
the university president. “We are
trying to convey with his helmet sticker?
war, held a series of televised hearfighting to recapture a school from
ings in which critics of the war anabusiness and war,” wrote student
lyzed United States policy. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
James Kunen, “and rededicate it to learning and life.”
pointed out that each dollar spent in Vietnam was one
A week later New York City police officers stormed
dollar less for social reform at home. By early 1966 the
the buildings to arrest the students and drag them off to
federal government was pouring nearly $2 billion a month
waiting police vans.
into Vietnam—–more than the Johnson administration
ever spent in a single year on the war on poverty.
War Divides the Nation
The Media and the War
Coverage Sways Public Opinion
The antiwar protesters gained a powerful ally as
the war continued on—–the mass media. Television,
especially, played an important role in molding public
opinion. Satellite technology meant that the war could
be broadcast at home almost as it happened. The
scenes of brutal fighting, desperate refugees, and dying
United States soldiers shocked the more than 60 million
Americans who tuned in to the nightly news.
© BURT GLINN/MAGNUM PHOTOS
By 1967 the United States was deeply divided over
the war. Hawks, those who supported the war, urged
stepping up the war effort to win a military victory.
Doves, those who supported the withdrawal of United
States troops and a negotiated end to the war, questioned
both the cost and the morality of the war.
Many Americans were neither hawks nor doves but
were disturbed both by the war and the protests against
it. A December 1967 poll showed that 70 percent of
Americans believed the protests were “acts of disloyalty”
to the soldiers fighting the war. As the war raged on,
however, many became convinced that the United States
was hopelessly bogged down in an unwinnable war. That
frustration could be heard in the words of one Iowa homemaker: “I want to get out, but I don’t want to give up.”
Bringing the War Home
In the aftermath of the Tet offensive, public opinion
on the war shifted dramatically. In early January 1968,
hawks outnumbered doves by 62 to 22 percent. By
March the number of hawks had fallen to 41 percent,
while the number of doves had climbed to 42 percent.
Antiwar protests increased in size and number on the
nation’s campuses. From January to June 1968, nearly
40,000 students at more than 100 colleges staged protests.
Though most protests were peaceful, violence occasionally erupted.
The most violent uprising took place that spring at
Columbia University in New York City and reflected the
growing militancy of SDS. The protest at Columbia
linked two potent issues—–civil rights and the Vietnam
War. At noon on Tuesday, April 23, more than 600 stu-
Support for the War The message on the banner in this
photo captures the sentiment that war protests were “acts of
disloyalty” to the fighting soldier. How do you think you would
feel about antiwar protesters if you knew someone who was a
POW?
SECTION THREE
791
In contrast with earlier wars, the military did not
censor the press in Vietnam. Reporters and photographers easily got press passes and tramped through the
muddy jungle, side by side with American patrols. In
1968, at the height of United States involvement, 800
reporters covered the Vietnam War.
Early Reporting on the War
During the early years of the war, most reporters
agreed that the United States was fighting the spread
of communism and that South Vietnam deserved and
needed American support. They applauded South Vietnamese leader Diem. In June 1960, Newsweek called him
“one of Asia’s ablest leaders.”
A More Critical Press
B I L L R AY / L I F E M A G A Z I N E , © T I M E , I N C .
After the Tet offensive in early 1968, however,
respected reporters such as Walter Cronkite began to
raise serious questions about the war. After a trip to
Saigon in 1968, Cronkite told viewers, “To say we are
closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the
evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the
past.” Such reports undercut official optimism and eroded public support for the war.
Reporters not only questioned official reports that
the war could be won but also raised more fundamental questions: Should the United States be in Vietnam?
Was Vietnam worth the cost? In the wake of Tet, James
Reston, a columnist for the New York
Times, asked: “What is the end that
justified this slaughter? How will we
save Vietnam if we destroy it in the
battle?”
The media also brought home the
immense tragedy of the war—–its cost
in human lives. In June 1969, Life
magazine published the photos of
242 Americans who had been killed in
1 week in Vietnam. Their young faces
served as a reminder that the nightly
casualty figures represented real people—–the sons, brothers, husbands, and
fathers of those at home.
The My Lai Massacre
The War Touches Home A boy stops to watch the funeral of Private First Class
Robert Damian Wuertz, Jr., the first casualty of war from Massillon, Ohio. Give an
example of how the media brought home the personal cost of the war.
792
CHAPTER 23
THE VIETNAM WAR
One of the most shocking incidents of the war surfaced in November 1969. Journalist Seymour Hersh
discovered that, in March 1968, United States forces under the command
of Lieutenant William L. Calley, Jr.,
had massacred nearly 350 Vietnamese
civilians in the village of My Lai.
Americans read the account of 22year-old Private Paul Meadlo: “We
huddled them up. We made them
squat down. . . . I poured about four
clips into the group. . . . The mothers
was hugging their children. . . . Well,
we kept right on firing.”
Lieutenant Calley was courtmartialed and sentenced to life imprisonment. Though the actions of
the United States forces shocked
Americans everywhere, some felt a
certain amount of sympathy for Calley, who claimed he was “following a
direct order.” The military eventually
reduced Calley’s sentence.
J O H N PA U L F I L 0 / L I F E M A G A Z I N E , © T I M E I N C .
Nixon and the
Antiwar Movement
Nixon Seeks to Silence Protesters
Public pressure had made the Vietnam War a key
issue during the 1968 election. President Johnson had
been forced out of the race for his failed Vietnam policies. Richard Nixon had been elected President in part
because he promised an end to the unpopular war.
In June 1969, President Nixon announced that he
would start bringing United States troops home as part
of his plan to “Vietnamize” the war. The fighting continued, however, and so did the protests. On October 1,
nearly 2 million Americans across the nation demonstrated for peace in Vietnam. One month later more
than 300,000 protesters flooded Washington, D.C., taking their plea for peace to the White House. By the end
of the year, doves outnumbered hawks on college campuses by 3 to 1.
To rally support for his policies, President Nixon
appealed to what he called the silent majority. In a
November 3 speech, he declared that a minority now
threatened the nation’s security “by mounting demonstrations in the streets.” “North Vietnam cannot defeat
or humiliate the United States,” Nixon insisted. “Only
Americans can do that.” To fend off this “enemy” at
home, Nixon appealed “to you, the great silent majority
of my fellow Americans—–I ask for your support.”
Conflict over the war would come to a head the
following spring. A new wave of demonstrations and
violence would rock the country and cause many on both
sides of the issue to fear for the nation’s future.
The War Comes Home
On April 30, 1970, President Nixon announced that
he had ordered United States troops to invade Vietnam’s neutral neighbor, Cambodia, to clean out Communist bases there. His expansion of the war soon led
to massive protests across the country.
The Cambodian invasion outraged students at
Ohio’s Kent State University. Two days after the President’s announcement, they surrounded the campus
ROTC building, pelting it with firecrackers and rocks.
Then they burned it to the ground. In response Ohio
Governor James Rhodes called members of the National Guard to Kent State on May 3.
The next day at noon, about 600 students held a
peaceful protest on the Kent State campus commons. A
campus police officer bellowed through a bullhorn: “This
assembly is unlawful! This is an order—–disperse immediately!”
A Different Kind of Violence A shocked young woman kneels
beside the body of a Kent State student killed by a National
Guard member’s bullet. What prompted the student protest at
Kent State?
The students refused to leave. Some lobbed stones
and sticks at the soldiers, shouting, “Pigs off campus!” In
reply the troops hurled tear gas at the students. Then
their commander ordered, “Prepare to move out and
disperse this mob.”
The members of the National Guard, many as
young and nervous as the students they confronted,
pointed their bayonets at the demonstrators and marched
toward them. Choking and weeping from the tear gas,
dozens of students fled. A group of soldiers retreated
to the top of a nearby hill. Suddenly they turned, raised
their rifles, and fired into the crowd.
“My God,” a girl screamed, “they’re killing us!” Seconds later, nine students had been wounded, and four
students were dead. None of them were radical activists.
One was an ROTC student, and two had simply been
crossing the campus on their way to lunch.
The soldiers claimed they had fired in self-defense.
A later investigation found otherwise, declaring the
action of the National Guard “unwarranted and inexcusable.”
Public reaction following the shootings revealed just
how deeply divided the country was during the 1960s.
Some Americans blamed the students for the violence
at Kent State. They resented the college students for
HISTORY
Student Web Activity 23
Visit the American Odyssey Web site at
americanodyssey.glencoe.com and click on Chapter
23—Student Web Activities for an activity relating to
the Vietnam War era.
SECTION THREE
793
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
their privileges, their countercultural values, and their
rebelliousness. Other people condemned the government. The grief-stricken father of Allison Krause, one of
the slain students, asked, “Is this dissent a crime? Is this
a reason for killing her?”
Jackson State
Violence flared again a week later at the nearly
all-African American college of Jackson State in
Mississippi. An outbreak of vandalism in downtown
Jackson prompted local officials to call in 500 National
Guard troops to back up 80 state highway patrol
officers and 125 city police officers.
On the evening of May 14, rocks and bottles began
to fly in downtown Jackson, and a city truck was set on
fire. At 10:30 P.M., police, highway patrol officers, and
National Guard troops approached the nearby campus
where students had gathered. Suddenly a bottle crashed
near an officer. Without warning, police and highway
patrol officers opened fire. The hail of bullets lasted
nearly 30 seconds; 12 students were wounded, and 2
were killed, both innocent bystanders.
The End of a Decade
794
CHAPTER 23
THE VIETNAM WAR
Jackson State A total of 230 bullet holes riddled Alexander
Hall, a women’s dormitory at Jackson State. Why do you
think the authorities reacted so violently to student unrest?
Section Assessment
Main Idea
1. Use a diagram like this one to write and support
a generalization on how student protests and
media coverage affected public opinion of the war.
Generalization
ting
por
Sup etails
D
The protests after the Cambodian invasion marked
the climax of a decade of student protest. Although some
protests would continue until the war ended in 1973, the
massive demonstrations of the 1960s were over. Their
failure to end the war frustrated many students. One of
the pioneers of the student movement, SDS, splintered
into smaller extremist groups such as the militant
Weathermen. Other students gave up political action
altogether.
Government harassment of the New Left also took
a toll. Although prohibited by law from spying on
American citizens, the Central Intelligence Agency
collected files on 7,200 Americans. Federal Bureau of
Investigation agents secretly joined leftist groups and
triggered feuds between members or instigated violent
encounters with the police. Racked by internal dissent
and weakened by government crackdowns, the New
Left fell apart as the war in Vietnam wound down and
United States troops returned home.
Although the student movement failed in its goal of
radically transforming United States society, it did succeed in effecting change. The antiwar protests helped to
force a shift in United States policy. The campus demonstrations brought about reforms in how universities were
governed and enlarged students’ role in campus life.
The radicalism of students during the 1960s alarmed
many Americans and fueled growing conservatism.
Along with inner-city riots, assassinations, and the Vietnam War, widespread campus unrest seemed to be a sign
that something was deeply wrong with the country.
Vocabulary
2. Define: draft, deferment, conscientious objector,
hawk, dove.
Checking Facts
3. Why did many students shift their attention from
domestic issues to antiwar activities?
4. Why was the Vietnam War a “living room war”?
Critical Thinking
5. Determining Relevance How did the lyrics of
“The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” reflect the
goals of many New Left groups?
Social Studies Skill
U N D E R S TA N D I N G P U B L I C O P I N I O N P O L L S
© C O S TA M A N O S / M A G N U M P H O T O S
Learning the Skill
Public opinion polls have become a major factor in
political life. For example, eroding public support for the
war in Vietnam was a key factor in President Johnson’s
decision not to seek reelection in 1968. Polls, however,
can only offer a snapshot of public opinion at one point
in time, and only about the specific questions asked.
A public opinion poll should collect information in an
objective and scientific way. Pollsters often use “random
sampling,” a method that employs the mathematical
rules of probability, to obtain a representative segment
of the population for questioning—called a “sample.”
Sampling allows pollsters to infer something about a
whole group by looking closely at a small part of it. Before
pollsters can make inferences from their data, however,
they must account for a “margin of error” in their sampling.
Questions must be written so the pollsters will find out
what they want to know without influencing the results.
Questions should be phrased to be as neutral as possible.
Knowing how to read and understand data from a
public opinion poll will help you judge what other citizens are thinking and feeling about people, issues, and
events of the day.
Use these steps to analyze a public opinion poll:
a. Look at the date and title for the overall context of
the poll.
b. Look to see who was questioned. How large was the
sample?
Rallying Support Opinions about the war varied among students. What is the opinion of these students about the war?
Practicing the Skill
Look carefully at the poll results shown on this
page and answer the following questions:
1. What is this poll about?
2. Is the question phrased objectively?
c. Read the questions carefully and decide whether
they were phrased in an unbiased way.
3. What is the sample size?
d. State the numerical results in sentence form.
5. State the numerical results in sentence form.
Find a public opinion poll in a newspaper or
magazine, and use the questions above to analyze
the results.
Public Opinion Poll, March 1969
What do you think the United States should do next in regard to the
Vietnam War situation?
Margin of error: 3–4 percentage points
Sample size: 1,500*
Escalate war (go all-out)
32%
Pull out (let South Vietnamese take over)
26%
Continue present policy (work for cease-fire at
Paris, stay in Vietnam as long as necessary)
19%
End the war as soon as possible
19%
Other
*Twenty-one percent expressed no opinion.
4. What is the margin of error?
4%
Applying the Skill
Pick an issue that concerns students in your
school. Develop a nonbiased question to poll opinion on this issue. Then randomly select a sample
population, conduct the poll, and tally results in a
chart. State the results in sentence form.
The Glencoe Skillbuilder Interactive
Workbook, Level 2 CD-ROM provides
more practice in key social studies skills.
SOCIAL STUDIES SKILL
795
SECTION
4
Ending the War
N O V E M B E R 1 3 – 1 5 , 1 9 6 9 : P R O T E S T E R S D E M A N D A N E N D T O WA R
© BONNIE FREER
During the evening of
she spoke the name of her husThursday, November 13,
band, Lieutenant Donald G.
thousands of people assemDroz, who had been killed in
bled outside the gates
Vietnam the previous April.
of Virginia’s Arlington
Behind her, in turn, another
National Cemetery. Across
woman angrily shouted out her
the Potomac River lay Washingdead brother’s name. Hour by
ton, D.C. The lights of the capihour, 1 by 1, they came. Fortytal twinkled in the distance as the
five thousand marchers, 45,000
group stood in the darkness and
names—–through 2 nights and
biting cold.
days, the March Against Death
In single file the protesters
continued.
A Solemn Moment
set off to walk the four miles
On Saturday, November 15,
Each soldier killed in Vietnam is honored.
(6.4 km) across the river to the
2 hours after the last marcher
White House. Each marcher
filed past the White House, nearcarried a lighted candle and a
ly 300,000 Americans swarmed
placard bearing the name of a
around the Washington MonuUnited States soldier killed in Vietnam or of a Vietment. They had journeyed to Washington, D.C., from
namese village destroyed by the war. Six drummers beatall over the nation to protest United States involvement
ing out a funeral march led the way. Just outside the gates
in the Vietnam War. This November mobilization, which
of the White House, each marcher paused for a moment
was the largest demonstration in the nation’s history,
and spoke aloud the name on the placard.
reflected the mushrooming opposition to the war.
The first marcher was Judy Droz, a 23-year-old
The protesters were no longer just long-haired student
widow and the mother of a 10-month-old child. Softly
radicals but ordinary Americans like Judy Droz.
Guide to Reading
796
Main Idea
Vocabulary
Read to Find Out . . .
Faced with increasing pressure to end the war, President
Nixon negotiated a settlement
that, in the end, brought
neither peace to Vietnam nor
honor to the United States.
CHAPTER 23
negotiate
nationalist movement
THE VIETNAM WAR
the steps Nixon took to end the war
in Vietnam.
the terms of the peace accords
negotiated by the United States.
the costs of the Vietnam War.
The Paris Peace Talks
Working Toward Peace
Four Years of Struggle
By the end of the 1960s, Vietnam had become, in
the words of one Nixon aide, “a bone in the nation’s
throat.” By 1969, about 15 years after United States advisers were first sent to Vietnam, more than 36,000 Americans had come home in flag-draped coffins.
Nixon knew he had to end this unpopular war.
During the 1968 campaign, he had claimed to have a
secret plan for ending the war quickly and achieving
peace with honor in Vietnam. The war would drag on,
however, for four more years. In the end the settlement
would bring neither peace to Vietnam nor honor to the
United States.
Peace talks had begun in Paris in 1968 but had yielded few results. Around the table sat representatives of the
United States; its ally, the Thieu government of South
Vietnam; North Vietnam; and its ally, the South Vietnamese Communists, known as the Vietcong. Each side
had interests to protect; neither the Communists nor the
anti-Communists were willing to compromise.
The United States and South Vietnam insisted that
all North Vietnamese forces withdraw from South Vietnam and that the Thieu regime remain in power. The
North Vietnamese and the Vietcong demanded that
United States troops withdraw from South Vietnam and
that a coalition government that included the Vietcong
would replace the Thieu regime.
Nixon sought to continue the peace talks by sending his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, to
Vietnamization
© J A M E S P I C K E R E L L / B L A C K S TA R
Despite pressure to end the war quickly, Nixon was
determined to keep an independent pro–United States
government in South Vietnam and to preserve the
prestige of the United States as the leader of the free
world.
Even the most optimistic military advisers estimated
that it would take eight more years for the United States
to win the war in Vietnam. The President realized that
the American people would never accept eight more
years of war. Public pressure was increasing to bring
American troops home—–now.
In May 1969, Nixon unveiled his secret plan: South
Vietnamese soldiers would be trained and equipped to
take the place of American troops, a process that came
to be known as Vietnamization. As the South Vietnamese took over more of the fighting, United States
troops would start coming home.
Vietnamization was part of a larger shift in
foreign policy, known as the Nixon Doctrine. On an
Asian tour in 1969, Nixon redefined the United
States’s role in Southeast Asia and the rest of the developing nations. The United States would no longer
step in militarily to protect its Asian allies from Communist threats. Although the United States would
continue to provide weapons and financial aid to
Asian nations, in the future they would have to fight
their own wars.
In November 1969, Nixon announced the withdrawal of 60,000 troops from Vietnam. Over the next 3
years, the number of American troops in Vietnam
dropped from more than 500,000 to less than 25,000.
The troop withdrawals, Nixon believed, would help
silence antiwar protesters and buy him time to pursue a
more favorable settlement on the battlefield and in the
Paris peace talks.
Vietnamization United States military officers train South
Vietnamese soldiers to take over more of the fighting in the
war. Why did the concept of Vietnamization become politically
necessary for President Nixon?
SECTION FOUR
797
STEPS TO END THE WAR, 1968–1973
1 9 6 8 Paris peace talks
begin.
1 9 7 1 The “Pentagon
Papers” are published.
1970
1971
1972
➤
negotiate secretly with North Vietnam’s foreign minister, Le Duc Tho. Kissinger, a Jewish refugee who had
escaped Nazi Germany, was a respected professor of
international relations at Harvard University when Nixon
tapped him for government service. Kissinger, a skilled
negotiator, was also ambitious. “What interests me,”
he once said in an interview, “is what you can do with
power.”
Nixon shared that interest. Over the years he relied
more and more on Kissinger alone to help him carry
out foreign policy, eventually appointing him secretary
of state. Convinced that debate would weaken their
ability to negotiate, Kissinger and Nixon kept their
foreign policy moves hidden from the American press,
the public, and even from Nixon’s own cabinet.
1975
1976
withdrew, Nixon ordered the secret bombing of enemy
supply routes and bases in Cambodia, Laos, and North
Vietnam in March 1969. As Nixon confided to aide H.
R. Haldeman:
call it the madman theory, Bob. I want the North
Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point
where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just
slip the word to them that “for God’s sake, you
know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We
can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his
hand on the nuclear button”—and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.
I
—H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power, 1978
The Secret War
One such hidden policy lay at the core of Nixon’s
strategy for winning the war in Vietnam. To force the
North Vietnamese to negotiate as American forces
LARRY BURROWS/LIFE MAGAZINE, © TIME WARNER INC.
United States Fire Power Bombing brought death and
destruction to the neutral countries of Laos and Cambodia.
Why did Nixon begin the secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia?
CHAPTER 23
1974
1972
Paris peace talks continue.
1 9 6 9 Vietnamization and
secret bombing of supply
routes in Laos, Cambodia,
and North Vietnam begin.
798
1973
➤
1969
➤
1968
➤
➤
1967
1 9 7 3 Thieu signs cease-fire.
THE VIETNAM WAR
The bombing raids failed to cut completely the
supply lines or bring the North Vietnamese to the
bargaining table. Instead the attacks spread the war to
Cambodia and Laos. Despite the failure of the air attacks,
Nixon and Kissinger believed that eventually their
strategy would work. For the next four years the
United States would pursue the same carrot-and-stick
policy––tempting North Vietnam with the carrot of
negotiations, and then threatening them with the stick
of escalating war.
A Bigger Stick
More than 3,600 secret bombing missions and
110,000 tons of bombs had failed to wipe out Communist bases in Cambodia. Nixon decided he needed a bigger stick. On April 30, 1970, he went on television to
announce that he was sending United States troops
across the border into Cambodia to attack North Vietnamese bases.
Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and Secretary of
State William Rogers opposed Nixon’s decision. Both
men feared the reaction of the American public. Nixon
insisted, convinced that his bold move would stun the
North Vietnamese and force them to negotiate.
United States Troop Commitment and Public Opposition to the War, 1965–1973
United States Troops in Vietnam, 1965–1973
70
Against United States Involvement (percent)
600
Number of Troops (in thousands)
500
400
300
200
100
0
1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973
Year
Public Opposition to the War
60
50
1965
First U.S. troops
in Vietnam
1973
Cease-fire
signed
1969
First withdrawal
of U.S. troops
40
30
1968
Tet offensive
20
10
0
1965 1966
Year
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
The Vietnam War never had complete public support, but as the war dragged on, opposition increased. In what year did opposition
peak?
The Home Front
Growing Opposition
Nixon hoped to rally support for his policy by making it public. Instead the news provoked widespread
protests. College campuses exploded in demonstrations
and violence as the National Guard fired on and killed
antiwar protesters at Kent State. Local police did the
same at Jackson State.
Despite the public outcry, Nixon and Kissinger
insisted that their strategy would bring the war to an
honorable end. Others disagreed. An editorial in a respected Midwest newspaper argued:
n asking the American people to support the
expansion of the Vietnam war to Cambodia, as he
has already expanded it to Laos, [Nixon] asks them
to believe the same false promises which have
repeatedly betrayed them against their will into ever
deeper involvement on the mainland of Asia.
I
They are asked to seek peace by making war; to
seek withdrawal of our troops by enlarging the
arena of combat; to diminish American casualties
by sending more young men to their death.
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 3, 1970
Further damage to the government’s credibility
came in June 1971, when the New York Times published
the “Pentagon Papers,” a secret Defense Department
study of United States involvement in Vietnam prepared
during the Johnson administration. Leaked to the press
by a former Defense Department analyst, Daniel Ellsberg,
the report offered evidence that in the past the government had lied to the public about the war. Publicly,
American Presidents had insisted that the United States
was fighting to keep South Vietnam free from communism. According to the “Pentagon Papers,” the real reason for pouring troops into Vietnam was to “avoid a
humiliating defeat.” Although there was nothing in the
work damaging to the Nixon administration, the White
House tried to block publication of the report. The
Supreme Court upheld the right of the New York Times
to print the “Pentagon Papers.”
The Final Years of War
The Agony Continues
Despite United States training and billions of dollars in military aid, the South Vietnamese troops proved
unable to defeat the Communist forces. In a disastrous
test of Vietnamization in February 1971, South Vietnamese troops invaded neighboring Laos to cut off the
flow of supplies from North Vietnam to South Vietnam.
Alerted to South Vietnamese battle plans by Vietcong
agents, the North Vietnamese troops crushed the South
Vietnamese forces in just 6 weeks.
Renewed Peace Talks
Finally, in October 1972, talks reopened in Paris.
For the first time in nearly 10 years of war, peace seemed
within reach. The North Vietnamese agreed to drop
SECTION FOUR
799
their demand that a coalition government replace South
Vietnam’s President Thieu. Kissinger, too, offered
critical concessions. The United States would allow
North Vietnamese troops to remain in South Vietnam.
Furthermore the United States would agree to let
the Vietcong play a role in a final political settlement.
A cease-fire agreement was negotiated that called for
the withdrawal of all remaining American troops and
the return of all American prisoners of war.
With the 1972 election approaching, the White
House was eager to reach a firm agreement of peace. A
settlement of the festering war in Vietnam would assure
Nixon’s reelection. Just days before the November election, a beaming Kissinger announced, “Peace is at hand.”
The settlement fell apart, however, when South Vietnamese President Thieu refused to sign the treaty. He
UPI/BETTMANN
knew he was doomed if North Vietnamese troops were
allowed to remain in the South.
Again Nixon used the military to force Hanoi to
negotiate. On December 18, he ordered the bombing of
North Vietnam’s major cities, Hanoi and Haiphong. For
12 days bombers hammered away. The “Christmas”
bombings——the most massive bombings of the war—–laid
waste to homes, hospitals, and factories. Thousands of
civilians were killed. The New York Times called it “diplomacy through terror.”
In January 1973, the North Vietnamese agreed to
return to the bargaining table. It took just one week to
negotiate, that is, to reach an agreement, nearly identical to the one hammered out the previous October.
What broke the stalemate? The bombing had taken its
toll, but even more important was United States pressure on Thieu. Nixon promised that
the United States would “respond
with full force should the settlement
be violated by North Vietnam” and
sent $1 billion in military equipment
to the South Vietnamese. Reassured, Thieu signed the cease-fire.
Although Nixon claimed he
had achieved peace with honor,
many Americans believed that the
agreement brought neither. These
critics pointed out that the same
peace agreement could have been
reached 4 years earlier. In those 4
years approximately 107,000 South
Vietnamese, 500,000 North Vietnamese, and 21,000 more American troops had been killed.
The Fall of Saigon
Fleeing to Safety In the 19 hours before the collapse of the capital, United States
helicopters evacuated more than 7,000 American personnel and selected South
Vietnamese citizens. Why did President Thieu eventually agree to the cease-fire?
800
CHAPTER 23
THE VIETNAM WAR
The peace accords failed to
bring peace to Vietnam. Issues
unresolved by the treaty would be
settled by soldiers on the battlefield,
not politicians in Paris.
Shortly after the last American
troops left in March 1973, the ceasefire collapsed. Fighting broke out
not only in Vietnam but also in Laos
and Cambodia. In March 1975,
North Vietnam launched an offensive against the weakened forces of
South Vietnam. Thieu turned to
Washington for aid, and Congress
refused to grant it.
In April 1975, Communist
troops marched into Saigon. American television audiences watched
©LES STONE/SYGMA
A Sacred Place The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in
Washington, D.C., is made of black granite panels
that carry the names of 58,000 Americans who died
in Vietnam. Visitors come and touch the names of
those they knew and often make a rubbing of a soldier’s name. Why do you think this memorial has had
such an impact on those who have come to visit it?
as desperate South Vietnamese, many of whom had
supported the Americans, scrambled to escape. A
United States Army medic described the turmoil on
an aircraft carrier offshore:
here were people coming out in boats, halfsinking boats. . . . There were all these choppers we had left there; they were using these to fly
out, the Vietnamese. This flight deck was so full of
choppers that we had to push them overboard
because there was no room, we couldn’t get our
own choppers in. . . . It was total chaos.
—Al Santoli, Everything We Had, 1981
T
In the dawn hours of April 30, 1975, Saigon fell to
the Communists; soon after, South Vietnam surrendered
to North Vietnam.
World War II had been shattered. Despite its
wealth and technology, the United States had
been unable to defeat a nationalist movement, the desire of a group of people to be
free of any foreign influence.
The people of Southeast Asia also paid
a great price for the war in Vietnam. More
than 8 million tons of bombs—–the equivalent
of 640 Hiroshimas—–had been dropped on
Southeast Asia. Two million Vietnamese and uncounted Cambodians and Laotians were dead. Their land lay
in ruins; their villages—–to the Vietnamese the heart of
their ancient culture—–had been destroyed.
Section Assessment
Main Idea
1. Use a diagram like this one to show the causes
and effects of the peace accords ending United
States military involvement in Vietnam.
Effects
Causes
Peace
Accords
Vocabulary
2. Define: negotiate, nationalist movement.
The Costs of the War
Thousands of Lives and Billions of Dollars
The nation paid a high price to end the war in Vietnam. More than 58,000 Americans were dead; 300,000
were wounded, many of them permanently disabled.
More than $150 billion had been poured into the war,
while social programs at home went underfunded.
For the first time in history, the United States had
lost a war. The optimism and self-confidence inspired by
Checking Facts
3. Explain the steps Nixon took to end the war.
4. Describe the costs of the war in Vietnam for the
United States and for the people of Southeast
Asia.
Critical Thinking
5. Predicting Consequences What consequences
might have made the Thieu government unwilling to sign a peace treaty that allowed North
Vietnamese troops to remain in South Vietnam?
SECTION FOUR
801
SPORTS: Baseball’s centennial year is one of many changes.
One Day in History
Sunday, July 20, 1969
NASA
MARKET BASKET
Here is where a dollar
will go:
© SUPERSTOCK
Minimum wage
per hour. . . . . . . . . . . . $1.60
Transistor radio . . . . . . $29.95
1 gallon regular gas . . . . . 33¢
Explorer Edwin Aldrin “Beautiful! Beautiful!” exclaimed the astronaut. About seven hours
after landing, both Apollo astronauts began their exploration of the moon.
©
A
& KL
MIA
US/S
UPE
RST
OCK
Body paint kit . . . . . . . . . . . $6
Deodorant . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69¢
Box of cereal. . . . . . . . . . . 27¢
Concert ticket for Newport
Jazz Festival . . . . . . . . $3.50
One-bedroom apartment
at the Watergate,
Washington, D.C. . . $28,000
Hairdryer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $35
802
The Eagle Has Landed!
Man steps on the moon for the first time in history
HOUSTON——At 10:56 P.M. astronaut
Neil Armstrong declared, “That’s one
small step for man, one giant leap for
mankind,” when he took his first cautious steps on the lunar surface. Television cameras mounted on the outside
of the Eagle landing craft recorded
Armstrong’s movements live for the
whole world to watch.
Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin joined Armstrong 15 minutes later for a 2-hour
tour of the moon. They collected samples, took photographs, performed
ONE DAY IN HISTORY
experiments, and radioed their feelings
and findings back to the earth. They
also spoke via telephone link with
President Nixon.
Astronaut Michael Collins was in
the Apollo 11 mother ship in lunar
orbit 70 miles (113 km) above the surface.
Landing on the moon was not easy.
The astronauts had to manually fly
their ship over the rocky surface to find
a level site for their craft in the plain
known as the Sea of Tranquility.
One Day in History, Sunday, July 20, 1969
NATION: Charles Evers was sworn in
UPI/BETTMAN
as the first African American mayor of
Fayette, Mississippi.
© 1968 ELLIOT ERWITT/MAGNUM PHOTOS
Packaged
Politics
NEW YORK——The Selling of the
President (1968), written by 26-yearold reporter Joe McGinniss, is a
shocking, often funny, insider’s
account of how Nixon’s team of
technicians, ghostwriters, and pollsters helped him capture the presidency from Hubert H. Humphrey.
COURTE
LW O R
S Y, W O O
Spending is up as Americans engage in more leisure activities.
P O R AT
TH COR
ION
Pantyhose find an eager market.
Cash registers at restaurants,
movie theaters, concert halls, and
clothing stores are ringing across
the United States. Per capita spending on clothing this year was
$189.96. More surprising was the
increase in entertainment expenditures––$198.86 per person, up
$58.93 from 1965.
Easy Rider, starring Peter Fonda
and Dennis Hopper, is one of the
most popular and controversial
movies of the year. Some moviegoers think the film reflects the fears
and concerns of today’s youth
about national problems; others feel
the movie glorifies drug use and escapism. Many believe it will capture an academy award for Fonda,
son of movie legend Henry Fonda.
Americans
Are Talking
More than
one-half of the 225
million telephones in
service all over the
world are used in the
United States.
© F O T O S I N T E R N AT I O N A L / A R C H I V E P H O T O S
NEW YORK——More women are
making the switch from nylon
stockings to panty hose. Spurred
by the popularity of the miniskirt,
panty hose have found a place in
fashion. Lively designs, colors, and
better fit have also fueled phenomenal growth. Sales rose this year to
624 million pairs, up from 200 million last year.
ENTERTAINMENT
© 1 9 9 5 C L A S S I C P I O PA RT N E R S
Hosiery
Revolution
LIFESTYLE
The hip heroes of Easy Rider find
violence and bigotry on their crosscountry journey.
ONE DAY IN HISTORY
803
Chapter
23
Assessment
HISTORY
7. Explain why the Tet offensive was
a turning point in the war.
2. The Vietnamese used __________
to their advantage in fighting the
Americans.
3. Someone who supported the war
and wanted a military victory was
called a __________ .
4. By the late 1960s, the nation had
entered the __________, in which
many Americans favored limiting
government.
5. The __________ was an accepted
concept during the cold war.
Recalling Facts
1. Identify Ho Chi Minh, his goals,
and his role in the Vietnam War.
2. What happened at Dien Bien
Phu?
3. Why did the United States
support Ngo Dinh Diem?
4. What was the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution?
5. List some of the guerrilla warfare
tactics the Vietcong used.
6. Who was General William
Westmoreland?
804
CHAPTER 23
Johnson Both
Nixon
10. Explain how the media influenced public opinion during the war.
11. What was public reaction to the
shootings at Kent State? At Jackson
State?
12. What impact did student and
other antiwar protest groups have
on government policies both
domestically and in Vietnam?
13. What did the Pentagon Papers
reveal about the government’s motivation for fighting in Vietnam?
14. What concessions did the
United States and the North
Vietnamese make at the Paris peace
talks that finally ended the war?
15. What happened in Vietnam after
the last American troops left?
Portfolio Project
Use books, periodicals, and
newspapers to learn about the
plight of American POWs
(prisoners of war) and MIAs
R
O JEC
(soldiers missing in action) in
Vietnam. Make a time line to
show what the government and private citizens have done on their behalf. Explain at
least two courses of action that one might
take to further the cause of verifying that
prisoners are still in Vietnam and promoting
their return.
RTFOL
IO
1. One way to avoid military service
was to obtain a __________ .
9. What was Richard Nixon’s strategy for winning the presidency in
1968?
P
Choose the vocabulary term that
best completes each sentence below. Write your answers on a separate sheet of paper.
dove
guerrilla warfare
deferment
domino theory
hawk
conservative era
War Strategies
T
Reviewing Key Terms
8. How did Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., link the civil rights movement to his opposition of United
States policy in Vietnam?
PO
Self-Check Quiz
Visit the American Odyssey Web site
at americanodyssey.glencoe.com
and click on Chapter 23—SelfCheck Quiz to prepare for the
Chapter Test.
3. Making Comparisons In a diagram like this one, compare the
plans by Johnson and Nixon to fight
and win the Vietnam War.
Cooperative Learning
made the decision not to run for
re-election in 1968. Determine
whether you believe that President
Johnson’s decision was a good one
or a bad one for him and the country.
Write at least three reasons to support your decision.
Work with your classmates to organize the class into two groups. One
group should contact friends, relatives, or veterans groups to locate
two Vietnam veterans and arrange to
have the veterans visit the class. The
other group should create a list of
questions to ask the veterans. It will
be useful to think about questions
that will help you learn about how
the veterans joined the military, their
combat or other training, their experiences in Vietnam, and their adjustment to civilian life after their return.
2. Identifying Alternatives Imag-
Reinforcing Skills
Critical Thinking
1. Demonstrating Reasoned
Judgment President Johnson
ine that you are a student during the
Vietnam era and you are going to be
drafted into the military. List several
choices you could make in response
to the draft. Explain the advantages
and disadvantages of each possible
decision.
THE VIETNAM WAR
Understanding Public Opinion
Polls Write a brief explanation of
how public opinion polls can affect
government decisions or public policy. Include at least one example
from either the period discussed in
this chapter or the present.
GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
M ek
Physical Map of Southeast Asia
Re
g R.
on
CHINA
d
R.
Dien Bien Phu
NDS
HLA Black
HIG
R.
MYANMAR
(BURMA)
Haiphong
N
ER
H
RT
LAOS
NO
Vientiane
CO
AS
L
a
Phray
S
ND
LA
W
LO
E
NG
RA
C hao
M u n R.
A
T
E
IT
Hue
MALAY
PEN
INS U
LA
Gulf of Thailand
100° E
SOUTH
CHINA SEA
Da Nang
CENTRAL
PLAIN
Bangkok
15° N
N
CAMBODIA
(KAMPUCHEA)
Phnom
Penh
MEKONG
DELTA
105° E
1. When the United States entered
the fighting in Vietnam, leaders
were following the cold war policy
of
A
B
C
D
national liberation.
containment.
pacification.
Vietnamization.
Test-Taking Tip: The clue
phrase in this question is cold war
policy. Remember that the goal of
U.S. foreign policy during the cold
war was to stem the spread of
communism. Identify the term that
best reflects this goal.
Tonle
Sap
Plain
of Reeds
Standardized Test Practice
Hainan
VIETNAM
AN
N
R.
THAILAND
20° N
Gulf of Tonkin
AM
R..
Pi
ng
KORAT
PLATEAU
RED RIVER
DELTA
M eko n g
Yom
R.
Kra
Isthmus
Hanoi
Ho Chi Minh City
(Saigon)
10° N
0
200 mi.
0
200 km
Conic projection
110° E
Study the map to answer the following questions:
1. Do the countries that border Vietnam share any of the same physical
characteristics? Explain.
2. What are the two principal river deltas in Vietnam?
3. What countries share the Northern Highlands?
4. How did the topography of Vietnam affect the kind of battles that
were fought during the war?
5. What clues does the latitude of Vietnam give you about its climate?
How would the climate affect how the war was fought?
Technology Activity
2. The greatest escalation of United
States troops in Vietnam took
place during the administration of
President
A
B
C
D
Eisenhower.
Kennedy.
Johnson.
Nixon.
Test-Taking Tip: This question
requires you to think chronologically
about U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
For example, the number of ground
forces in Vietnam peaked in the late
1960s. Neither Eisenhower nor
Kennedy served then, so you can
rule out answers A and B.
30
25
20
15
10
5
Using a Computerized Card Catalog Use the comput-
0
erized card catalog in your school or local library to
locate information about American attitudes during the
Vietnam War. Find quotes from the late 1960s and early 1970s that
show America’s feelings toward the war. Then use the quotes to create a bulletin board. Include photographs and other memorabilia.
C H A P T E R 23
ASSESSMENT
805