American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Truman’s reaction to poll of fifty experts]: quoted in Phillips, pp. 243-44. [Dewey on overconfidence]: Donovan, p. 437.

  [“Very barbarous”]: Wallace Oral History, p. 72.

  238 [Election results]: Schlesinger, Elections, vol. 4, p. 3211.

  [“A brave man”]: Kirkendall, p. 3099.

  The Spiral of Fear

  [Polling in 1948]: Angus Campbell and Robert L. Kahn, The People Elect a President (Survey Research Center, University of Michigan, 1952); Schlesinger, Elections, vol. 4, pp. 3192-97; Frederick Mosteller et al., The Pre-election Polls of 1948: Report to the Committee on Analysis of Pre-election Polls and Forecasts (Social Science Research Council, 1949); Bernard R. Berelson et al., Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (University of Chicago Press, 1954).

  [1948 as “maintaining election”]: see Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (Norton, 1970); James Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States (Brookings Institution, 1973), chs. 11-12; Kirkendall, p. 3144.

  239-40 [Soviet atomic bomb]: “Announcement by President Truman,” September 23, 1949, in LaFeber, pp. 406-7; see also Herken, chs. 14-15; Yergin, ch. 5 passim: Robert J. Donovan, Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S Truman, 1949-1953 (Norton, 1982), ch. 9; “Reactions of 150,000,000,” Newsweek, vol. 34, no. 14 (October 3, 1949), pp. 25-26.

  240 [Germany in the cold war]: Bruce Kuklick, American Policy and the Division of Germany: The Clash with Russia over Reparations (Cornell University Press, 1972); W. Phillips Davison, The Berlin Blockade: A Study in Cold War Politics (Princeton University Press, 1958); Lucius D. Clay, Decision in Germany (Doubleday, 1950), chs. 19-20 and passim; Avi Shlaim, The United States and the Berlin Blockade, 1948-1949: A Study in Crisis Decision-Making (University of California Press, 1983); Yergin, ch. 14.

  240 [Chinese revolution and the U.S.]: U.S. Department of State, United States Relations with China (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949); Tang Tsou, America’s Failure in China, 1941-1950 (University of Chicago Press, 1963); H. Bradford Westerfield, Foreign Policy and Party Politics: Pearl Harbor to Korea (Yale University Press, 1955), chs. 12, 16; Lewis M. Purifoy, Harry Truman’s China Policy: McCarthyism and the Diplomacy of Hysteria, 1947-1951 (New Viewpoints, 1976); Donovan, Tumultuous Years, chs. 6-7; John K. Fairbank, The United States and China, 4th ed. (Harvard University Press, 1983); Russell D. Buhite, Soviet-American Relations in Asia, 1945-1954 (University of Oklahoma Press, 1981), chs. 1-3; Kenneth S. Chern, Dilemma in China: America’s Policy Debate, 1945 (Archon Books, 1980); Okabe Tatsumi, “The Cold War and China,” in Yonosuke Nagai and Akira Iriye, eds., The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (Columbia University Press/University of Tokyo Press, 1977), pp. 224-51.

  [Korean War]: Joseph C. Goulden, Korea: The Untold Story of the War (Times Books, 1982); David Rees, Korea: The Limited War (St. Martin’s Press, 1964); Ronald J. Caridi, The Korean War and American Politics: The Republican Party as a Case Study (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968); Bevin Alexander, Korea: The First War We Lost (Hippocrene, 1986); Donovan, Tumultuous Years, ch. 8 and parts 3-4 passim; Truman, Trial and Hope, chs. 22-28 passim: David J. Dallin, Soviet Foreign Policy After Stalin (Lippincott, 1961), pp. 60-69; Glenn D. Paige, The Korean Decision (Free Press, 1968); Buhite, ch. 5; Allen Guttmann, ed., Korea: Cold War and Limited War, 2nd ed. (D. C. Heath, 1972); Charles M. Dobbs, The Unwanted Symbol: American Foreign Policy, the Cold War, and Korea, 1945-1950 (Kent State University Press, 1981); Allen S. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu (Macmillan, i960); Strobe Talbott, ed. and trans., Khrushchev Remembers (Little, Brown, 1970-74), vol. 1, ch. 11; Dean Acheson, The Korean War (Norton, 1971); Gaddis, Strategies, ch. 4; John Lewis Gaddis, “Korea in American Politics, Strategy, and Diplomacy, 1945-50,” in Nagai and Iriye, pp. 277-98; Robert M. Slusser, “Soviet Far Eastern Policy, 1945-50: Stalin’s Goals in Korea,” in ibid., pp. 123-46; Robert R. Simmons, The Strained Alliance: Peking, Pyongyang, Moscow and the Politics of the Korean War (Free Press, 1975); James I. Matray, “Truman’s Plan for Victory: National Self-Determination and the Thirty-eighth Parallel Decision in Korea,” Journal of American History, vol. 66, no. 2 (September 1979), pp. 314-33; Daniels, pp. 239-41; Taubman, pp. 201-2, 211-22; Shulman, chs. 6-7; William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964 (Little, Brown, 1978), chs. 9-10.

  [“Administrative dividing line”]: Acheson, quoted in Manchester, p. 539.

  240-1 [Acheson on U.S. defense perimeter]: quoted in Goulden, p. 30; see also Dobbs, pp. 180-81; Gaddis, Long Peace, ch. 4.

  [Ulam on Soviet blunder in Korea]: Adam B. Ulam, “Washington, Moscow, and the Korean War,” in Guttmann, pp. 258-85, quoted at p. 277.

  [Smith Act]: quoted in Howe and Coser, p. 418.

  [Smith Act trial of communist leaders]: ibid., pp. 481-82; Shannon, pp. 198-200; Packer, pp. 11-13.

  [“Government … on trial”]: William Z. Foster, quoted in Shannon, p. 198.

  [“Sufficient danger”]: Judge Harold R. Medina, quoted in ibid., p. 200.

  [China-Korea links]: see Purifoy, chs. 8-9.

  [China Lobby]: Ross Y. Koen, The China Lobby in American Politics (Octagon Books, 1974), esp. ch. 2; Stanley D. Bachrack, The Committee of One Million: “China Lobby” Politics, 1953-1971 (Columbia University Press, 1976), esp. part 1.

  [Taft on communism in China]: quoted in Fried, p. 4; and E. J. Kahn, Jr., The China Hands: America’s Foreign Service Officers and What Befell Them (Viking, 1975), p. 2.

  [Acheson as target]: see Westerfield, pp. 327-29.

  [“Whined” and “whimpered” and “slobbered”]: quoted in William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1912-1972 (Little, Brown, 1974), p. 492.

  244 [Acheson and Hiss]: Weinstein, pp. 505-6, Acheson quoted at p. 505.

  [Butler on Acheson]: quoted in Eric F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade: America, 1945-1955 (Knopf, 1956), p. 125.

  [McCarthy]: Richard H. Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy (Harcourt, 1959); Oshinsky; Fried; Thomas C. Reeves, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy (Stein & Day, 1982); Edwin R. Bayley, Joe McCarthy and the Press (University of Wisconsin Press, 1981); Daniel Bell, ed., The New American Right (Criterion Books, 1955); Earl Latham, ed., The Meaning of McCarthyism, 2nd ed. (D. C. Heath, 1973); Michael P. Rogin, The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter (MIT Press, 1967); Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: McCarthy and the Senate (University Press of Kentucky, 1970); Donald F. Crosby, God, Church, and Flag: Senator Joseph R McCarthy and the Catholic Church, 1950-1957 (University of North Carolina Press, 1978); Joseph R. McCarthy, McCarthyism: The Fight for America (Devin-Adair, 1952; reprinted by Arno Press, 1977).

  244 [“Multiple untruth”]: see Rovere, pp. 109-10.

  [Wheeling]: Reeves, pp. 222-33, McCarthy quoted at p. 224; Oshinsky, pp. 107-12; Bayley, ch. 1.

  245 [McCarthy’s Senate performance]: Reeves, pp. 236-42, quoted at p. 239; and Oshinsky, pp. 112-14, quoted at p. 112.

  [“Perfectly reckless”]: quoted in Patterson, Mr. Republican, p. 446.

  [Tydings committee]: Reeves, pp. 249-314, conclusion quoted at p. 304; Rovere, pp. 145-59.

  [“Keep talking”]: quoted in Patterson, p. 446.

  [“Declaration of Conscience”]: Oshinsky, pp. 163-65; Fried, p. 83.

  [McCarthy in 1950 campaign]: Reeves, ch. 14, reporter quoted at p. 346; Fried, ch. 4.

  246 [Buckley on McCarthyism]: quoted in Rovere, p. 22.

  [McCarthy and the press]: Bayley, esp. ch. 3, Reedy quoted at p. 68; see also James A. Wechsler, The Age of Suspicion (Random House, 1953); Oshinsky, ch. 12.

  [Courting of Eisenhower]: Herbert S. Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades (Macmillan, 1972), chs. 9-10; Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952 (Simon and Schuster, 1983), ch. 25; Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (Doubleday, 1963), ch. 1.

&nbs
p; 247 [“Completely foreign field”]: quoted in Barton J. Bernstein, “Election of 1952,” in Schlesinger, Elections, vol. 4, p. 3225.

  [GOP nomination battle]: Ambrose, Soldier, ch. 26; Eisenhower, ch. 2; Patterson, part 6; Parmet, chs. 12-14; Bernstein, “Election,” pp. 3224-34.

  [GOP as two parties]: see James MacGregor Burns, The Deadlock of Democracy: Four-Party Politics in America (Prentice-Hall, 1963), esp. ch. 8.

  248 [“Path to defeat”]: quoted in Bernstein, “Election,” p. 3230.

  [“Why do they hate me so?”]: quoted in Patterson, p. 547.

  [Morningside Heights statement]: quoted in Parmet, p. 130; see also ibid., pp. 128-30; Patterson, pp. 572-78; Eisenhower, p. 64.

  [“Surrender at Morningside Heights”]: quoted in Bernstein, “Election,” p. 3242.

  249 [Courtship of Stevenson]: Kenneth S. Davis, A Prophet in His Own Country: The Triumphs and Defeats of Adlai E. Stevenson (Doubleday, 1957), ch. 24; John Bartlow Martin, Adlai Stevenson of Illinois (Doubleday, 1976), pp. 513-78; Walter Johnson, How We Drafted Adlai Stevenson (Knopf, 1955); Truman, Trial and Hope, pp. 491-96.

  [“Could not, ” not “would not”]: quoted in Davis, p. 394.

  [Stevenson’s convention welcome] July 21, 1952, in Walter Johnson, ed., The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson (Little, Brown, 1972-79), vol. 4, pp. 11-14, quoted at p. 12; author’s personal observations, July 21, 1952, Chicago.

  [Democratic, convention]: Davis, pp. 397-409; Martin, pp. 578-604; Bernstein, “Election,” pp. 3236-40; Johnson, Papers, vol. 4, ch. 1.

  [Eisenhower in Indiana]: Parmet, pp. 127-28, Jenner quoted on Marshall at p. 127; Ambrose, Soldier, pp. 552-53.

  249-50 [Eisenhower in Wisconsin]: Reeves, pp. 436-40, praise of Marshall quoted at p. 437; Ambrose, Soldier, pp. 563-67.

  250 [Nixon’s second crisis]: Richard M. Nixon, Six Crises (Doubleday, 1962), ch. 2; Parmet, pp. 134-41; Fawn M. Brodie, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character (Norton, 1981), ch. 19; Smith, Dewey, pp. 599-603; Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (Houghton Mifflin, 1970), pp. 91-114; Eisenhower, pp. 65-69.

  [“My boy”]: quoted in Nixon, p. 123,

  [Stevenson on Taft winning nominee]: Johnson, Papers, vol. 4, p. 90.

  [Stevenson on Eisenhower’s backbone]: Ambrose, Soldier, p. 567.

  [“Two Republican” parties]: see Johnson, Papers, vol. 4, pp. 66-68.

  [Civil rights and the South in 1952 campaign]: Schlesinger, Elections, vol. 4, pp. 3280-81; Bernstein, “Election,” pp. 3247, 3251-52; Eisenhower, pp. 55, 69-71; Donald S. Strong, “The Presidential Election in the South, 1952,” Journal of Politics, vol. 17, no. 1 (August 1955), pp. 343-89; Johnson, Papers, vol. 4, pp. 47-48, 54-60, 89, 151-53, 157; Robert F. Burk, The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights (University of Tennessee Press, 1984), ch. 1 passim.

  [“Go to Korea”]: Parmet, pp. 142-43, Eisenhower quoted at p. 143.

  [1952 election results]: Schlesinger, Elections, vol. 4, p. 3337; see also Bernstein, “Election,” pp. 3264-65; Strong.

  [Stevenson on his loss]: Johnson, Papers, vol. 4, p. 188.

  The Price of Suspicion

  [Army-McCarthy hearings]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Special Subcommittee on Investigations, Charges and Countercharges Involving: Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens … , 83rd Congress, 2nd Session (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1954); Oshinsky, chs. 27-31; Reeves, chs. 21-22; Michael W. Straight, Trial by Television (Beacon Press, 1954); Fred I. Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Lender (Basic Books, 1982), pp. 198-212. [Oshinsky on hearings]: Oshinsky, p. 416.

  252 [“Largest single group”]: quoted in ibid., p. 319.

  [“Got his Ph.D. ”]: quoted in Brodie, p. 290.

  [“The dark days of the Hiss case”]: quoted in ibid., p. 284.

  [Nixon on Stevenson and Hiss]: quoted in Johnson, Papers, vol. 4, p. 392. [McCarthy on Stevenson]: quoted in Reeves, p. 445.

  [“Get into the gutter”]: quoted in Oshinsky, p. 260.

  [“Trouble-maker”]: see entry of April 1, 1953, in Robert H. Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (Norton, 1981), pp. 233-34.

  [McCarthy’s depredations, early Eisenhower Administration]: see Reeves, ch. 18; Parmet, ch. 26; see also Griffith, Politics of Fear, ch. 6.

  [McCarthy and Dirksen on Bohlen]: quoted in Parmet, p. 246; see also Athan G. Theoharis, The Yalta Myths: An Issue in U.S. Politics, 1945-1955 (University of Missouri Press, 1970), ch. 9 and passim. 853.

  [“ No More Bohlens”]: quoted in Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 60.

  [Stalin’s death and the succession]: Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty letters to a Friend, Priscilla Johnson McMillan, trans. (Harper, 1967), pp. 5-14; Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 1, pp. 306-41; Dallin, pp. 117-34; Daniels, pp. 246-50; Eisenhower, Mandate, pp. 43-45.

  [Dulles]: Townsend Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles (Atlantic Monthly/Little, Brown, 1973); Ronald W. Pruessen, John Foster Dulles: The Road to Power (Free Press, 1982); John R. Beal, John Foster Dulles, 1888-1959 (Harper, 1959); Herbert S. Parmet, “Power and Reality: John Foster Dulles and Political Diplomacy,” in Merli and Wilson, pp. 589-619; Ambrose, President, pp. 20-22; Gaddis, Strategies, pp. 136-45; Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, pp. 362-64.

  253-4 [Smith on Dulles]: Gaddis Smith, “The Shadow of John Foster Dulles” (review of Hoopes), Foreign Affairs, vol. 52, no. 2 (January 1974), pp. 403-8, quoted at p. 406.

  254 [Eisenhower’s inaugural address]: January 20, 1953, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight. D. Eisenhower (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1958-61), vol. 1, pp. 1-8, quoted at pp. 1, 2.

  [Dulles on communism]: January 15, 1953, in LaFeber, pp. 464-68, quoted at p. 466.

  [Dulles’s hard line vs. Eisenhower’s soft]: see Seyom Brown, The Faces of Power: Constancy and Change in United States Foreign Policy from Truman to Reagan (Columbia University Press, 1983), chs. 7-8; Robert A. Divine, Eisenhower and the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 19-23 and passim: Ambrose, President, passim: Hoopes, passim; Charles C. Alexander, Holding the Line: The Eisenhower Era, 1952-1961 (Indiana University Press, 1975), pp. 64-66; Gaddis, Strategies, ch. 5 passim; Richard M. Saunders, “Military Force in the Foreign Policy of the Eisenhower Administration,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 100, no. 1 (Spring 1985), pp. 97-116.

  [“United States of Europe”]: see Ambrose, President, pp. 49-50, 120. [Eisenhower, Dulles and “book burning”]: see ibid., pp. 81-83; Reeves, pp. 477-96 passim.

  255 [Iran]: Ambrose, President, pp. 109-12; Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran (McGraw-Hill, 1979); Sepehr Zabih, The Mossadegh Era: Roots of the Iranian Revolution (Lake View Press, 1982); Dallin, pp. 203-17; Anthony Eden, Full Circle (Houghton Mifflin, 1960), ch. 9; Stephen E. Ambrose, Ike’s Spies: Eisenhower and the Defense Establishment (Doubleday, 1981), chs. 14-15.

  [Eden on Eisenhower’s “obsession”]: quoted in Eden, p. 235.

  [Lebanon]: Ambrose, President, pp. 462-75 passim; Fahim I. Qubain, Crisis in Lebanon (Middle East Institute, 1961); Leila M. T. Meo, Lebanon, Improbable Nation: A Study in Political Development (Indiana University Press, 1965); Hoopes, ch. 27.

  [“Five times he said no”]: Ambrose, President, p. 229; see also Gaddis, Long Peace, ch. 6.

  [“Bland leading the bland”]: quoted in Melanson in Melanson and Mayers, p. 47.

  [Eisenhower revisionism]: see Murray Kempton, “The Underestimation of Dwight D. Eisenhower,” Esquire, vol. 68, no. 3 (September 1967), pp. 108-9, 156; Vincent P. De Santis, “Eisenhower Revisionism,” Review of Politics, vol. 38, no. 2 (April 1976), pp. 190-207; Richard H. Rovere, “Eisenhower Revisited—A Political Genius? A Brilliant Man?,” in Bernstein and Matusow, pp. 436-54; Greenstein; Ambrose, President, chs. 1, 27; Mary S. McAuliffe, “Eisenhower, The President,” Journal of American History, vol. 68, no. 3 (December 1981), pp. 625-32; Divine, Eisenhower, pp. 6-7; Wills, pp. 115-38; Melanson an
d Mayers, passim.

  [New Look]: Ambrose, President, pp. 171-73, 224-26; Melanson in Melanson and Mayers, pp. 49-54; Gaddis, Long Peace, pp. 123-24, 140-45; Ambrose, Ike’s Spies, pp. 275-76.

  256 [Operation Alert]: Ambrose, President, pp. 256-57; Peter Lyon, Eisenhower: Portrait of the Hero (Little, Brown, 1974), p. 655.

  [Eisenhower’s address to editor]: “The Chance for Peace,” April 16, 1953, in Eisenhower Public Papers, vol. 1, pp. 179-88, quoted at pp. 185, 186, 182, respectively; see also Ambrose, President, pp. 94-96.

  [“Atoms for peace”]: December 8, 1953, in Eisenhower Public Papers, vol. 1, pp. 813-22; Ambrose, President, pp. 147-51. 256-7 [Bikini atoll test]: Robert A. Divine, Blowing in the Wind: The Nuclear Test Ban Debate, 1954-1960 (Oxford University Press, 1978), ch. 1.

  257 [Geneva summit]: Ambrose, President, ch. 11; Hoopes, ch. 18; Dallin, pp. 279-83; Eisenhower, Mandate, ch. 21; Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 1, ch. 13.

  [“Complete blueprint”]: “Statement on Disarmament,” July 21, 1955, in Eisenhower Public Papers, vol. 3, pp. 713-16, quoted at p. 715.

  [Stevenson’s proposal of test suspension]: Divine, Blowing on the Wind, pp. 86-87, Nixon quoted at p. 87.

  [Dulles and Aswan]: Hoopes, chs. 20-21.

  [Suez]: Hoopes, chs. 22-24; Ambrose, President, chs. 14-15 passim; Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956-1961 (Doubleday, 1965), ch. 3 passim; Herman Finer, Dulles Over Suez: The Theory and Practice of His Diplomacy (Quadrangle, 1964); Eden, book 3.