When Franklin Roosevelt ran for his fourth term in 1944, there were several important men who wanted to be Vice President. Roosevelt didn't want to choose between them, so he asked that Harry Truman be nominated instead. However, after the election Roosevelt gave Truman very little to do and didn't even bother to tell him much about what was going on. Then he died suddenly and Truman became President. Back in Missouri, Truman had been elected with the help of one of the nation's most crooked political groups. No would he be loyal to the group or to his country? For him there was never any doubt. He loved his country.
The war in Europe ended less than a month after Truman took office. He went to Europe to help draw up peace. However, the war with Japan was still going on in the Pacific. Japan still controlled China and a number of islands. It's almost certain that if the bomb had not been used, the U.S. would have had to invade Japan and many more people would have been killed in the fighting. After the war, Truman asked Congress to pass civil rights laws and to increase Social Security, which had been created as part of Roosevelt's New Deal. However, Congress rarely passed the laws Truman asked for. In 1948 he ran against Thomas Dewey, the governor of New York. Newspapers and polls predicted Truman would be badly defeated. Truman traveled back and forth across the country and made more than 350 speeches, and to almost everyone's surprise, he won.
World War II was over, but the Cold War with the Soviet Union had begun. The Russians tried to force the other Allies out of Berlin by blocking the roads and railroads across Russian-held territory. Truman ordered supplies flown in. The Berlin airlift, as it was called, brought in everything from food to coal. Finally the Russians gave in an opened the roads. When Communists tried to overthrow the government of Greece, Truman declared that the United States would help countries fighting to stay free of Communism. Under his leadership, the U.S. helped free European countries rebuild houses and factories that had been destroyed in the war. After the war, Korea had been divided into two parts. The northern half was under Communist control, and the southern half was supposed to be Democratic. In June 1950, the Communists from northern Korea invaded the south. Truman immediately ordered American troops to go to Korea. Then he asked for and got the help of the newly formed United Nations to save South Korea.
People who didn't like Truman said he wasn't dignified enough to be President. However, history has shown that on the big decisions he was nearly always right.
When World War II began, Dwight Eisenhower was asked to draw up plans for war in the Pacific. These were so good that President Roosevelt promoted him over 366 other officers to head the U.S. armies in Europe. Soon he was made commander of all the Allied Forces in Europe. Eisenhower's great hope as President was that he could work for peace. He had seen enough of war. Right after the election he flew to Korea. It was largely through his efforts that peace was achieved a few months later. He tried hard to find some way to get along better with the Russians, so he said America would stop testing atomic weapons if the Russians would too. He set up a plan called Atoms for Peace to help smaller nations. Few of these ideas worked, however, because the Russians wouldn't agree.
At home, Eisenhower didn't make many changes in the policies begun by Roosevelt and Truman. He broadened the Social Security system and the minimum wage law. He also started a new system of national highways. He believed wholeheartedly in equal rights for all citizens and completed the integration of the armed forces started by Roosevelt and Truman. He asked Congress for new civil rights laws. However, he didn't work as hard for these and other laws as Roosevelt and Truman had. When the opportunity came, though, he made his position clear. When the governor of Arkansas refused to obey the law to integrate the high school in Little Rock, Eisenhower called out the army and forced the governor to obey.
It was under Eisenhower's administration that an important new program got underway. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the world by launching the first artificial satellite into space. Many Americans had believed the United States was superior to the Soviet Union in technology, and Sputnik seemed to shatter that belief. On January 31, 1958, the first American satellite Explorer I was launched. The "space race" between the two nations began.
For the first time during a presidential campaign, candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon debated each other on television. This was a big help to Kennedy. He was handsome and had great personal charm; he was also smart, studied hard, and had his facts ready; he spoke well and didn't get flustered. The election was one of the closest in history, but Kennedy won. He was also the first Catholic President, and some people didn't like that.
Kennedy established the Peace Corps to help underdeveloped countries. He worked hard for new civil rights laws, and he wanted to improve U.S. relations with Latin America. Congress, however, didn't approve of most of his plans. He also hoped the U.S. could have more friendly relations with the Soviet Union. At first, though, things got worse instead of better. Cuba, under Fidel Castro, had already turned Communist. Kennedy supported an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro Cubans and Americans on April 17, 1961. This was called the Bay of Pigs Invasion. It hurt American prestige in Latin America and threatened American-Soviet relations as well. In October 1962, Kennedy learned that the Russians were sending nuclear missile to Cuba. This became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy ordered the military to blockade Cuba so that no more Russian ships could enter. He sent planes and soldiers to Florida to be ready to invade Cuba if necessary. He asked the Russian leader Nikita Krushchev, "to halt and eliminate this...threat to world peace." For one week, the U.S. and Russia seemed to be on the edge of war. Then the Russians backed down and took their missiles out of Cuba. After that, relations with the Soviet Union became a little better.
Then on November 22, 1963, Kennedy was shot and killed by an assassin's bullets.
When Kennedy was killed, Lyndon B. Johnson became President and promised the American people to carry on with Kennedy's plans. During his first year as President, he pushed many important bills through Congress. Then in 1964 he was elected by a huge majority. Under his leadership, Congress passed new civil rights laws. One of these guaranteed blacks the right to vote, which had been denied them in some southern states. "To deny a man his hopes because of color or race, his religion or place of birth," he said, "is not only to do injustice, it is to deny America and dishonor the dead who gave their lives for freedom." Johnson began what he called a War on Poverty to improve city slums and other poor sections of the country. He got Congress to pass a Medicare law. He saw that laws were passed to slow down the pollution of American rivers and air and to make highways more beautiful. Not everyone approved of the laws Johnson passed. Many conservatives said that the civil rights laws gave blacks too many rights. Many liberals and blacks said that the laws didn't go far enough. As a result, race riots broke out in a number of cities.
Since the end of World War II, Communist revolutionaries supported by the North Vietnamese government had tried to overthrow the government of South Vietnam, an American ally. Despite the efforts of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy sending American soldiers to advise the South Vietnamese, South Vietnam continued to lose the war. Johnson's efforts did not fare much better, and many American troops were killed or wounded in the fighting. His efforts at home also began to suffer because so much money and attention were going to the war in Vietnam. Many Americans thought the U.S. had no business in Vietnam and wanted Johnson to bring the soldiers home. Other Americans said the fight in Vietnam was part of the worldwide fight against Communism and wanted North Vietnam bombed off the map so that the war would end. Johnson stood somewhere in the middle. He didn't want to destroy North Vietnam or start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, North Vietnam's ally. Time and again he tried to make peace, but only if the North Vietnamese would retreat from the south, which they refused to do.
Because of the racial problems at home and the war in Vietnam, the people of the United States grew more and more divided, angry at each other and at the President. Johnson was trying to do what he thought was best for the whole country and was terribly hurt by the violent criticism. Therefore, he said, "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."
Richard Nixon had spent most of his time as Eisenhower's Vice President traveling to 56 different countries representing the U.S. government. When Eisenhower got sick, he served as acting President. In 1960 he ran for President against Kennedy and was defeated in one of the closest elections in history. He went back to California and ran for governor but was again defeated. He blamed the press for his loss. He went right on working with professional Republican politicians and helped many who were running for office. They in turn helped him get nominated for President in 1968, and this time he won.
Nixon slowly began to withdraw U.S. ground troops while steadily increasing bombing of North Vietnam. He established a training program to help the South Vietnamese army defend itself. At the same time, he worked to improve relations with the Communist world. In February 1972 he became the first American President to visit Communist China. This opened new channels for trade and communications. In May he visited Moscow and made plans to reduce the production of nuclear weapons. He also improved U.S.-Soviet relations through scientific and cultural exchanges. Soon after he won the 1972 election, a cease-fire agreement was signed in North Vietnam. North Vietnam and South Vietnam went right on fighting, however, and eventually that entire country was taken over by the Communists. But at least the American troops were finally out of Vietnam. In 1973 Nixon also helped bring about a cease-fire in the conflict between Israel and Egypt and Syria. This improved American prestige in the Middle East.
However, there was serious trouble brewing at home. It had started with the 1972 campaign, during which some Republicans had formed the Committee to Re-elect the President. The group hired burglars to steal secret information from the Democratic campaign headquarters in a building complex called Watergate in D.C. The burglars were caught. Nixon's closest advisors had been involved. Nixon insisted that he himself had known nothing about the burglary and had no part in trying to cover it up. More trouble came with the announcement that Vice President Spiro Agnew was officially suspected of taking bribes. This charge was never brought to court. Instead, he was allowed to plead "no contest" to a charge of cheating on his income tax, and in October 1973 he resigned and Gerald Ford was chosen to replace him. All this time the Watergate scandal was growing. Nixon kept insisting he wasn't a crook, that he hadn't tried to cover up the crimes committed by his associates. Evidence began to build, however, and his impeachment and subsequent conviction seemed imminent. The Supreme Court ordered Nixon to give up some secret tape recordings of talks held in his office. These tapes showed without doubt that Nixon had taken part in the cover-up. He resigned on August 14, 1974.
Nixon might have been one of the great Presidents, but he put politics above honesty. To get what he wanted, he was willing to lie, and eventually he got caught.
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