Chapter 29 Section 3 Conflicts at Home
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Chapter 29 Section 3 Conflicts at Home One American’s Story A student journalist took Mary Ann Vecchio’s picture as she knelt by a dead student at Kent State University in Ohio. The dead youth was Jeffrey Glenn Miller, one of four students killed by the National Guard during an antiwar demonstration on May 4, 1970. Later, Vecchio said PRIMARY SOURCE “I couldn’t believe that people would kill . just because he demonstrated against the Vietnam War.” —Mary Ann Vecchio Gillum, conference at Emerson College, April 23, 1995 Mary Ann Vecchio was just 14 when she became a symbol of anguish over the Vietnam War. Growing opposition to the war led to deep divisions in American society. The Growing Antiwar Movement KEY QUESTION Why did so many Americans oppose the war? As the war escalated in the mid-1960s, antiwar feeling grew among Americans at home. Religious leaders, civil rights leaders, teachers, students, journalists, and others opposed the war for a variety of reasons. Protests Grow Some protestors believed that the United States had no business involving itself in another country’s civil war. Others believed that the methods of fighting the war were immoral. Still others thought that the costs to American society were too high. College students formed a large and vocal group of protesters. Many opposed the draft, which required young men to serve in the military. In protests nationwide, young men burned their draft cards. About 50,000 people staged such a protest in front of the Pentagon on October 21, 1967. Opponents of the draft pointed out its unfairness. Most draftees were poor. Middle- and upper-class youths could delay being drafted by enrolling in college. They also sought advice from draft counselors, doctors, and lawyers to help them avoid service. Certain medical conditions or religious beliefs, for example, could keep them out of the military. Links to Civil Rights Another unfair aspect of the draft was the high number of African Americans called to serve. African Americans made up about 10 percent of combat troops in Vietnam. In 1965, they accounted for 20 percent of U.S. battlefield casualties. Yet they were only 13.5 percent of the military-age population in the United States. For this and other reasons, the antiwar movement became linked with the civil rights movement. In 1967, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke out against the Vietnam War. King was concerned that the war took money away from antipoverty programs. SUMMARIZE Explain why so many Americans opposed the Vietnam War. 922 Chapter 29 WAR PROTESTS During the Vietnam War the country was deeply divided between those who supported the war and those who opposed it. Americans had been divided in earlier wars as well—the nineteenth century war with Mexico and the Spanish American War are two examples. The ideas of past antiwar protestors influenced the U.S. antiwar movement of the 1960s–1970s. Civil disobedience, or the deliberate breaking of a law, was supported by the ideas of Henry David Thoreau, an influential writer of the mid nineteenth-century. Thoreau was a pacifist, meaning he was opposed to war or violence as a means of resolving disputes. Some of the young men who refused to report for military duty and burned their draft cards during the Vietnam War liked to quote Thoreau’s ideas. An antiwar protester confronts the National Guard outside the Pentagon in 1967. CRITICAL THINKING Make Connections Thoreau’s values and ideals of justice emphasized the necessity of practicing civil disobedience. How do those values express the American spirit of justice today? The War Divides American Society KEY QUESTION How did the Vietnam War divide Americans? The war helped turn some young people against traditional society. This movement, called the counterculture, rejected the middle-class lifestyle of consumerism and corporate influence. Members of the counterculture, or hippies, wanted to create a new society based on peace and love . Many joined communes, places where people or families live together and share everything. A Divided Country By 1967, it was clear that the Vietnam War was dividing Americans into two camps. Even within families, people took opposite sides. Those who opposed the war were called doves. Those who supported it were known as hawks. Supporters of the war staged marches of their own. Believing that antiwar protesters were unpatriotic, they popularized such slogans as “America—love it or leave it.” Because draftees tended to be poor, working class, or minorities, many doves belonged to these groups. Some Americans were angry that the cost of the war drew money away from social programs. The normal generation gap, or differences in values, between the older and younger generations, widened in the 1960s. SUMMARIZE Explain how the Vietnam War created divisions in American society. Vietnam Overwhelms American Politics KEY QUESTION How did the war affect American politics? The Tet offensive that began in early 1968 became a turning point in the war. Tet made Americans doubt that they could win the war. The news media reflected the public’s growing discontent with the state of affairs. A Change in Leadership Walter Cronkite, a respected TV news anchorman, visited Vietnam in February. He concluded that the United States was not winning the war but was in a deadlock. PRIMARY SOURCE “[The] only rational way out, then, will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.” —Walter Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life Johnson took Cronkite’s words to heart. “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America,” he reportedly said. In addition, after Tet, Johnson changed his war policy. He refused, for example, General Westmoreland’s request for 206,000 more troops. Then, on March 31, 1968, Johnson said that he would would seek to bargain for peace. In the same speech, he announced that he would not run for another term as president. Johnson’s domestic policies had been largely successful. He helped create programs to assist the poor and the elderly, and to protect civil rights. But Vietnam overshadowed his accomplishments at home. Johnson lost the support of liberal Democrats, civil rights leaders, and intellectuals. The war destroyed this “New Deal coalition” that had supported large-scale government programs since the 1930s. Nixon Promises Results That summer, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago reflected the country’s turmoil. Democrats chose Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice-president, as their nominee. Outside the convention hall, TV cameras showed police clubbing antiwar demonstrators and bystanders. The chaos helped Republican candidate Richard Nixon win the 1968 presidency. In his campaign, Nixon promised to restore law and order and “bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.” Nixon was determined not to let the same thing happen to him as had happened to Johnson. He promised his supporters, “I’m going to stop that war. Fast.” But Nixon did not follow through with his promise, and the war dragged on. Morale Sinks As the Vietnam War went on, it wore down American soldiers. They fought hard, but many were losing faith that the United States could win the war. The South Vietnamese government did not have the loyalty of the people. In addition, the South Vietnamese army often avoided fighting. American soldiers asked why they were fighting a war the Vietnamese did not want to fight themselves. The low morale of U.S. forces in Vietnam became clear when news of the My Lai (MEE•LY) massacre broke in 1969. The incident happened on March 16, 1968. A U.S. platoon led by Lieutenant William Calley, Jr., rounded up and shot between 400 and 500 unarmed civilians, mostly women, children, and old men. A U.S. helicopter pilot rescued some civilians by threatening to fire on the soldiers. To Americans, My Lai represented a horrifying breakdown in morality and discipline in the armed forces. “Peace With Honor” In Spring 1969, Nixon announced his strategy of Vietnamization. It called for gradually withdrawing U.S. forces and turning the ground fighting over to the South Vietnamese. Nixon promised to withdraw 25,000 of the 543,000 U.S. ground troops in Vietnam by the end of the year. Although U.S. troops began coming home in 1969, Nixon was not willing to simply retreat. He wanted “peace with honor” for the United States. Nixon thought he could force the North Vietnamese to negotiate a peace settlement. Widening the War In 1969, Nixon began secret bombing raids of Cambodia, a country bordering Vietnam. This bombing was meant to stop North Vietnamese troops and supplies from moving along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And in 1970, Nixon said that he had sent American troops into Cambodia to attack Communist camps. Many people grew angry when they learned that the government had widened the war and hidden its actions. Public anger and distrust of the government grew after Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971. Ellsberg had helped research and write these secret Defense Department papers. They showed that the four previous presidential administrations had not been honest with the public about U.S. involvement and goals in Vietnam. CAUSES AND EFFECTS Describe how the war in Vietnam affected American politics at home and abroad. .