IN AUGUST and September 1957, the efforts by southern segregationists to resist Brown and its implications reached a peak. The climax began on August 2, in the wee hours, after an exhausting session of Senate debate over Eisenhower’s civil-rights bill, when the Senate voted, 51 to 42, to adopt the jury-trial amendment to the bill. Eisenhower, told of the vote when he woke, was furious. At a 9 A.M. Cabinet meeting, he opened by saying the vote was “one of the most serious political defeats of the past four years, primarily because it was such a denial of a basic principle of the United States,” the right to vote. Eisenhower said he could not find much forgiveness in his soul for those Republicans who had voted with the South (twelve had done so, including Barry Goldwater of Arizona). In a statement issued later that morning, the President declared that the jury-trial amendment would make it impossible for the Justice Department to obtain convictions of southern registrars who refused to enroll Negroes. He spoke of how “bitterly disappointing” the result of the Senate vote had been to the millions of “fellow Americans [who] will continue . . . to be disenfranchised.”1
Despite the President’s relatively strong words, the Senate proceeded, on August 7, to pass the emasculated civil-rights bill, 72 to 18. It then went to a Senate-House Conference (the House had earlier passed the bill Eisenhower wanted), where the differences would be worked out. At a news conference on the seventh, May Craig praised Eisenhower for his attempts to wipe out discrimination based on race, creed, religion, and color. Then she asked, “Why have you not been as active in trying to wipe out discrimination based on sex, namely, the equal-rights amendment?” Caught by surprise, Eisenhower’s response was “Well, it’s hard for a mere man to believe that woman doesn’t have equal rights.” That standard line brought a standard guffaw from the nearly all-male press corps. Eisenhower added that it was not a question he had thought about, but “I am in favor of it [the perennial equal-rights amendment]. I just probably haven’t been active enough in doing something about it.” Mrs. Craig persisted. “Will you?” she asked. Eisenhower said he would “take a look at it.”2
But what he was really looking at and wondering about was what he should do if the House agreed to the crippling jury-trial amendment. He was getting conflicting advice. The White House mail mainly urged him not to sign a “phony” bill. Prominent Negro leaders joined the chorus. Ralph Bunche wrote, “It would be better to have no bill than one as emasculated as that which has come out of the Senate.” Jackie Robinson, the baseball player, wired to state his opposition. “Have waited this long for bill with meaning—” Robinson said, “can wait a little longer.” Robinson was one of the newest civil-rights leaders; one of the oldest leaders, the grand old man of the movement, A. Philip Randolph, joined him in opposition. “It is worse than no bill at all,” Randolph declared.3 But the NAACP concluded that half a loaf was better than no bread at all, and therefore wanted Eisenhower to sign it. So did Martin Luther King, Jr. Nixon reported at a meeting of Republican leaders on August 13 that he had talked to King, who had said that when the bill was passed, “he will touch off a massive Negro registration drive.” King added that although he was not a member of either party, he and his associate, Ralph Abernathy, had both voted for Eisenhower, and indicated that they expected most new Negro voters would be Republican.4 Eisenhower doubted that there would be many new Negro voters, given the jury-trial provision. He also feared that if he signed this bill, “it will mean that no other legislation can be enacted for at least a decade or two.”5
But he had not given up on getting a better bill out of the Senate-House Conference. On August 13, he told Republican leaders that he was “in favor of fighting it out to the end to prevent the pseudo liberals from getting away with their sudden alliance with the southerners on a sham bill.”6 He found it difficult, however, to work effectively with the House minority leader, Joe Martin. Eisenhower characterized Martin as “a courageous fighter,” but complained that “it was almost impossible to get him to understand any subtle suggestions.”7 Martin was able, however, to get Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson to agree to a minor compromise. It gave a federal judge the right to decide whether a defendant should receive a jury trial in a criminal contempt action concerning the right to vote. If there were no jury trial, the maximum penalty would be a $300 fine and forty-five days in jail; if there were a jury trial, the maximum penalty would be six months and $1,000. On that basis, the House passed the conference bill; on August 29, so did the Senate.
The bill created a Civil Rights Commission with a two-year life; it set up a Civil Rights Division in Justice; and it empowered the Attorney General to seek an injunction when an individual was deprived of the right to vote.8 But the penalties for violation were so relatively light, and the obstacles in the way of the Attorney General so relatively heavy, that the final bill was a long way away from providing the guarantees of basic civil rights that Eisenhower had insisted were the birthright of all Americans. Some civil-rights leaders blamed the southern senators for this outcome, but others said it was Eisenhower’s responsibility, because of his failure to speak forcefully and clearly on the issue. His leadership had been, at best, tepid; Emmet Hughes, disgusted, wrote that “his limp direction of the struggle in Congress for the Civil Rights Act . . . had served almost as a pathetic and inviting prologue to Little Rock.”9
The battered and bruised bill was hardly Eisenhower’s exclusive fault, but the bill’s confused and hesitant approach to the problem of civil rights did symbolize the President’s own confusion and hesitancy. He still could not make up his mind whether to sign it or not. By the time he did decide, on September 9, to sign, events in Little Rock had overshadowed the bill, and its enactment into law passed virtually unnoticed. Nor can it be said that its enforcement ever attracted much attention, or much action. Essentially, Eisenhower passed on to his successors the problem of guaranteeing constitutional rights to Negro citizens.
• •
On September 4, weary from his battles with Congress, Eisenhower and Mamie flew to Newport, Rhode Island, to spend their summer vacation at the naval base there. Upon their arrival in Newport, Eisenhower said a few words at a reception by the mayor and other local dignitaries. “I assure you no vacation has ever started more auspiciously,” he said. He and Mamie were looking “forward to the time of our lives . . .”10
Actually, no vacation had ever begun more inauspiciously, because the previous day the governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, had presented Eisenhower with exactly the problem he had most wished to avoid, outright defiance of a court order by a governor. Faubus had called out the Arkansas National Guard, placed it around Central High School in Little Rock, and ordered the troops to prevent the entry into the school of about a dozen Negro pupils. Before departing for Newport, Eisenhower had reviewed the situation with his staff. The President made it clear that he had no desire to get the Administration involved in the controversy. He doubted that the Justice Department had a right to intervene and said the real problem was “these people who believe you are going to reform the human heart by law.”11
That Eisenhower had great sympathy for the white South was, of course, well known, and Faubus counted on it to keep the President inactive while he battled the federal court. On September 4, when Eisenhower arrived in Newport, he was given a telegram from Faubus. The governor asked the President for his understanding and cooperation in his efforts to forestall integration. Faubus complained that federal authorities were threatening to take him into custody and that his telephone had been tapped by the FBI. The following day, before leaving for the golf course, Eisenhower replied in a telegram. He told Faubus, “The only assurance I can give you is that the federal Constitution will be upheld by me by every legal means at my command,” and insisted that no one planned to arrest the governor or tap his telephone.12 Various legal maneuvering ensued, while the National Guard remained around Central High, blocking the entry of nine Negroes who were still trying to get in. The federal judge set September 20 as the date for a hearing on the legality of Faubus’ action.
On September 11, Sherman Adams called Eisenhower to report that Arkansas Congressman Brooks Hays had been conducting negotiations with Faubus. Hays told Adams that Faubus “would like to find a way out of the situation in which he has gotten and would be amenable, would like to, ask for a meeting with the President.” Hays wanted to arrange a meeting between Eisenhower and the governor. Adams further reported that he had discussed the proposal with Brownell, who was strongly opposed to such a meeting, because Faubus had “soiled” himself badly. For his part, Adams believed that Faubus “realizes he has made a mistake and is looking for a way out.” Brownell insisted that there was nothing to discuss with Faubus; the Attorney General thought it was a simple case of “this is the law” and “it must be complied with.” Eisenhower said that the situation was not that simple, that the Administration had to “take into consideration the seething in the South.” He wanted Brownell to make it “very clear” at the September 20 hearing that the Administration was “appearing in court only as a friend of the court . . . By no means does the federal government want to interfere with the governor’s responsibilities.” Adams told Eisenhower that Hays said Faubus was not a true segregationist, that his son attended an integrated college, and that his only objection to the court-ordered integration of Little Rock was that it started in the high schools, rather than in first grade. Eisenhower told Adams that if Faubus “honestly wanted to talk with him, he would see him any time any place.”13
After talking to Adams, Eisenhower called Brownell. He said that the preservation of law and order was the governor’s responsibility; “consequently we cannot in any way question the rights of governors to call out National Guard whenever they want.” He also said that “the whole U.S. thinks the President has a right to walk in and say ‘disperse—we are going to have Negroes in the high schools and so on.’ That is not so.” Under the circumstances, Eisenhower said he thought he should see Faubus. Brownell thought he should not. The Attorney General pointed out that the Brooks Hays intervention was the fifth attempt to negotiate with Faubus; two senators, a Little Rock newspaper publisher, and Winthrop Rockefeller had all tried, and “all came to the conclusion it was hopeless.” Well, Eisenhower replied, “Perhaps the time is now ripe.” He told Brownell to get together with Adams and compose a proper telegram for Faubus to send to Newport, requesting a meeting. Then he called Adams again to inform him of his decision. Adams warned that Senator Russell had told Jerry Persons that “Faubus was going to try to force a court decision which would be conciliatory to the problems of the South, which would serve as sort of bellweather in future cases.” Eisenhower scoffed at that and ordered Adams to get the telegram to Faubus.14
That afternoon, September 11, Faubus’ telegram arrived. It was not completely satisfactory. Faubus admitted that “all good citizens” must obey court orders and said “it is certainly my desire to comply . . . consistent with my responsibilities under the Constitution of the United States, and that of Arkansas.” The last qualifying phrase was ominous, but Eisenhower chose to ignore it. He replied that he would be happy to see Faubus, and a meeting was arranged on the Newport Naval Base for September 14.15
The meeting took place in Eisenhower’s tiny office at his vacation headquarters. For twenty minutes, the President and the governor talked, alone. Eisenhower later dictated to Whitman his version of what was said. Faubus began by protesting “again and again [that] he was a law-abiding citizen . . . and that everybody recognizes that the federal law is supreme to state law.” He said he had been one of “Ike’s boys” in Europe during the war, when he served as a major of infantry and was wounded. Eisenhower said he wanted to give Faubus a way out of the hole he had put himself in. Why not go home, Eisenhower suggested, and instead of withdrawing the Guard, simply change the orders, directing the Guard to maintain the peace while admitting the Negro pupils. If he would do that, Eisenhower promised, the Justice Department would go to court to request that the governor be excused from the hearing. Eisenhower said it was not beneficial to anybody “to have a trial of strength between the President and a governor because . . . there could be only one outcome—that is, the state would lose, and I did not want to see any governor humiliated.” Faubus seemed to seize the offer. Satisfied, Eisenhower took Faubus to an outer office, where they were joined by Adams, Hays, and Brownell. To that group, Faubus reiterated his intention to change the Guard’s orders.16
Ann Whitman had the sinking feeling that her boss, in his eagerness to find a face-saving compromise for everyone, had allowed himself to be led down the primrose path. “I got the impression,” she wrote in her diary that evening, “that the meeting had not gone as well as had been hoped, that the federal government would have to be as tough as possible in the situation.” She thought that Faubus “has seized this opportunity and stirred the whole thing up for his own political advantage . . .” She noted that “there was certainly a great frenzy around here.” Then she warned, “The test comes tomorrow morning when we will know whether Governor Faubus will, or will not, withdraw the troops” or change their orders.17
Faubus returned to Little Rock. He did not withdraw the troops, or change their orders. Brownell had been right in predicting that nothing would come of a meeting with him other than more publicity for Faubus. The governor continued to use the state’s armed forces to defy the orders of a federal court. Eisenhower wanted to issue a statement denouncing Faubus for his duplicity, but Brownell and Adams talked him out of it. They wanted to wait until the hearing, where they anticipated the court would issue a directive to Faubus to admit the children forthwith. At that time, as Goodpaster noted in a memorandum, if Faubus still refused to comply, “then an obligation falls upon the federal government to require Faubus to do so by whatever means may be necessary.”18
At the hearing, on September 20, Faubus’ lawyers—but not the governor himself—made an appearance. They read a statement questioning the federal court’s authority, then withdrew. The judge promptly enjoined Faubus and the Guard from interfering with the progress of integration at Central High. That afternoon, Eisenhower called Brownell, who told him of Faubus’ action, then said that the governor might withdraw the Guard, turning over the streets around Central High to a racist mob, or he might follow a path of “straight defiance.” In either case, Brownell said, the President was going to have to make some difficult decisions, including the possible use of the U.S. Army to enforce the court orders.
Eisenhower said he was “loath to use troops.” He feared that the “movement might spread—violence would come.” He had no doubt whatever about his authority to call out the troops, but said again that he hated to do it. He wanted Brooks Hays told “just how low the governor has fallen in the President’s estimation since he broke his promise.” Then Eisenhower expressed his deepest and most persistent fear. He asked Brownell, “Suppose the children are taken to school and then Governor Faubus closes the school? Can he do that legally?” Brownell said he would look it up. Eisenhower feared that the federal government would be helpless in the event the South abolished its public school system, and that the precedent thereby set for defiance of constitutional authority could have devastating results, for Negroes, for poor white southerners, and for the nation.19
Eisenhower spent most of the weekend playing bridge and golf with his gang. (At the card game, Slater noted, “The President was the big loser and as usual didn’t like it.”) During the evening, Hagerty flew up from Washington to report that Faubus had withdrawn the Guard. The governor also said that he intended to appeal the injunction, and he asked the Negro parents to keep their children away from Central High. The President was pleased that an immediate confrontation had been avoided. On September 22, a Sunday, he put on his apron and chef’s hat and cooked steaks for the gang. At a marathon bridge session, he said he thought the Little Rock situation would get worse. He had tried “desperately” to keep the integration problem “under control, but the agitators won’t let it be that way.” No one could win, Eisenhower said, but many would be hurt. He recalled previous crisis situations—the North Africa landings, D-day, the Bulge, NATO, the 1952 campaign, Korea, Suez, and others—and commented that while he made his decisions “without the harassment that most men feel,” still it “would be much pleasanter to have a short period where things are running smoothly.”20
Monday morning, September 23, a howling racist mob gathered around Central High, screaming protests against integration. Variously estimated at from five hundred to “several thousand” strong, the mob rushed two Negro reporters. As the mob knocked down and beat up the newsmen, nine Negro pupils slipped into the school by a side door. The mob, learning of this development, grew even more enraged. It rushed the police barricades and fought to get into the school, vowing to “lynch the niggers.” On orders from the mayor of Little Rock, the police then removed the Negro students. Integration at Central High had lasted three hours.21
That afternoon, Eisenhower was driving to the Newport Country Club when an urgent call from Brownell caused him to return to his office. Brownell informed him of the events in Little Rock. The Attorney General said the President had to act. Eisenhower agreed. He issued a blunt and vigorous statement: “The federal law . . . cannot be flouted with impunity by any individual or any mob of extremists. I will use the full power of the United States including whatever force may be necessary to prevent any obstruction of the law and to carry out the orders of the Federal Court.” He expressed the hope that “the American sense of justice and fair play will prevail . . . It will be a sad day for this country . . . if schoolchildren can safely attend their classes only under the protection of armed guards.” He followed the statement with a proclamation setting forth the President’s authority and responsibility to use troops to enforce the federal law. The President then did “command all persons engaged in such obstruction to cease and desist therefrom and to disperse forthwith.”22
Eisenhower was in Newport, Brownell in Washington. They had so many telephone conversations the morning of September 24 that Whitman wrote she could monitor only a few of them. At 8:45, Eisenhower told Brownell that an additional statement Brownell had sent up from Washington for the President’s approval was too strong. Instead of starting out with a statement that the “law has been defied,” Eisenhower said, he had substituted a phrase expressing his sympathy with the South. Brownell said that Max Taylor, Chief of Staff of the Army, wanted to use the Arkansas National Guard, not regular Army troops, if the President decided to use force. Eisenhower thought that it would be a mistake to use units from Little Rock, as that would set “brother against brother,” and suggested instead using Guard units from other parts of the state. Brownell protested that it would take six to nine hours to get units into Little Rock, but the President said “that in this case time was not of the essence.”23
In his four and one-half years as President, Eisenhower had gotten through many a crisis simply by denying that a crisis existed. His favorite approach was to conduct business as usual, stick as close to a routine as possible, speak and act with moderation, and wait for the inevitable cooling down of passions. On the morning of September 24, between telephone conversations with Brownell, Eisenhower found time to write a long letter to Al Gruenther (who had urged him to return to Washington to manage the crisis), explaining his thinking. He would not return to Washington, because to do so “would be a confession that a change of scenery is truly a ‘vacation’ for the President and is not merely a change of his working locale.” Highly sensitive to the criticism that he was only a part-time President who spent far too much of his time on vacation, Eisenhower insisted that “the White House office is wherever the President may happen to be” and that he could make his decisions in Newport as easily as in Washington. Further, “I do not want to exaggerate the significance of the admittedly serious situation in Arkansas.” If he rushed back to Washington, he would give the impression of “fretting and worrying about the actions of a misguided governor.” To Eisenhower’s mind, “The great need is to act calmly, deliberately, and giving every offender opportunity to cease his defiance . . .”24
Moderation and deliberation, however, were hard to find in Little Rock that morning. There the mob, now swollen in size to many thousands, again took control of the streets. The mayor, Woodrow Wilson Mann, sent Eisenhower a frantic telegram: “The immediate need for federal troops is urgent. . . . Situation is out of control and police cannot disperse the mob . . .”25
Eisenhower realized immediately that his entire policy had broken down. By allowing events to run their course, by attempting to negotiate with Faubus, by failing to ever speak out forcefully on integration, or to provide real leadership on the moral issue, he found himself in precisely the situation he had most wanted to avoid. His options had run out. Mayor Mann’s telegram gave him no choice but to use force.
He did have a choice as to what type of force he would use. At 12:08 P.M., he called Brownell to say that he finally agreed, force would have to be used. And, in a significant switch from his position of only a few hours earlier, he said he wanted to use the U.S. Army. He accepted Brownell’s suggestion that he simultaneously call the Arkansas National Guard into federal service and use it side by side with the regulars. At 12:15 he called General Taylor and gave the order. He wanted Taylor to move quickly in order to demonstrate how rapidly the Army could respond. Within a few hours, Taylor had five hundred paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division in Little Rock; another five hundred were there by nightfall.26
Eisenhower also changed his mind about going to Washington. At 3:30 P.M., he flew to the capital so that he could speak to the nation that night from the White House. On the plane, he scribbled down some notes. “Troops—not to enforce integration, but to prevent opposition by violence to orders of a court.”27 In his statement to the nation, the President emphasized that he was not sending U.S. troops into the South to integrate the schools, but only to maintain the law. He went out of his way to state that his personal opinion on Brown had no bearing on enforcement. Carefully avoiding any specific reference to Faubus, he blamed the situation in Little Rock on “certain misguided persons, many of them imported into Little Rock by agitators . . .” In a gesture of conciliation toward the white South, Eisenhower said that the “overwhelming majority of the people of the South—including those of Arkansas and of Little Rock—are of good will, united in their efforts to preserve and respect the law even when they disagree with it.” Then he appealed to their sense of patriotism. He noted with sadness that the United States was taking a terrific beating in the world press—foreigners were aghast that the Army had to be called out to escort fewer than a dozen youngsters to school. The Soviets, Eisenhower said, were “gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrepresent our whole nation.” Then he returned to his basic theme, that the troops were there to enforce a court order, not integration, and that in no way would they be responsible for running the high school. He concluded by appealing to the people of Arkansas to return to “normal habits of peace and order,” and thus help to remove “a blot upon the fair name and high honor of our nation . . .”28
Eisenhower’s conciliatory words, his call for moderation, his appeal to patriotism, had little effect. Throughout the South, white segregationists were outraged by the “invasion.” Marching protestors carried banners that played on the words of the Army’s recruiting slogan: “Join the Army and See the High Schools!” Lyndon Johnson proclaimed: “There should be no troops from either side patrolling our school campuses.” Senator Eastland said that “the President’s move was an attempt to destroy the social order of the South.” Senator Olin Johnston boldly proclaimed, “If I were a governor and he came in, I’d give him a fight such as he’s never been in before.” In Louisiana, a local political boss, Leander Perez, called for secession (calmer heads reminded him that this time around the Feds had atomic weapons).
Few southerners could see the distinction that Eisenhower stressed so carefully, the difference between using troops to enforce integration on one hand, or to uphold the law on the other. The result, after all, was the same. The following morning, the 101st Airborne dispersed the mob, with only minor incidents (one man was pricked by a bayonet), while nine Negro students entered Central High and, under Army guard, sat through a full day of classes. Central High was integrated. That was the result the segregationists had vowed to prevent, and that Eisenhower’s orders had made possible. Eisenhower nevertheless continued to insist on his distinction. He told an October 3 news conference, “The troops are not there as a part of the segregation problem.”29 He was careful to tie his actions to such historical precedents as the Whiskey Rebellion, or Grover Cleveland’s dispatch of the Army to Chicago during a train strike; his purpose in drawing these historical analogies was to deny that he himself was setting any precedent. But, of course, and inevitably, he was. Faubus had forced Eisenhower to face one ultimate question: Could the southern governors use the state’s armed forces to prevent integration? But because Faubus had been forced to pose the question within the context of outright defiance of the orders of the federal court, he gave Eisenhower no choice but to act. He could not have done otherwise and still been President.
Eisenhower had to be pushed to the wall before he would act, but at the critical moment, he lived up to his oath of office. In the process, he convinced most white southerners that they could not use force to prevent integration. Nevertheless, the roar of protest from the segregationists continued, even increased. Senator Russell sent Eisenhower a telegram, protesting the “highhanded and illegal methods being employed by the armed forces of the United States under your command who are carrying out your orders to mix the races in the public schools of Little Rock.” He charged that Eisenhower was using Hitler-like storm-trooper tactics on American citizens, and spoke of “bayonet-point rule.”30
Eisenhower’s reply was calm and conciliatory. He began by confessing that “few times in my life have I felt as saddened” as the day he ordered the troops into Little Rock. Without naming him, Eisenhower blamed Faubus for all the trouble. Eisenhower reminded Russell that he had taken an oath of office, an oath that required him to protect American citizens who were peaceably exercising their rights and who were attacked by mobs that the police could not control and the governor would not. Under those circumstances, Eisenhower insisted, “Failure to act . . . would be tantamount to acquiescence in anarchy and the dissolution of the union.”
Turning to Russell’s analogy, Eisenhower said, “I completely fail to comprehend your comparison of our troops to Hitler’s storm troopers. In one case military power was used to further the ambitions and purposes of a ruthless dictator; in the other to preserve the institutions of free government.” That was strong, accurate, and a good place to stop, but Eisenhower went on to promise Russell that he would order the Army to investigate Russell’s allegations about wrongdoing on the part of individual soldiers (the subsequent investigation revealed none).31
• •
The troops were in control, the Negro pupils were at their desks, the mobs had been dispersed. Now Eisenhower’s immediate goal was to get the 101st Airborne out of town as quickly as possible. He tried to negotiate with Faubus through a group of four southern governors, but failed; Faubus was up for re-election and his goal was to keep the crisis atmosphere alive. Eisenhower therefore had to abandon his plan to withdraw the regulars and turn command of the Arkansas Guard back to Faubus. Eisenhower’s next goal was to dissociate himself with court-ordered integration. He issued a statement which stressed that “the Executive Branch of the federal government does not participate in the formulation of plans effecting desegregation . . .”. In an October 3 press-conference briefing, Eisenhower expressed his personal and private view that the courts had gone too far too fast. As Whitman noted, “The President said there was a grave situation raised . . . as to the right of the Supreme Court to go ahead after they find a thing unconstitutional—to work out plans and lay down schemes for implementing plans.” Such actions by the courts threatened individual liberties and states’ rights. He then announced that he was going to stay as quiet as possible about Little Rock, hoping to play down the situation and allow moderate sentiment in the South to assert itself.32
But the news conference was taken up almost entirely with Little Rock. Patiently and clearly, the President restated his reasons for acting. “No one can deplore more than I do the sending of federal troops anywhere,” he said. “It is not good for the troops; it is not good for the locality; it is not really American . . .” He did not publicly criticize the federal court for its orders to integrate Central High, but rather praised the plan the court had agreed to (drawn up originally by the Little Rock School Board) as moderate and reasonable (indeed the NAACP had denounced it as much too slow). He preached patience, tolerance, and understanding.33
Eisenhower’s open appeal to southern moderates to step forward and assume leadership was a dismal failure. It could hardly have been otherwise, given that nearly all the voters in the South were whites committed to segregation. By letters, phone calls, and stag dinners, Eisenhower tried to rally some southern support, but as he told Oveta Culp Hobby, a Texan, the only prominent southerner who had rallied to his side was Ralph McGill, editor of the Atlanta Constitution. The President had concluded sadly that southern politicians were not “in a position” to support him.34
Slowly, the crisis faded. Faubus continued to shout defiance, but by October 14 the situation was stable enough for Eisenhower to withdraw half the Army troops and to defederalize 80 percent of the Guardsmen. The next week, Brownell carried out his long-standing intention of resigning, to return to private practice, an act that helped cool passions, as many southerners saw Brownell as the villain in the piece. By October 23, Negro students entered Central High without military protection. In November, the last of the 101st left. The Guard remained, under federal control, until the end of the school year, in June 1958. In September of that year, Faubus did what Eisenhower had so feared—he closed Central High altogether (it was reopened on an integrated basis in the fall of 1959).
Little Rock had been, for Eisenhower, “troublesome beyond imagination.”35 By the time the crisis ended, however, it had become little more than an irritant, because by then it had been eclipsed by another crisis in American education, this one brought on by the Russians.
• •
Eisenhower had endured many a discouraging autumn. In 1942, he was stuck in the mud of Tunisia, in 1943 in the mud of Italy, in 1944 along the West Wall. In 1954, he lost control of Congress in the fall elections. In late September 1955, he had suffered his first heart attack. In October 1956, it was Suez, and in September 1957, Little Rock. That should have been enough for any man, but still the dreary list grew. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union fired into orbit the world’s first man-made satellite, named Sputnik (“traveling companion”). This impressive achievement came as “a distinct surprise” to Eisenhower and his Administration. But as Eisenhower confessed in his memoirs, “Most surprising of all . . . was the intensity of the public concern.”36
He had no excuse for being surprised by the near-hysterical reaction of the American press, politicians, and public to Sputnik. He himself had said repeatedly, when discussing the American missile program, that the ICBMs were far more important in terms of psychological factors than as military weapons. He had predicted that the achievement of operational ICBMs by the Russians would throw the American people into a fright bordering on panic, because the idea that the enemy could send nuclear warheads across the oceans to obliterate American cities was certain to create uncontrollable anxieties. But predicting and experiencing were two distinct things, and Eisenhower was indeed almost overwhelmed by the intensity of the American response to Sputnik.
Eisenhower had anticipated the fear that Sputnik engendered; what really surprised him was the way in which Sputnik swept away certain basic American assumptions and caused a crisis in self-confidence. For a dozen years, since the victory in the war, Americans had taken for granted that theirs was not only the richest and freest and most powerful nation in the world, but also the best educated and most technologically advanced. As generalizations, those assumptions were more or less appropriate to the mid-1950s. The trouble was that, at the time, few of those who boasted so frequently about American achievements bothered to point out that this was an abnormal and unique situation, brought on by the way in which World War II had been fought. America’s allies, and her enemies, had been pulverized while the American industrial system had boomed. It was geography, not inherent American goodness or skill, that had brought about that result, just as it was geography, not American money or scientific know-how, that brought the atomic project out of Britain and over to America. Americans thought of the Manhattan Project as an achievement of American science, when in fact it had been an international project, with anti-Nazi scientists from all over Europe making crucial contributions.
As almost any general history of the 1950s points out, it was a decade characterized by complacency. In this, it was unique. In the thirties, there was the trauma of the Depression. In the forties, there were the horrors of a world war, followed by Korea. In the sixties, there would be a civil-rights revolution and war in Vietnam; in the seventies, Watergate, an oil embargo, and inflation. But the fifties were unique and blessed, or so people thought. Except for the problem of race relations, which even after Little Rock was minor compared to the events of the sixties, and for minor problems with the economy, and of course, the continuing problems of the Cold War, Americans could find little to worry about, and much to praise, in their assessment of the state of the nation.
Most commentators, then and later, linked this remarkable self-satisfaction to President Eisenhower. “Trust Ike” was the watchword. He was so comforting, so grandfatherly, so calm, so sure of himself, so skillful in managing the economy, so experienced in ensuring America’s defenses, so expert in his control of the intelligence community, so knowledgeable about the world’s affairs, so nonpartisan and objective in his above-the-battle posture, so insistent on holding to the middle of the road, that he inspired a trust that was as broad and deep as that of any President since George Washington. Even southern Democrats could not bring themselves to dislike Ike, and the Democratic Party as a whole never hated Eisenhower as the Republicans hated FDR and Truman, or as the Democrats later hated Nixon. Thus Eisenhower is praised—or blamed—for the complacency and consensus of the fifties.
Actually, Eisenhower was given far too much credit—or blame—for the character of the fifties. In large part, it was plain good luck. The economic boom would have taken place even if Taft or Stevenson had won in 1952. America’s preponderant position in military and financial power was a legacy Eisenhower inherited. Eisenhower had been a participant in the process of changing the isolationist America of 1939 into the world colossus of 1952, but not the maker of that policy. His task as President was one of managing America’s rise to globalism, not bringing it about. As Eisenhower himself was always first to point out, it was plain silly to give all the credit, or blame, to one man.
It is also wrong to think of the fifties as a whole as an era of good feelings. The 1952 presidential campaign was one of the most bitter and divisive of the twentieth century. The events in Little Rock signified the breakdown of consensus; Sputnik destroyed the complacency. Modern nostalgia for the fifties is in reality nostalgia for a period of only slightly more than four years, from July 1953 (the end of the Korean War) to September–October 1957.
After Little Rock and Sputnik, the Democrats were after Eisenhower with a vigor and enthusiasm previously unknown. They did not attack the President personally, to be sure, because his popularity was consistently high, but they did lambast his Administration, with great success. The consensus had always been fragile, and it was incapable of dealing with such a basic issue as race relations. Eisenhower always wanted to widen the middle of the road, but Little Rock narrowed it down to little more than a tiny strip. Northern Democrats and liberals generally were critical of Eisenhower’s hesitant response to Faubus’ challenge; southern Democrats and conservatives generally were even more vocal in their criticism of his decision to use the Army. Eisenhower’s policy of delay and obfuscation, which he had used so successfully in various foreign crises, had only made the civil-rights crisis worse.
Similarly, the complacency had always been fragile, as was demonstrated when one Russian satellite, weighing less than two hundred pounds and carrying no scientific or military equipment, broke it down. Democrats cashed in on the shame, shock, and anger Americans felt, as they blamed the Republicans for various “gaps”—in education, in missiles, in satellites, in economic growth, in bombers, in science, and in prestige. Almost all Americans wanted to be “number one” in everything, which helped explain the overreaction to Sputnik and gave the Democrats the rallying cry that would carry them to victory in the 1958 and 1960 elections—Let’s get the country moving again. “If we do have to stress party differences,” Eisenhower had told the Democratic leaders at the beginning of 1957, “let us do it on relatively small matters.” But after Little Rock and Sputnik, the differences were over big matters, civil rights and national defense, as complacency and consensus disappeared.
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Three days after Sputnik went up, the AEC finished the Plumbob series of tests. There had been twenty-four bombs set off in all, including an underground test. The Russians had tested fifteen bombs in 1957, the British four. The American lead in nuclear weaponry, both in technology and in size of the arsenal, remained substantial.37 Still Strauss and the AEC wanted more, specifically twenty-five tests in 1958 in a series code-named Hardtack. Almost all the tests would be of hydrogen bombs. On August 9, Strauss met with Eisenhower to go over Hardtack, with Major John Eisenhower keeping the notes. (John was substituting for Goodpaster, who was on vacation.) The President opened the meeting by expressing his reservations about the scope of Hardtack—twenty-five explosions seemed far too many to him. Strauss said he had pared the number down from the thirty tests requested by the Defense Department. Next Eisenhower objected to the duration of the series, scheduled for May through August. He said he was trying to get disarmament negotiations under way, and publicity from the tests would hamper his efforts. Strauss explained that “perfect meteorological conditions” were necessary for each test, “particularly for the” large-yield weapons.” Why do we need to test bigger bombs? the President wanted to know. Because, Strauss replied, although neither State nor the AEC could “justify a need for the very large weapons,” the DOD wanted to ascertain how big a bomb could be carried by the B-52 (Hardtack included a bomb that weighed twenty-five thousand pounds). John noted that “the President pointed out that the scaling laws apply on a cube route basis, which would give a forty-megaton weapon a radius of damage only about one and one-half the size the radius of damage of the ten megaton.” Strauss then said he would not go any higher than the Bravo test of 1954, which was fifteen megatons.
Eisenhower said his dilemma was that in conducting tests of this magnitude the United States “was planning and carrying out extensive tests on the one hand while professing a readiness to suspend testing in a disarmament program on the other.” He was concerned that he would be charged with bad faith. However, he said with a sigh, “having gone this far,” it was necessary to go through with Hardtack. He did instruct Strauss to explode no bomb bigger than Bravo, and to condense the time span of the series.38 Eisenhower’s reluctance in approving Hardtack only highlighted his determination to stay ahead of the Russians in nuclear weaponry.
Sputnik also highlighted another aspect of the nuclear dilemma—delivery systems. In fact, the American B-52 fleet of 1957 was incomparably the best delivery system in the world of that time, far superior to the Russian bomber fleet, and enjoying the additional advantage of access to airfields around the Soviet Union. Sputnik, however, coupled with Soviet boasting about their progress in ICBMs, suddenly made Americans feel naked and vulnerable, stripped of a retaliatory capacity. American weapons, Khrushchev declared, including the B-52, belonged in museums. Eisenhower knew how ridiculous such an assertion was, but like so many of his countrymen he nevertheless was fearful that the Russians had stolen a march on the United States, that Sputnik proved the enemy had better rockets and missiles than the Americans possessed.
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Eisenhower’s first response to Sputnik was to call a meeting with the appropriate officials from the Defense Department to review American missile development and find out how the Russians had won the race to space. The backbiting and blame fixing had already begun, the day after Sputnik, when two Army officers said that the Army had a rocket, Redstone, that could have placed a satellite in orbit many months ago, but the Eisenhower Administration had given the satellite program to the Navy (Project Vanguard), and the Navy had failed. On October 8, at an 8:30 A.M. conference, Eisenhower asked Deputy Secretary Quarles if that was true. Quarles said it was worse than true—he claimed that Redstone could have accomplished the task as much as two years earlier. But DOD had decided that it was “better to have the earth satellite proceed separately from military development,” in order to stress the peaceful character of the satellite program. Well, the President commented wryly, when the congressmen find out about this “they are bound to ask why this action [Redstone] was not taken.” Quarles said that the Army could still beat the Navy; Vanguard was at least five months away, while Redstone could gear up and send a satellite into space within four months.
Quarles then pointed out that “the Russians have in fact done us a good turn, unintentionally, in establishing the concept of freedom of international space . . .” Eisenhower wanted to know what were the prospects for a reconnaissance vehicle, a satellite that could take pictures and beam them back to earth. Quarles said the Air Force had a research program in that area that was coming along nicely.39 Later that morning, Eisenhower met with Wilson (who had dismissed Sputnik as “a neat scientific trick”). They discussed the Army and the Air Force programs for missiles. Wilson gave some background on each, then concluded that the choice was to go ahead with both, hoping one would work out, “or to chop off one program now.” Eisenhower said “he did not feel in a position to make such a decision, not being a technician.” Despite the several millions in cost, he decided to go ahead with both; he also said that what the United States really ought to do was abolish the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines “and go to task forces under Defense—but such an idea is probably twenty years away.”
Wilson warned that “trouble is rising between the Army and the Air Force over this missile.” The Navy, too, was going to make trouble if Vanguard was neglected. “The President interjected, with some vigor, that he thought we are going to have to go to a ‘Manhattan Project’ type approach in order to get forward in this matter.” He then instructed Wilson to remove the restrictions on overtime work at missile research stations, and to get Redstone into the business of putting a satellite into orbit as soon as possible.40
Shortly thereafter, Eisenhower met with the Joint Chiefs in the Red Room, for what he described as “a kind of seminar.” His subject was rivalry between the services. General Taylor complained that the Air Force was trying to block Redstone. General Nathan Twining, an Air Force officer who had, in August, replaced Radford as chairman of the JCS, immediately “intervened to say that this is one point that is clear—the Army is to have no missiles more than two-hundred mile range.” Eisenhower refused to accept such fixed mile limitations. He said there were great advantages to the Army having missiles that could be more centrally located, farther back from the battle area, “which is bound to be a turbulent one, and able to fire on all parts of the sector.” He wanted the Army to go ahead with Redstone. Then the President gave a long lecture on teamwork, citing AFHQ, SHAEF, and SHAPE as examples he wanted the Chiefs to emulate. They all nodded their heads.41
Sputnik not only set the Chiefs to bickering among themselves; it had a remarkable effect on the White House press corps, usually so friendly to Eisenhower. On October 9, five days after Sputnik, Eisenhower held a news conference that was one of the most hostile of his career. Merriman Smith, ordinarily a great admirer of Eisenhower, set the tone in his opening question. Reading from a note card, Smith began, “Russia has launched an earth satellite. They also claim to have had a successful firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile, none of which this country has done.” Raising his eyes, Smith looked directly at the President. “I ask you, sir, what are we going to do about it?”
Eisenhower began by denying that there was a link between a satellite and the ICBM. He gave a brief history of American involvement in a satellite program. He denied that there ever was a race to get into space first. He promised to have an American satellite in orbit before the end of 1958. As to the Russian ICBM, Eisenhower said that Sputnik had certainly proved that “they can hurl an object a considerable distance.” It did not prove that the ICBMs could hit a target. American missile research was going forward full speed, and the United States had a lead in the ICBM race.
Eisenhower was asked if the B-52 was “outmoded,” as Khrushchev claimed. Absolutely not, the President replied. Robert Clark wanted to know how the Russians had gotten ahead in launching an earth satellite. Eisenhower replied that “from 1945, when the Russians captured all of the German scientists in Peenemunde, . . . they have centered their attention on the ballistic missile.” (Don’t worry, Mort Sahl was telling his audiences; all Sputnik proves is that the Russians captured better German scientists than we did.) Eisenhower then downplayed the Russian achievement, although he admitted that they had gained a “great psychological advantage.”
May Craig wanted to know if the Russians could use satellites as space platforms from which to launch rockets. “Not at this time, no,” Eisenhower replied. “There is no . . .” he went on, but paused, smiled, and commented, “Suddenly all America seems to become scientist, and I am hearing many, many ideas.”
Hazel Markel of NBC then asked the question all of America was asking. “Mr. President,” Markel said, “in light of the great faith which the American people have in your military knowledge and leadership, are you saying at this time that with the Russian satellite whirling about the world, you are not more concerned nor overly concerned about our nation’s security?” Eisenhower spoke to the whole nation in his reply, in an attempt to calm a jittery public. “As far as the satellite itself is concerned,” he said, “that does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota. I see nothing at this moment, at this stage of development, that is significant in that development as far as security is concerned.”42
Later that day, Eisenhower met with Lyndon Johnson. Senator Symington was beginning an investigation into the American missile program, with the obvious purpose of putting the blame for the loss of the space race on the Republicans. Eisenhower hoped to keep the whole subject out of partisan politics. He told Johnson that Symington and his friends should be aware “that the Democrats could be blamed.” Truman had spent literally nothing on missile research before 1950, and only a pittance after that. Eisenhower promised that the Republicans “would not be first to throw the stone.” Johnson said he had been urged to call a special session of Congress; Eisenhower said “he saw no need of it now.” After Johnson left, Eisenhower told Whitman that he had “said all the right things. I think today he is being honest.”43
Having faced the Chiefs, the press corps, and the politicians, Eisenhower met next with the scientists. On October 15, he called fourteen of the leading scientists in America to the Oval Office. It was his first meeting with so broad-gauged and representative a group. Strauss had always previously managed to control the access of scientists to the President, and brought him only such men as Drs. Lawrence and Teller. (Teller, incidentally, had called Sputnik a greater defeat for the United States than Pearl Harbor, which was exactly the kind of talk Eisenhower deplored.) Shortly before the Oval Office meeting began, Jerry Persons came in to say he was worried about the guided-missile program, because “it was more than rivalry between services, there was rivalry between German and American scientists, between civilian groups, etc.” Eisenhower said he knew that already.44
The meeting started at 11 A.M. and it was a long one. Eisenhower began by asking “whether the group really thought that American science is being outdistanced, and asked for an expression of the state of mind of the members.” Dr. Isidor Rabi, a Columbia physicist whom Eisenhower knew and admired, spoke first. He said that he, and all the group, wanted federal support for scientific research and training, not because America had fallen behind, but because the Soviets “have picked up tremendous momentum, and unless we take vigorous action they could pass us swiftly just as in a period of twenty to thirty years we caught up with Europe and left Western Europe far behind.” Then Dr. Land, who had developed the camera equipment for the U-2, “spoke with great eloquence.” He said that science “needs the President acutely.” The Russians were in a pioneering stage and frame of mind. They were teaching Russian students basic sciences and beginning to reap the rewards. “Curiously, in the United States we are not now great builders for the future but are rather stressing production in great quantities of things we have already achieved,” Land said, while the Russians looked to the future. Land wanted the President to “inspire the country—setting out our youth particularly on a whole variety of scientific adventures.” He complained that “at the present time scientists feel themselves isolated and alone.”
Eisenhower disagreed with Land’s analysis. He said that the Russians had “followed the practice of picking out the best minds and ruthlessly spurning the rest.” Nor did he think that he alone could give a new spirit to scientific training and research in America. He did agree that “perhaps now is a good time to try such a thing. People are alarmed and thinking about science, and perhaps this alarm could be turned to a constructive result.” Rabi pointed out that Eisenhower lacked a scientific adviser. Eisenhower admitted that such an individual could be “most helpful.”45 Soon thereafter he appointed Dr. James Killian, the president of MIT, to the post, making the widely popular Killian the head of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC).
Two weeks later, on October 29, Rabi and Strauss came to see the President. Rabi said that “we now enjoy certain advantages in the nuclear world over the Russians and that the most important of these gaps can be closed only by continuous testing on the part of the Russians.” Rabi and his associates had therefore reached the conclusion that the United States, “as a matter of self-interest,” should agree to a suspension of all nuclear testing, if the Russians would allow the United States to place a half-dozen or so listening posts inside Russia. Rabi admitted that there were “certain advantages” to continuing testing and keeping the Hardtack series in place, but “the expected advantage would be as nothing compared with maintaining the particular scientific gap that exists in the design of the Russian H-bomb as compared to ours.” He explained that the nature of the gap was that Russian bombs were unshielded against certain types of radioactivity, so that if the United States exploded a small atomic weapon in the path of incoming ICBMs, they would reduce the effect of the Russian weapon by “something like 99 percent.”
Eisenhower was more than interested. A freeze on testing would save money, maintain an American lead, quiet the fears about fallout—it had everything going for it. But Strauss intervened to say that neither he nor the AEC scientists, led by Lawrence and Teller, agreed with Rabi. They thought that despite the listening posts inside the Soviet Union, the enemy could set off undetected explosions, and thus successfully cheat on any test ban. Further, they were “keenly afraid” that if America stopped testing, “the Russians would, by stealing all of our secrets, equal and eventually surpass us.” They insisted that America had to protect itself through continuous testing. Eisenhower shook his head—in the face of such conflicting advice from the experts, how could he decide? He told Strauss to get together with other scientists and get some agreement on what should be done.46
When the meeting ended, Eisenhower asked Strauss to stay for a moment. Goodpaster kept notes of their private talk. Eisenhower said that Rabi “is a brilliant scientist and a friend of long standing to whom he is deeply devoted.” He wanted Strauss to make a thorough study of Rabi’s proposal. “The President recalled that he had many times thought that if in fact we are ahead in the types of atomic weapons we have, we should stop testing at once in order to ‘freeze’ our lead.” Strauss again insisted that in the event of a test ban, the Russians would steal American secrets. He also told Eisenhower that “the mutual antagonisms among the scientists are so bitter as to make their working together an impossibility . . . Dr. Rabi and some of his group are so antagonistic to Drs. Lawrence and Teller that communication between them is practically nil.”47
The following day, Eisenhower met with Twining to discuss ways and means of cutting down costs in the nuclear development field. The President wondered why the AEC and JCS wanted so many bombs. He asked, “What is going to be done with this tremendous number of enormous weapons?” With an existing arsenal of thousands of weapons, Eisenhower said, “we are certainly providing for elaborate reserves, and making very pessimistic estimates as to what can get to the target.” He thought the B-52 had “great penetrating power.” Twining confirmed that assumption, but then said that “the Air Force will not be happy until they get one [hydrogen bomb] for every aircraft plus a sizable reserve.”48
Costs were very much on Eisenhower’s mind. Sputnik had stimulated almost unmanageable demands for more spending, on space and missile research, for conventional forces, for federal aid to colleges and universities, for fallout shelters, and a myriad of other projects. But the economy was slipping; 1957 was a recession year, federal income was down as a result, and the balanced budget of the previous two years was about to become a deficit budget. George Humphrey had resigned as Secretary of the Treasury (Robert Anderson replaced him), but he continued to have a strong influence on Eisenhower. Humphrey wrote the President an alarmist letter, predicting a major disaster if the expenditures were not reduced sufficiently to balance the budget. Eisenhower responded that if Humphrey was correct, “there better be some looking for storm cellars,” because he was going to have a hard enough time holding to current levels of spending, and had no chance to reduce them.49
Humphrey had been, by far, the leading watchdog on spending in the Cabinet. With his departure, the remaining members felt freer to propose new projects. At a November 1 meeting, they bombarded Eisenhower with proposals. “Look,” the President finally exploded, “I’d like to know what’s on the other side of the moon, but I won’t pay to find out this year!”50
National sentiment was otherwise. Eisenhower was getting advice from individuals, groups, organizations, all centering around the theme that “security is more important than balanced budgets.” The President took the time to respond at length to one such communication, from the Committee on International Policy of the National Planning Association. He deplored the Pearl Harbor atmosphere, the readiness to forget economics and spend whatever had to be spent to win the war. “We face,” the President said, “not a temporary emergency . . . but a long-term responsibility.” The United States effort “to combat and defeat the Soviets must be designed for indefinite use and endurance. Hasty and extraordinary effort under the impetus of sudden fear . . . cannot provide for an adequate answer to the threat.” He said he knew he could get whatever he asked for from Congress in the way of defense spending in the next session, but the suggested expenditures were “unjustifiable.” (A week later, Eisenhower told Goodpaster that “about two-thirds of the supplementary funds are more to stabilize public opinion than to meet any real need.”) Eisenhower admonished the committee that “we must remember that we are defending a way of life, not merely property, wealth, and even our homes . . . Should we have to resort to anything resembling a garrison state, then all that we are striving to defend . . . could disappear.”51
Still the pressure continued. H. Rowan Gaither, Jr., of the Ford Foundation, headed a committee that had studied “security in the broadest possible sense of survival in the atomic age.” The conclusions the committee reached—and, after a leak, made public in the Gaither Report—included, as Eisenhower typically understated it, “some sobering observations.” At a November 6 meeting in the Oval Office, Gaither told Eisenhower that his group had found that “our active defenses are not adequate,” and the passive defenses “insignificant.” Within two years, if the Russians launched a surprise ICBM attack, they would catch up to three-quarters of the B-52s on the ground. That prospect so frightened the group that three members advocated an immediate preventive war, while there was still time.
Gaither practically predicted the end of Western civilization. He said the Soviet GNP was growing at a faster rate than that of the United States, that the Soviets were spending more on their armed forces, that they had fifteen hundred nuclear weapons, forty-five hundred bombers, three hundred submarines, an extensive air defense system, an IRBM with a seven-hundred-mile range, a soon-to-be operational ICBM, and so forth. Gaither almost pleaded with Eisenhower to “do something” about it, something on the order of increasing defense appropriations from $38 billion to $48 billion. Much of that new money should go into fallout shelters, one for every individual in the country, at a cost of $100 per person, or a total over five years of $30 billion.
Eisenhower strongly disagreed. There was no defense, he insisted, except retaliation. Therefore, fallout shelters “rank rather low in the list of priorities.” He thought it would be twenty years or more before shelters would be built for such places as his Gettysburg farm. He confessed, “I can’t understand the United States being quite as panicky as they are.” Even with shelters, Gaither estimated that half the American people would die in a nuclear exchange. Eisenhower said that “we are getting close to absolutes” at that point. Then he gave his regular lecture on the need to balance economic and social needs with defense spending, and his regular warning about the dangers of a “garrison state.” And he reminded Gaither that while it would be easy to get $10 billion more from Congress in this session, “Americans will carry a challenging load only for a couple of years.” In conclusion, Eisenhower mentioned “that someone had advised him recently not to say this is a problem that will last forty years, but simply to call for a spurt of activity now. He thought this was inaccurate, and besides we must bring ourselves to carry the load until the Soviets change internally.”52
With that, Eisenhower rejected the Gaither Report. He refused to bend to the pressure, refused to initiate a fallout shelter program, refused to expand conventional and nuclear forces, refused to panic. It was one of his finest hours. If in September 1957, at Little Rock, he had failed to exercise leadership and consequently suffered through one of the low moments of his Presidency, then in October and November 1957, in his response to Sputnik and the uproar it created, he reached one of the highest points. It is doubtful if any other man could have done what Eisenhower did. The demands for shelters, for more bombers, for more bombs, for more research and development of missiles and satellites, was nearly irresistible. Only Ike could have gotten away with saying no. His unique prestige among his countrymen made him unassailable on the question of national defense. The Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers, the JCS, Congress, indeed almost all of what would be called in the seventies “the Establishment,” clamored for more defense spending. But Eisenhower said no, and he kept saying no to the end of his term. He thereby saved his country untold billions of dollars and no one knows how many war scares. Eisenhower’s calm, common-sense, deliberate response to Sputnik may have been his finest gift to the nation, if only because he was the only man who could have given it.
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On November 18, Eisenhower wrote Swede. Since July of 1956, when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, Eisenhower said he could not “remember a day that has not brought its major or minor crisis . . . But I have the satisfaction of knowing that I do my best . . . and that the Almighty must have in mind some better fate for this poor old world of ours than to see it largely blown up in a holocaust of nuclear bombs.” As for himself, “I must tell you that physically I seem to stand up under the burden remarkably well.” He had had a physical examination the day before; his blood pressure was 130 over 80 and his pulse was 66.53 A week later, Whitman told him she thought he was looking “really well.” Eisenhower agreed that he felt great.54 That afternoon, November 25, he had a stroke.