The many changes that marked the first term of President Dwight Eisenhower consisted of, among other things, increased pressure for long-overdue reforms toward the protection of the constitutional rights of African Americans and, eventually, of women and other minorities as well. To say that the civil rights movement began in the 1950s, or even reached a greater level of activism and attention during that decade, would be to speak inaccurately. Since the abolition of slavery, American citizens of all races, religious traditions, and persuasions, and in both major parties, have worked either for or against the protection of civil rights for African Americans, and the movement for greater civil rights protected under the law and enforced by it reaches back to the end of the Civil War. If one also counts the struggle for abolition that predates the Civil War, the first stirrings of a movement that promoted the rights of all citizens can be observed even before the American Revolution.
But in the 1950s, a confluence of events and variables finally merged to make the movement more visible, sustained, and pervasive, and its victory inevitable. And it was under the administration of President Eisenhower, for the most part, that the civil rights movement began to finally break through and command the attention of the broader citizenry. This is not to say that civil rights were ignored in previous decades; but only to say that during Eisenhower’s presidency, the stage was being set for the struggles and triumphs that would unfold during his administration and in the following decade of the 1960s. While a common image of Eisenhower portrays him as indifferent to civil rights, a closer examination reveals another side to him. Eisenhower saw himself as a man of the people, and as such he was firmly committed to equality under the law. This attitude made him amenable to reforms against racial discrimination. As the Allied commander in Europe, he directed, on a limited scale, the racial integration of the military forces under him, long before President Truman would formally desegregate the military three years after the war’s end, and it was indeed a cooperative General Eisenhower who worked diligently to implement Truman’s executive order. In fact, most of the desegregation of the armed forces was actually accomplished under President Eisenhower after President Truman left office. Truman issued the order; Eisenhower carried it through.
When in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the principle of “separate but equal” in the public education case of Brown v. Board of Education, Eisenhower announced that as president, he was bound to enforce the law as henceforth defined. In his Supreme Court appointments, he avoided segregationists and Southerners altogether, a fact that Chief Justice Earl Warren, in reflecting back on these appointments, observed as critical to the success of the civil rights movement as supported by the courts. (Although, to be fair, it must also be pointed out that President Eisenhower would later regret the liberal tenor of some of the justices that he appointed—especially Justice William Brennan.) In 1957, President Eisenhower introduced civil rights legislation to Congress that, with the help of Senate majority leader Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas, became law and a necessary forerunner of the still more extensive legislation that would be passed seven years later. While certainly not perfect owing to the diluting efforts, especially in the Senate, of the powerful Southern bloc, it was in fact the first legislation of its kind since Reconstruction, and it was, significantly, bipartisan—due in large part to the collaboration of President Eisenhower and the liberal and moderate Democratic and Republican leadership in Congress. This legislation was an outgrowth of Eisenhower’s public commitment to ending segregation, a commitment that he made early in his administration. Any shortcomings in the legislation cannot be blamed on the president, who was openly in favor of a more integrated society. Finally, President Eisenhower, acting on his authority as commander in chief, deployed the U.S. Army to enforce desegregation in the South, as firm a commitment as a president can make within the limits set by the Constitution.
Change was in the making in some areas of American public life during the 1950s, but not in others. Even though President Eisenhower had extended a campaign olive branch to the conservative wing of the Republican Party (still loyal to Ohio’s senator Robert Taft and determined to dismantle the New Deal), during his presidency he moved back to the center; and on many issues, he found more allies among the Democrats than from within his own party. For Eisenhower, Roosevelt’s legacy was complete and unalterable. In a letter to his brother in November 1954, Eisenhower remarked, “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.” In other words, should any party seek to roll back the achievements of Franklin Roosevelt, it would risk self-destruction. It was no longer at issue for Eisenhower; the programs of the New Deal were entrenched and invulnerable to any reasonable attack. In Eisenhower’s view of the political universe, both parties were now New Deal parties. This was less a statement of belief than acknowledgment of political realities, less an affirmation of any principle than a realization of the practical. Conservative Republicans could not look to Ike for an ally, or even for a sympathetic friend. To Eisenhower, that brand of conservatism—that is, the anti-New Deal conservatism that still appealed to strong elements within his own party—was growing increasingly “negligible and stupid.” And liberal Democrats gladly recognized in President Eisenhower the voice of moderation, a Republican who was almost a New Dealer by default. Indeed, the Republican president enjoyed a close and genuinely affectionate relationship with the two most powerful Democrats in Congress: Johnson and another Texan, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. This relationship forged a uniquely bipartisan mood in Washington, and the old animosities between the parties seemed to have abated. This is not to say that there were no disagreements, but any criticism of the president from the Democratic leadership was offered absent invective, and any support for him by that same leadership was given without qualification. Eisenhower was liked and appreciated in a Congress that was controlled by the Democrats. Finally, Eisenhower oversaw the ending of the war in Korea, and his reputation as a proven international leader lent confidence to the voting public—and again would prove hard for any opposing candidate to rebuke. Thus it would be difficult, for these and other reasons, to mount a credible challenge to this popular president in 1956. But a challenge was mounted, as it had to be, and once again it was through the candidacy of the erudite Adlai Stevenson.
As the campaign season approached, many Democrats hoped Stevenson would run again, even though Stevenson himself again met such a prospect with reluctance. However, Stevenson was not unchallenged. Estes Kefauver entered the New Hampshire primary unopposed, taking New Hampshire’s delegates and showing early strength (although Stevenson, who was not on the ballot there, managed a high number of write-in votes, enough to reach about 15%). More impressively, Kefauver won the Minnesota primary outright, this time with Stevenson on the ballot, thus prompting Stevenson to begin a serious effort. In so doing, Stevenson assented to a televised debate with Kefauver, the first televised presidential debate in history. The debate itself was uninspiring, as both candidates were fairly close on nearly all the issues; and in subsequent events, it was largely ignored by the candidates themselves. But it sparked in Stevenson a renewed interest in running, and from this point forward, his campaign was more focused. Following the debate (but evidently not a consequence of it), Stevenson won in Florida and California, and from there, the way to his renomination at the convention was eased. Kefauver continued to win primaries, but Stevenson’s support grew.
By the end of the primaries, Stevenson had won just over 50 percent of the popular vote, with slightly less than 38 percent going for Kefauver, who subsequently withdrew from the race prior to the convention. Stevenson, now the clear front-runner going into the Chicago convention, won the nomination on the first ballot, although a last-minute challenge from Averell Harriman forced a contest, largely due to the efforts of former president Truman, who felt Harriman could beat Eisenhower. Despite the entrance of a last-minute contender, the nomination was easily won by Stevenson, taking 905 delegates to Harriman’s 210, the rest of the delegates scattered among seven also-rans led by Senator Johnson’s 80 delegates. For the vice presidency, Stevenson unexpectedly asked the convention to decide, thus initiating a spontaneous contest between a number of unprepared candidates led by Kefauver, who was challenged by Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. of New York City, and a youthful first-term senator and former congressman from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy.
From the start, Kennedy was the more visible candidate, and it appeared that his chances at becoming Stevenson’s running mate in 1956 were strong. He was an appealing figure; his particular combination of rhetorical eloquence, quick wit, confident disposition, and personal grace were of a kind not seen in either party since the passing of Franklin Roosevelt, and his record as a war hero—having won the Purple Heart in the Pacific theater while displaying extreme courage, strength, and resourcefulness in saving many lives after a PT boat under his command was sliced in half by an enemy destroyer—only added to his appeal. The Campaign of 1956 occurred just eleven years after the end of World War II; thus personal stories of combat bravery were better than gold during a political campaign, and young Jack Kennedy’s story was certainly stirring. Additionally, Stevenson quietly preferred Kennedy, but he kept to his pledge to allow the convention to make the decision and thus remained silent in the contest. Kennedy was also Roman Catholic, a fact that might have lacked purchase for the nomination, particularly given memories of Al Smith’s frustrated campaign for the presidency in 1928, the last and only time a Catholic received a presidential nomination from a major party. Aware of this, the Kennedy faction went to great lengths to demonstrate that their man’s Catholicism would actually give the Democrats an advantage in the larger northern cities that were so vital to winning the bigger prizes in the Electoral College; but this effort backfired, provoking some to respond that Kennedy’s religion should not be a factor for or against him.
On the first ballot, Kefauver took the lead in delegates, winning 466 to Kennedy’s 294, with 178 going to Gore, 162 to Wagner, 134 to Humphrey, and the rest of the votes scattered among a variety of favorite sons and also-rans. On the second ballot, Kennedy actually pulled ahead, gaining a significant lead with 618 delegates to Kefauver’s 515, but these results were not announced quickly enough to stem a sudden shifting of delegates initially supporting favorite sons but now moving toward Kefauver, resulting in Kefauver regaining the lead before it was clear that it had even been lost. Senator Kennedy came very close to winning the nomination to run on the ticket with Stevenson, but in the end, Kefauver won the official vote, 755 to Kennedy’s 589. As the convention was nationally televised, Kennedy, in losing the nomination, gained greatly by winning national recognition, his gracious concession speech in particular receiving broad acclaim; hence his narrow loss for the vice presidential nomination in 1956 has been viewed as a first important step toward other goals of a still larger scale that were yet to be achieved. But for the moment, Stevenson-Kefauver was the ticket promoted by the Democrats, two candidates that not only resembled each other on the issues, but in many ways were not that far from their Republican counterpart, President Eisenhower.
With the economy strong and expanding, the Korean War long over, relations with the Soviet Union comparatively less tense, and his reputation solid, renomination to run for a second term seemed an inevitability for the incumbent president. However, the pre-campaign picture suddenly became muddied by questions over the condition of the president’s health. In September 1955, while on a visit to Denver, the president suffered what was later discovered to have been a fairly serious heart attack, causing him to be hospitalized for several days and, even after his release, raising lingering doubts about his long-term health and his viability as a two-term president. Under this climate of uncertainty, other possibilities for the upcoming election year were floated, and for a short time, a field of potential replacement candidates emerged, including the incumbent vice president Richard Nixon; two-time GOP presidential nominee (1944 and 1948) Thomas Dewey; Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., a longtime Eisenhower supporter currently sitting as ambassador to the United Nations; Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Sherman Adams; Senate minority leader William Knowland, a prominent member of the party’s conservative wing; Minnesota’s former governor Harold Stassen; Massachusetts governor Christian Herter; and even the president’s brother, Milton Eisenhower. In time, Eisenhower’s health did improve; but the president, considering his options, privately entertained the possibility of stepping down after one term. Eisenhower slowly began to change his mind after January, but it was not until March 1956 that he officially announced that he would stand for a second term. But then in June, the president suffered another setback to his health, this time involving an occurrence of ileitis that required surgery, prompting a renewal of rumors regarding his possible withdrawal from the race and, once again, the consideration of possible alternatives. Again his health recovered, and the discussion of his replacement silenced.
Throughout these changes and uncertainties, Vice President Nixon’s name provoked intraparty controversy: he was, on the one hand, floated as a strong alternative to succeed President Eisenhower; and on the other hand, as a liability who needed to be dropped from the ticket altogether. Stassen in particular wanted Nixon out, claiming that with the president’s health no longer a certainty, a more mature man was needed in the event of the worst-case scenario. Nixon was still fairly young; when he was inaugurated as vice president four years earlier, he was only thirty-nine years old, making him the second-youngest vice president in history, behind only John Breckinridge (who served under President Buchanan and was himself a candidate for president in 1860), who was thirty-six at his inauguration and to this day remains the youngest. By and large, Nixon was seen as a capable vice president, and he had taken an active role in running cabinet meetings during the president’s convalescence. Thus by the time of the convention, Stassen’s attempt to dislodge Nixon fizzled out.
The Republicans moved on from the convention with confidence. “In four years we have achieved the highest economic level with the most widely shared benefits that the world has ever seen,” stressed the GOP platform. “We of the Republican Party have fostered this prosperity and are dedicated to its expansion and to the preservation of the climate in which it has thrived,” the platform continued. With respect to the Eisenhower administration’s foreign policy, the platform stressed that under “the leadership of President Eisenhower, the United States has advanced foreign policies which enable our people to enjoy the blessings of liberty and peace.”
The post-convention campaign seemed anticlimactic. Stevenson, a moderately liberal (or perhaps liberally moderate) New Dealer, ran in defense of the social programs established by Roosevelt and Truman, but as the president himself had openly endorsed many of those programs and policies, it seemed to make little difference. Additionally, with the economy at its healthiest, the Democrats were deprived of an important set of issues to bring forward in debate. Equally important, Stevenson, a foreign policy expert, supported efforts to slow the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, including a ban on atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, especially the city-busting hydrogen bomb. Throughout the campaign, Stevenson attempted to lead a national debate over the direction of the nation’s foreign policy, a somewhat risky strategy given the president’s own solid reputation in this area. Stevenson argued that Eisenhower’s foreign policy was bringing the United States closer to war than to peace, claiming that efforts to contain communism needed to involve more than just building and testing increasingly powerful nuclear weapons. The United States needed to understand what made communism attractive to many within the developing countries around the world. These were reasonable arguments and for the most part well received; but even so, it remained difficult to credibly challenge a figure such as President Eisenhower, whose experience in the international arena could not be matched, and who had already gone to great lengths to develop a better rapport with the Soviet Union. Toward the end of the campaign, a series of international crises erupted, again driving home the desire among Americans for foreign policy experience in the White House, and none was more qualified than the man who commanded all Allied forces in Europe just one decade ago, and that same man was in the Oval Office.
In the domestic arena, many Democratic loyalists wanted Stevenson to attack the close ties between big business and the Eisenhower administration in an effort to mobilize working-class men and women to support the Stevenson candidacy. However, because of his privileged upbringing and academic demeanor, Stevenson did not make a credible populist, even though his credentials as a New Deal liberal were real. The slogans “Get the Country Moving Again” and “Give ‘em Hell, Adlai” failed to ignite the passion that led to President Truman’s last-minute, come-from-behind victory in 1948. Stevenson’s distaste for modern campaigning once again worked against him. His commendable desire to raise the level of debate also prevented him from considering the kinds of tactics that were becoming more compulsory in the age of visual media. “The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal,” Stevenson lamented, “is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.” As before, the GOP won the battle of the slogans and sound bites, and it helped that the country’s overall outlook was bright in spite of dangers abroad. Much like the Campaigns of 1896, 1924, and 1928, good economic times permitted Eisenhower to run on the slogans of “Peace, Progress, Prosperity” and “Keep America Strong with Ike.”
Following the model set during the contest in 1952, Eisenhower’s 1956 campaign focused on assuring voters that their president was in touch with the lives of ordinary Americans. For example, the Eisenhower ad campaign relied heavily on testimonies of average voters, making a point to include support from people such as a “Taxi Driver and His Dog.” Perhaps even more importantly, the Eisenhower campaign effectively portrayed Stevenson’s experience in foreign policy as too thin compared to that of the president, and it treated his support of a nuclear test ban as naïve. Besides raising questions regarding the effectiveness of Eisenhower’s foreign policy to preserve peace, the Stevenson campaign faced the problem of changing the lingering image of Stevenson as an “egghead.” To accomplish this, the campaign ran a series of ads entitled “The Man from Libertyville,” portraying Stevenson as a somewhat folksy man of the people. Taking everything into consideration, Stevenson had little hope of defeating the president. Americans simply trusted Eisenhower to sustain prosperity and keep the peace.
On Election Day, President Eisenhower was returned to office in a landslide, winning over 35,000,000 popular votes, or 57 percent, to Stevenson’s approximately 26,000,000 votes, which amounted to just under 42 percent, a crushing victory that converted to a still more impressive win in the Electoral College, where the president won 457 electoral votes (86%) to Stevenson’s 73 (14%). Eisenhower again swept the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West, holding every state that he had won in 1952 except the border state of Missouri, and in exchange he gained three states: Louisiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia. To this point, only four candidates had won a larger percentage of the popular vote: Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 and 1932 (Eisenhower’s victory was .04 percentage points behind FDR’s 1932 landslide), Warren Harding in 1920, and Herbert Hoover in 1928. Perhaps even more telling, Eisenhower’s separate percentages of the popular vote in 1952 and 1956 were both higher than President Roosevelt’s in the elections of 1940 and 1944; and as stated above, his 1956 share was virtually the same as Roosevelt’s 1932 share, evidence that the Republican Party had completely rebounded from the doldrums of the 1930s and the lingering effects in the early 1940s. Eisenhower was also the first Republican to win a second term since Theodore Roosevelt (and the first Republican to be elected twice—Roosevelt’s first term being the result of ascension upon the death of a president—since President McKinley in 1900). Eisenhower’s immense popularity did not come with very long coattails, for the Democrats retained control of both houses of Congress.
President Eisenhower would leave office in 1960 as the last president to have been born in the nineteenth century, and as the country moved into the decade of the 1960s, youth and the fresh outlooks that come with it would set the tone for the politics and culture of the next generation. Nonetheless, the Eisenhower administration was an important factor in prompting those myriad changes that would be later associated with the youth movement of the future, and it stood at a critical moment in the history of the republic. And at the center of it was the steady presence of President Eisenhower himself, whose calm influence may have been the right element for the times. Today Eisenhower’s legacy is viewed positively; most presidential scholars and historians rank him among the nation’s ten best chief executives and regard him as a “near-great” president. Rankings aside, his presidency fares well when considering the things at stake during his administration and his steady demeanor throughout his two terms. In the words of journalist Andy Rooney, “Eisenhower was the quintessential American to me. He meant to do the right thing. He was honest. I think he is the great American hero of our time.”
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