eisenhower – History First

Eisenhower & the 50th State

By Kaleena Fraga

On this day in 1959, Dwight D. Eisenhower issued Proclamation 3309, creating the state of Hawaii. The admission of Hawaii brought the total of U.S. states up to fifty, and it is the most recent addition to the Union.

Upon signing his proclamation, the president said:

All forty-nine States will join in welcoming the new one–Hawaii–to this Union. We will wish for her prosperity, security, happiness, and a growing closer relationship with all of the other States. We know that she is ready to do her part to make this Union a stronger Nation–a stronger people than it was before because of her presence as a full sister to the other forty-nine States. So all of us say to her, “Good Luck.” And to each of her representatives, a very fine tour of service in the public domain. We know that they will find their work interesting and fruitful for all of us.

Ike had long been a proponent of admitting both Hawaii and Alaska to the Union, and his presidency saw the absorption of both territories.

The road to statehood was a bumpy one–Hawaii’s royal family first proposed joining the Union in 1919. Congress voted down the idea multiple times before 1959, although Eisenhower made it a proponent of his 1952 campaign. Democrats feared that Hawaii would become a Republican stronghold, and pushed for the inclusion of Alaska to balance things out. Some Americans found its distance from the continental U.S. problematic; others opposed Hawaii’s inclusion on racial grounds.

Some native Hawaiians did not want to join the Union, either, and today there is a Hawaiian sovereignty movement.

Still, for most Americans today there has never been a United States without Hawaii. The flag that changed under Eisenhower to include 50 stars is the one that most Americans grew up seeing flying over buildings, hanging off porches, or being held on the 4th of July.

Barack Obama, the only American president born in Hawaii, attributes his famous calm demeanor to his childhood in the 50th state. “I always tell folks part of it’s being born in Hawaii,” Obama said, “and knowing what it’s like to jump into the ocean and understanding what it means when you see a sea turtle in the face of a wave.”

Happy Statehood, Hawaii!

Truman, Eisenhower, and the Roots of the Korean War

By Kaleena Fraga

This week marked a historic chapter in relations between the United States and North Korea. We take a look back on how the initial conflict began and ended, under the Truman and Eisenhower administrations:

Harry Truman:

The United States first joined the Korean War in 1950, when Harry Truman ordered American troops to help the Democratic South repel an invasion from the Communistic North. Truman did not rule out using the atomic bomb, stating that the United States would “take whatever steps were necessary” to stop the communists. He added that he never wanted to use the bomb again, acknowledging, “it is a terrible weapon, and it should not be used on innocent men, women and children.”

Public approval of the war quickly dovetailed, and one of Truman’s generals, Omar Bradley, testified in Congress in 1951 that any expansion of the war to include China would put the United States “in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong enemy.”

Truman received a letter from a bereaved father who’d lost his son, including the son’s purple heart, which read:

“Mr. Truman

As you have been directly responsible for the loss of our son’s life in Korea, you might just as well keep this emblem on display in your trophy room, as a memory of one of your historic deeds.

Our major regret at this time is that your daughter was not there to receive the same treatment as our son received in Korea.

Signed

William Banning”

Truman reportedly kept this letter in his desk.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

In 1952, Korea was a vital part of Eisenhower’s campaign. He argued that as a military man, he would be better equipped to handle the conflict than Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate. When Harry Truman challenged Eisenhower to come up with a better policy than what the Truman administration was pursing, Eisenhower responded in a speech detailing his foreign policy goals. He said that, if elected, he would personally visit Korea in order to understand how to win the war. He also promised the American people that there would be no appeasement from his administration–indicating that lessons from WWII still lay heavily on American policymakers.

In response, Truman said that if Eisenhower knew how to end the war, he should tell the country. “Let’s save a lot of lives and not wait…if he can do it after he is elected, we can do it now.”

The month after he was elected president, Eisenhower made good on his word and flew to Korea. (Truman offered the use of his plane, Independence, adding “if you still desire to go to Korea.” Eisenhower refused the offer). Seven months after he was inaugurated, despite pressure from within his cabinet and within his party (and even from the South Koreans) Eisenhower pushed through the signing of the armistice, which would bring the conflict to a close.

As of the day of its signing–July 27, 1953–33,629 Americans had been killed, another 103,284 had been wounded, and 5,178 were missing.

In an announcement to the American people Eisenhower said: “And so at long last the carnage of war is to cease…” he finished his short address by quoting Lincoln. “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on…to do all which may achieve and cherish a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

In the next eight years, not a single American serviceman would die. But then came Vietnam. Despite provocations from North Korea, it largely took a backseat to the Vietnam conflict. In this light the Korean War became, as it is oft-referred to, the “forgotten war.” American presidents after Truman and Eisenhower focused less on Korea than they did on other conflicts in the region and around the world.

It’s not yet clear what may change now that President Trump has met with Kim Jong-un. As of this writing, there is still no peace treaty which means that, despite Eisenhower’s armistice, the Korean War never ended.

Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Two Notes

By Kaleena Fraga

On June 5th, 1944 General Dwight D. Eisenhower sat down and wrote a letter. It was the night before he would attempt the largest seaborne invasion in human history, and Eisenhower’s mind had wandered toward the looming possibility of a battle lost on the beaches of Normandy.

The invasion had been months in the making. As the crucial time approached, the date itself kept changing. Bad weather forced Eisenhower to postpone the invasion, and he knew that he had only a three-day window in June to launch the attack before more inclement weather arrived. Eisenhower’s blood pressure shot up as he subsisted on a diet of coffee, cigarettes, and nerves.

On the day before the invasion, Ike sat down and thought about what would happen if the invasion failed. He wrote:

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

Eisenhower then tucked the note in his pocket. He apparently had the habit of writing such “in case of failure” notes before invasions, and tearing at least one up afterwards. It was, as Jean Edward Smith noted in his Eisenhower biography Eisenhower in War and Peace, reminiscent of the same note that Lincoln wrote expecting to be defeated in the election of 1864.

“It seems exceedingly probably that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to cooperate with the President-Elect to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward.”

Yet with the first note weighing heavily in Eisenhower’s pocket, he penned another, a speech, which he gave to his troops on the eve of the attack. To his troops he said, “The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!”

On the night before the invasion Ike waited with his personal chauffeur (and rumored mistress) Kay Summersby, who noted that the General’s “eyes were bloodshot, and he was so tired that his hands shook when he lit a cigarette.” Still, she wrote, “if Ike had wished, he could have been [with] Churchill…[and] de Gaulle…who were gathered just a few miles away in Portsmouth. But he preferred to wait in solitude.”

The invasion, although a success, cost thousands of lives. When Eisenhower found the note again he showed it to his aide, Captain Harry. C Butcher, who asked to keep it. Eisenhower, reluctant, acquiesced.

In the end, Eisenhower and Lincoln embraced a strategy of warfare perhaps best articulated by another American president, John F. Kennedy:

“Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.”

K1C2: Lessons for Political Messaging from 1952

By Kaleena Fraga

As Democrats gear up for midterm elections in 2018 and the presidential election in 2020 the party struggles to define its message. It cannot simply be the party of anti-Trump–especially if it aims to win back two-time Obama voters who turned Republican in 2016. Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s former communications director and current co-host of the left-leaning podcast Pod Save America, has suggested that the Democrats take up “corruption” as part of their messaging. In recent weeks, his colleagues at Crooked Media have pushed this–corruption, collusion, and chaos.

It’s reminiscent of another young political operative. This one a Republican, and in the year 1952. Richard Nixon, as a candidate for the vice presidency, pushed the similarly sounding message of “Korea, Communism, Corruption”–K1C2.

While Eisenhower maintained a healthy distance from the campaign, Nixon leapt into the fray. He put up a fight for the presidency that would embitter many against him for the rest of his political career, including Harry Truman, who interpreted Nixon’s messaging as a sly way of calling him a traitor. (Truman would later insist that Nixon had personally accused him of treason, although no evidence exists to support this). Even in Nixon’s lowest point of the campaign–when he was forced to defend his use of a political slush fund in the now famous “Checkers” speech–he was sure to add at the end that electing Eisenhower was important because the Democrats had left the government riddled with Communists and corruption.

At one rally, Nixon said: “If the record itself smears, let it smear. If the dry rot of corruption and Communism, which has eaten deep into our body politic during the past seven years, can only be chopped out with a hatchet, then let’s call for a hatchet.”

At another, he went further, accusing the Democratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson, of “carrying a Ph.D. from Dean Acheson’s cowardly college of Communist containment.”

As for Korea, Eisenhower, a war hero, promised to visit the battlefield after the election. He and Nixon could argue that Stevenson lacked the necessary military experience, while no one could doubt Ike’s credentials. The war weighed heavily on the country. Truman kept a letter and a purple heart from a distraught parent in his desk, who sent it to him as the man “directly responsible” for their son’s death.

In the end, the alliteration worked–Eisenhower won 55% of the popular vote, won 39 out of 48 states, and took 442 electoral votes. He even won Stevenson’s native state of Illinois. Of course there were other factors at play. The Democrats had been in power since 1933 and there was a general feeling of fatigue toward their policies. Ike also campaigned on the promise of change.

Still, perhaps communications professionals of the Democratic party can take a page from Richard Nixon’s book. A s simple message, endlessly repeated, can go a long way.

Sources:

Richard Nixon: The Life by John A. Farrell

The President & the Apprentice by Irwin F. Gellman

Truman by David McCullough