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"United States -- Politics and government -- 1945-1953"
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A companion to Harry S. Truman
With contributions from the most accomplished scholars in the field, this fascinating companion to one of America's pivotal presidents assesses Harry S.Truman as a historical figure, politician, president and strategist.
eBook
The Fear Within
Sixty years ago political divisions in the United States ran even deeper than today's name-calling showdowns between the left and right. Back then, to call someone a communist was to threaten that person's career, family, freedom, and, sometimes, life itself. Hysteria about the \"red menace\" mushroomed as the Soviet Union tightened its grip on Eastern Europe, Mao Zedong rose to power in China, and the atomic arms race accelerated. Spy scandals fanned the flames, and headlines warned of sleeper cells in the nation's midst--just as it does today with the \"War on Terror.\"
In his new book,The Fear Within, Scott Martelle takes dramatic aim at one pivotal moment of that era. On the afternoon of July 20, 1948, FBI agents began rounding up twelve men in New York City, Chicago, and Detroit whom the U.S. government believed posed a grave threat to the nation--the leadership of the Communist Party-USA. After a series of delays, eleven of the twelve \"top Reds\" went on trial in Manhattan's Foley Square in January 1949.
The proceedings captivated the nation, but the trial quickly dissolved into farce. The eleven defendants were charged under the 1940 Smith Act with conspiring to teach the necessity of overthrowing the U.S. government based on their roles as party leaders and their distribution of books and pamphlets. In essence, they were on trial for their libraries and political beliefs, not for overt acts threatening national security. Despite the clear conflict with the First Amendment, the men were convicted and their appeals denied by the U.S. Supreme Court in a decision that gave the green light to federal persecution of Communist Party leaders--a decision the court effectively reversed six years later. But by then, the damage was done. So rancorous was the trial the presiding judge sentenced the defense attorneys to prison terms, too, chilling future defendants' access to qualified counsel.
Martelle's story is a compelling look at how American society, both general and political, reacts to stress and, incongruously, clamps down in times of crisis on the very beliefs it holds dear: the freedoms of speech and political belief. At different points in our history, the executive branch, Congress, and the courts have subtly or more drastically eroded a pillar of American society for the politics of the moment. It is not surprising, then, thatThe Fear Withintakes on added resonance in today's environment of suspicion and the decline of civil rights under the U.S. Patriot Act.
eBook
Truman, Congress, and Korea
Three days after North Korean premier Kim Il Sung launched a
massive military invasion of South Korea on June 24, 1950,
President Harry S. Truman responded, dispatching air and naval
support to South Korea. Initially, Congress cheered his swift
action; but, when China entered the war to aid North Korea, the
president and many legislators became concerned that the conflict
would escalate into another world war, and the United States agreed
to a truce in 1953. The lack of a decisive victory caused the
Korean War to quickly recede from public attention. However, its
impact on subsequent American foreign policy was profound.
In Truman, Congress, and Korea: The Politics of America's
First Undeclared War , Larry Blomstedt provides the first
in-depth domestic political history of the conflict, from the
initial military mobilization, to Congress's failed attempts to
broker a cease-fire, to the political fallout in the 1952 election.
During the war, President Truman faced challenges from both
Democratic and Republican legislators, whose initial support
quickly collapsed into bitter and often public infighting. For his
part, Truman dedicated inadequate attention to relationships on
Capitol Hill early in his term and also declined to require a
formal declaration of war from Congress, advancing the shift toward
greater executive power in foreign policy.
The Korean conflict ended the brief period of bipartisanship in
foreign policy that began during World War II. It also introduced
Americans to the concept of limited war, which contrasted sharply
with the practice of requiring unconditional surrenders in previous
conflicts. Blomstedt's study explores the changes wrought during
this critical period and the ways in which the war influenced US
international relations and military interventions during the Cold
War and beyond.
eBook
Building the Cold War consensus
In 1950, the U.S. military budget more than tripled while plans for a national health care system and other new social welfare programs disappeared from the agenda. At the same time, the official campaign against the influence of radicals in American life reached new heights. Benjamin Fordham suggests that these domestic and foreign policy outcomes are closely related. The Truman administration's efforts to fund its ambitious and expensive foreign policy required it to sacrifice much of its domestic agenda and acquiesce to conservative demands for a campaign against radicals in the labor movement and elsewhere. Using a statistical analysis of the economic sources of support and opposition to the Truman Administration's foreign policy, and a historical account of the crucial period between the summer of 1949 and the winter of 1951, Fordham integrates the political struggle over NSC 68, the decision to intervene in the Korean War, and congressional debates over the Fair Deal, McCarthyism and military spending. The Truman Administration's policy was politically successful not only because it appealed to internationally oriented sectors of the U.S. economy, but also because it was linked to domestic policies favored by domestically oriented, labor-sensitive sectors that would otherwise have opposed it. This interpretation of Cold War foreign policy will interest political scientists and historians concerned with the origins of the Cold War, American social welfare policy, McCarthyism, and the Korean War, and the theoretical argument it advances will be of interest broadly to scholars of U.S. foreign policy, American politics, and international relations theory.
eBook
Truman and the Democratic Party
What best defines a Democrat in the American political arena -- idealistic reformer or pragmatic politician? Harry Truman adopted both roles and in so doing defined the nature of his presidency.
Truman and the Democratic Partyis the first book to deal exclusively with the president's relationship with the Democratic party and his status as party leader. Sean J. Savage addresses Truman's twin roles of party regular and liberal reformer, examining the tension that arose from this duality and the consequences of that tension for Truman's political career.
Truman saw the Democratic party change during his lifetime from a rural-dominated minority party often lacking a unifying agenda to an urban-dominated majority party with strong liberal policy objectives. A seasoned politician who valued party loyalty and recognized the value of political patronage, Truman was also attracted to a liberal ideology that threatened party unity by alienating southern Democrats. By the time he succeeded Franklin Roosevelt, the diversity of opinions and demands among party members led Truman to alternate between two personas: the reformer committed to liberal policy goal -- civil rights, national health insurance, federal aid to education -- and the party regular who sought greater harmony among fellow Democrats.
Drawing on personal interview with former Truman administration members and party officials and on archival materials -- most notably papers of the Democratic National Committee at the Harry S. Truman Library -- Savage has produced a fresh perspective that is both shrewd and insightful. This book offers historians and political scientists a new way of looking at the Truman administration and its impact on key public policies.
eBook