Introduction

President Dwight David Eisenhower may not have planned to make foreign affairs, in particular the effort to preserve the policy of containing communism, the central feature of his second administration. On January 20, 1957, as he took the oath of office in a private Sunday ceremony, Ike knew that he still had unfinished items on his agenda dating from his first four years in office, when he had launched a balanced attack on foreign and domestic problems. He could be excused a strong sense of satisfaction with what had been accomplished. He had, with impressive success, met the major challenges that he faced. As the world's most dominant leader, he had ended the bloody, stalemated war in Korea, replaced threatening leftist governments in Guatemala and Iran, eased the Soviets out of Austria, brought Germany into the NATO alliance, salvaged at least half a country from communism following a French debacle in Indochina, and restored order after his allies had launched their ill-advised invasion of Egypt's Suez Canal region. On the domestic scene, he had tamed the military and reformed America's defense posture, defanged, at last, the dangerous Joe McCarthy, initiated a revolutionary program of federal interstate-highway construction, opened the Midwest to ocean traffic through the St. Lawrence Seaway, brought an out-of-control federal budget into balance, and engineered a sound, growing economy. In the political realm, where he was an admitted novice, he had crushed his Democratic opponent in an election even more lopsided than his first decisive triumph four years earlier. The theme of successful crisis management was mirrored in his personal life. He had survived a heart attack and emergency surgery for a serious intestinal ailment. Recovering swiftly, he had won the assurances of his doctors that he could take control of his own health and serve out another full term.

The next four years would, however, destroy the illusion of political control, force him to devote most of his energy to foreign affairs, and thoroughly test his ability to lead the effort to defend the frontiers of the capitalist world. The assumption that the course of history can be controlled has been very strong in American presidents of the twentieth century, and Dwight David Eisenhower was no exception. But the notion that Eisenhower and the United States could shape the world to their liking turned out to be difficult to sustain in the second administration. A case in point was the Middle East, where the ceasefire Eisenhower had imposed by leaning on his allies--Britain, France, and Israel--had left the charismatic Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser in power and pan-Arabism gaining strength as the Soviets threatened to extend their influence in the oil-rich region. Fortified by bipartisan acceptance of the basic policy expressed in the Eisenhower Doctrine, the President worked quietly and methodically to prevent any renewed outbreak of hostilities. He forced the Israelis to withdraw their troops from the territory they had occupied during the 1956 Suez Crisis. Working through the United Nations whenever possible, he was able to broker an uneasy peace that featured renewed Western access to Middle Eastern oil, a reopened Suez Canal, and international passage through the Straits of Tiran up to the Israeli port of Eilat.

A lasting settlement proved far more elusive. "The basic reason for our Mid East troubles is Nasser’s capture of Arab loyalty and enthusiasm throughout the region," he wrote former Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey. Seeking a counterweight, Eisenhower attempted to forge a personal relationship with the deeply religious king of Saudi Arabia, ibn Abd al-Aziz Saud, whom he felt could "lead most of the Arab world toward the Western camp" even though he was "so patently a dictator." Given the persistence of religious conflict between Moslems and Jews, this strategy had its limitations, and Eisenhower eventually abandoned it after the king's own family stripped him of power. In 1958 Eisenhower was forced to go beyond his usual diplomatic and internationalist approaches when two other potential allies in the region, Lebanon and Jordan, were menaced by Nasserite subversion. Moving swiftly after a coup in Iraq threatened to destabilize the area, he dispatched a joint Army-Marine force to Beirut and aided the British in their almost simultaneous troop deployment to Jordan. Eisenhower's largely symbolic actions prevented a further deterioration in the Middle East, but the basic problem of Arab-Israeli conflict remained long after his military forces were withdrawn. This was, indeed, the type of fundamental conflict that made the cold war era so trying to the patience of Americans and so threatening to the peace of the world. Eisenhower provided steady leadership, looking always to contain a still expansive communism by bolstering the U.S. system of alliances and stabilizing regimes that promised to support that overriding goal.

One very important cold-war tool that Eisenhower employed against the Communists in the Middle East and elsewhere was foreign aid. This assistance was, he said, an "effective way of helping to defeat that kind of socialism (Imperialistic Communism) which the nations of the world, unaided, could not successfully withstand." Often, his best efforts were frustrated by domestic reluctance to provide U.S. resources to foreigners. Congress was particularly unwilling to fund the mutual-assistance program at a time when the Eisenhower Administration was trying to cut back on domestic spending for the good of the economy. The President lashed out at what he saw as short-sighted thinking, the unbridled "stupidity of the opponents of the program." Since the United States was in actuality supplying foreign countries with the means to buy its goods and services, he argued, "our mutual security operations represent America's best investment." Eisenhower labored continuously to convince Congress that foreign aid was an inexpensive way to defend our country, but he was frequently forced to accept serious funding cuts.

Equally frustrating was his effort to control events in the Far East. The Communist government of the People's Republic of China threatened to reclaim Quemoy and Matsu, the small offshore islands held by the Formosa-based regime of Chiang Kai-shek, an American client. Eisenhower believed that if the Sino-Soviet alliance took the islands "by armed assault," then it could capture Formosa and "'expel' the United States from the West Pacific and cause its Fleet to leave international waters and 'go home.'" His freedom of action was constrained by the significant domestic and allied opposition to risking a nuclear war over two valueless pieces of real estate. Chiang complicated matters further by refusing to modify his rigid, confrontational stance. In the end, the Communists backed down and partially lifted the blockade. Sporadic shelling of the islands continued, and here as elsewhere the United States and its allies had to play the nerveracking, waiting game central to containment. Eisenhower's confidence in that strategy never wavered. But he often felt discouraged when his support wavered as the struggle ground ahead and the Communists appeared to be winning the contest for global supremacy.

Looming over each of these crises was the threat of nuclear conflict, Eisenhower's greatest concern. He wrote a friend that "atomic war could mean the end of all civilization, including our own," and he believed that it was in the power of the United States, "along with those others who possess nuclear weapons to put an end to the fear and horror which the possibility of their use imposes." The basic problem, for Eisenhower, was that the other major superpower, the Soviet Union, refused to agree to the specific American solutions to the dilemma. Suspicious of "Communist imperialism" and "its announced purpose of world revolution and the Kremlin’s control of the entire earth," he insisted that any disarmament agreement contain provisions for inspection and verification.

The most promising area in which to begin a diplomatic journey toward nuclear disarmament seemed to be the elimination of atomic testing, which was threatening the health of all the world's peoples. "I am convinced," Eisenhower wrote, "that a cessation of nuclear weapons tests, if it is to alleviate rather than merely to conceal the threat of nuclear war, should be undertaken as a part of a meaningful program to reduce that threat." But how could he get the Soviets to agree upon a program for inspections and inspection stations? The President and hardline Secretary of State John Foster Dulles were willing to make concessions to the Soviet suspicions about inspection by outsiders. Others in the Administration insisted that American flexibility was dangerous because the Soviets could never be trusted. Eisenhower decided to move ahead toward banning the tests, and in August 1958 he offered to cease testing if the Soviets would do likewise. Khrushchev agreed, and in October of that year test-ban talks began. At last it seemed as though the first small steps toward a reduction in tensions had begun.

But almost immediately the Soviets stirred up a new round of trouble and disrupted Eisenhower's dream of orderly progress toward a more peaceful world. Khrushchev announced that by the end of May 1959 he was going to make a separate peace with the Communist East Germans unless the United States and its allies agreed to Soviet proposals regarding the two Germanies. This step threatened the West's beleaguered outpost in Berlin. Allowing East Germany control over access rights to Berlin would jeopardize the West's ability to remain in the symbolic city and would make the reunification of Germany far less likely. Khrushchev had precipitated an "artificial crisis," Eisenhower complained. The United States could not think of risking its "honor by accepting, under the threat of force, conditions which would undermine our ability to fulfill our commitment to the people of Berlin. Our rights are clear." The President, who realized that the city could not be held by conventional forces in the face of overwhelming Soviet ground strength, refrained from provocative actions and proclaimed himself "completely ready to negotiate where there is any possible negotiable ground." Here too patience trumped provocation, and the Soviets eventually allowed the ultimatum to lapse without incident. But the threats to containment appeared to be mounting, and no long-term settlement was on the horizon in Berlin, the Far East, or the Middle East.

Each dangerous flash of conflict increased the media's demands and the popular yearnings for a four-power summit of Western and Soviet leaders. Eisenhower distrusted summits. In his view, they were all too likely to provide the Communists with a propaganda platform and to raise false hopes. He wrote that "to go back to the world with no more specific accomplishment" than had followed the 1955 Geneva meeting would "sound the death knell of much of the stirring hope that is discernible in the world." He insisted that before heads of government met, there first had to be progress at meetings between foreign ministers; "unless most careful preparations precede a summit meeting," he said, "such a conference would end in failure." Lower-level discussions continued to deadlock, however, and Eisenhower decided to hold out an additional inducement: the prospect of a personal visit to the United States by the Soviet leader, with a reciprocal visit to the Soviet Union by Eisenhower. Khrushchev, as expected, leapt at the chance to come to America, and his trip dominated the headlines in September 1959. There were few substantial diplomatic results, but the Soviets agreed to forgo any more ultimatums regarding Germany and the status of Berlin. This concession was enough to prompt Eisenhower to drop his insistence on progress at the foreign ministers' level as a precondition for a summit. The meeting, which was expected to produce an agreement banning atomic tests, was scheduled for May 1960.

Eisenhower set to work bringing his own administrative house into better order so that he could deal effectively with the Soviets. The Defense Department and the Atomic Energy Commission opposed disarmament deals with the Communists, and Eisenhower knew that the Democrats were poised to take advantage of any moves that might be seen as weakening the nation's security. The President had one great advantage, although it was not one about which he could speak publicly. Since 1956 the CIA had been flying over the Soviet Union in sophisticated, high-altitude reconnaissance planes. These flights had revealed the enemy's shortcomings in delivery systems for their nuclear weapons. Eisenhower later explained that this daring aerial-reconnaissance program was but "one phase of an intelligence system made necessary for defense against surprise attack on the part of a nation which boasts of its capability to 'bury' us all--and one which stubbornly maintains the most rigid secrecy in all its activities."

On the eve of the summit conference disaster struck. Eisenhower granted permission for one more overflight, the results of which he could use to overcome opposition within the ranks of his administration. On May 1, however, the Soviets shot down a U-2 spy plane deep within their own territory. Even worse, they captured the pilot, along with sufficient evidence to give the lie to the U.S. cover story that the flight's purpose had been weather research. Professing outrage at the opening of the Paris Summit, Khrushchev demanded that Eisenhower apologize. When the President declined, Khrushchev abruptly terminated the meeting and crushed any hope that these two powerful leaders would be able to make the world less threatening. Dismayed, Eisenhower blamed the debacle on the Soviet leader, who he said had "embarked on a calculated campaign, even before it began, to insure the failure of the conference and to see to it that the onus for such failure would fall on the West, particularly the United States." In truth, however, all of the blame belonged to the hazards of fortune and the overconfidence that had prompted Eisenhower and the CIA to push their luck at the worst possible time.

While weathering the wave of shock and dismay that followed, Eisenhower could take some consolation from the manner in which the crisis bolstered the Western alliance. America's staunchest friends, the British, were led by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. He and Eisenhower were "old wartime comrades and friends of long standing" dating back to World War II, and the American President was usually confident that they would remain united in the "more difficult job of waging the peace." In accord concerning most aspects of the cold war, they both believed in the NATO concept of collective security as a means of stopping Soviet aggression. As in all such relationships, a number of relatively minor conflicts had to be worked out. Eisenhower was far less eager than Macmillan for a summit, but he eventually agreed to hold it. Macmillan in turn agreed to Eisenhower's requests for suitable berthing facilities for U.S. missile submarines in the United Kingdom. The President could not grant every one of Macmillan's pleas for the United States to open its doors to British imports, but he was glad to lend a sympathetic ear and was steadfast in his largely successful attempts to remove barriers to trade. As the letters in these volumes show, Eisenhower took care to consult his principal ally on every major matter in which the British had a substantial interest.

Another wartime associate, Charles de Gaulle, proved to be less receptive to American leadership. For years Eisenhower had longed for a strong figure to take charge in France. He once asked Dulles, "The trick is--how do we get the French to see a little sense?" In 1958 he got his wish. De Gaulle took power as a revolt in the French territory of Algeria threatened to disrupt not only the French nation but the nascent American ties to the emerging Moslem nations in North Africa as well. For the most part the United States supported the French as they groped their way toward a resolution of the bloody conflict, a resolution that would eventually end in complete independence for Algeria, but de Gaulle often aggravated Eisenhower by challenging the fundamental premises on which the North Atlantic alliance was based. De Gaulle's desire to modify NATO's power relationships did not mean that he was leaning toward neutralism or the Soviet bloc. During the Paris Summit his firm pro-Western support in the face of Khrushchev's threats heartened Eisenhower in one of his darkest hours. Eisenhower responded, "Certainly the word 'ally' has for me now an even deeper meaning than ever before."

Eisenhower's strongest ally within the U.S. government had been unable to support him at the Summit. From the outset of his administrations Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had been an almost ideal adviser and subordinate, and the President had praised "his wisdom, his knowledge in the delicate and intricate field of foreign relations, and his tireless dedication to duty." These two strong men had their differences. The lawyer like Dulles was often inclined toward an adversarial approach to world affairs at inappropriate times. He was also quick to give moralistic lectures when tolerant persuasion was needed. Dulles lacked some of Eisenhower's vision and flexibility, especially in such matters as admitting Soviet students to the United States in order to give them a taste of life in a free society. Their differences had to do with tone and tactics rather than fundamentals, however, and Dulles remained loyal and effective throughout the first six years of Eisenhower's presidency. When Dulles succumbed to illness in the spring of 1959 Eisenhower was devastated. The new Secretary of State, former Congressman Christian A. Herter, was seasoned and capable, but Eisenhower would never be as close to him as he had been to Dulles.

Unlike Dulles, Herter was supportive of the kind of initiative that Eisenhower now launched in the cold-war struggle for worldwide public opinion. The President reasoned that he could employ his enduring personal popularity by visiting a number of foreign nations as an antidote to Communist propaganda. He explained: "I have found from experience that there is no substitute for personal contact in furthering understanding and good will." The trip that he most wanted to take, to the Soviet Union, was a casualty of the U-2, and domestic unrest forced the Japanese government to request cancellation of the President's visit to that important American ally. But in country after country Eisenhower drew large and enthusiastic crowds, and he found the results gratifying: "Everywhere there is evidence that they look to America as a sort of father-nation, and that they feel we will be able to help them achieve the fulfillment of their desires." As Eisenhower sensed, democratic capitalism, with or without American help, had widespread appeal even during the years when the Communist empires seemed to be growing ever stronger. In dealing with Latin America, where he had tried to foster friendlier relationships, he was shaken by the hostile reception given to Vice-President Richard M. Nixon during a 1958 trip to Venezuela and Peru. Even worse was to come. Cuba's Fidel Castro, whom the President regarded as a "little Hitler," had come to power and was threatening to hand his country over to the Soviet Union "as an instrument with which to undermine our position in Latin America and the world." By July 1960 Eisenhower was tactfully explaining to Harold Macmillan that American patience had been exhausted and that he had begun "creating conditions in which democratically minded and Western-oriented Cubans can assert themselves and regain control of the island’s policies and destinies." President John F. Kennedy would employ the resources Ike had started to create in an ill-planned and tragically unsuccessful armed invasion of the island by American surrogates.

During Eisenhower's final year in office two other hot spots developed, in Africa and Asia. In the Congo, Belgium's reluctant decolonization efforts had resulted in chaotic factionalism and territorial secession of a province rich in mineral resources. Fearful of opportunistic Soviet penetration into Africa, Eisenhower was able to bring about at least a modicum of stabilization by using U.N. peacekeeping troops. In Laos, the President was even more apprehensive that Communist forces from North Vietnam were threatening to upset the uneasy status quo that prevailed after the 1954 Geneva accords had halted a dangerous and bloody conflict. He told India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that he was "deeply troubled by the renewal of fratricidal warfare in this small and weak but strategically important Kingdom, whose only 'offense' is geographical: it lies in the path of Communist expansionist intent in Asia, and is perhaps the most vulnerable spot on the entire periphery of the communist-controlled Eurasian land mass." Matters came to a head in January 1961, as he was preparing to turn power over to the Democrats and was powerless to affect events except by warning President-elect Kennedy that another nation was threatening to fall to the Communists. The domino theory and the assumption that global communism was a unified force were still playing a powerful role in shaping U.S. foreign policy.

The world had clearly become a more dangerous place in the four years of Ike's second term. Nuclear weapons were a greater threat than ever, and increasing hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union was exacerbating cold-war tensions. The Soviet Union had gained its first foothold in the Western Hemisphere, and Southeast Asia seemed to be on the verge of collapse. Although de Gaulle had brought a measure of stability to the French republic, he had started to challenge American leadership and threatened to withdraw his country's support from the alliance. Neutral nations, led by Nehru's India, had resisted Eisenhower's assiduous courting and continued to act in ways that injured American interests. The newly emerging nations of Africa faced overwhelming problems and were vulnerable to Communist influence even as Congress grew ever more reluctant to provide economic support overseas. The future looked stark.

But in reality, the explosive combination of Communist imperialism and national socialist revolutions would never be stronger than it was when Eisenhower left office. He had guided the U.S. system of alliances through the worst stage of a threatening era and had kept intact the containment policy that would ultimately bring about the astonishing collapse of the Soviet empire and the rapid retreat of communism as an ideological and political force. He had done so while preventing the bitter rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union from exploding into a general war. As ideologically driven conflicts erupted, Eisenhower and his allies had been able to keep these struggles localized. The great powers had not gone to war over Quemoy, Suez, Lebanon, the Congo, or the access routes to Berlin. The cold war continued, but the soldier-president had kept the peace through the world's most dangerous years.

International relations was Eisenhower's strength as a national leader, but while in office he improved his skills in handling domestic affairs. By 1957 he had learned, for example, how to work with Congress even when it was controlled by the Democratic opposition. He forged personal ties with House and Senate leaders in both parties and cultivated a loose alliance between Republicans and conservative Democrats. These measures, coupled with a judicious use of his veto power, were usually effective in preventing what he felt were liberal excesses.

Eisenhower wanted to maintain a sound economy by means of an equally sound fiscal policy. He was convinced that a balanced budget was necessary to keep the economy healthy over the long term. Eisenhower wrote to a businessman friend that the enemy was inflation: "With this thief and robber stalking across the country, we can easily have an apparent prosperity for a time, but not for long. Inflation must be avoided, and this means that the Federal government must not only live within its means but must, in times of prosperity, begin reducing the nation’s debt." His determination was put to the test after the Soviets launched their Sputnik, the world's first earth satellite, in October 1957. This was bad news for two reasons. First, it meant that the Soviets had, or soon would have, the capability to reach the United States with long-range missiles armed with atomic weapons. The United States was losing an important element of its continental security. Second, Eisenhower's domestic foes were certain to take advantage of the crisis atmosphere to attempt to push higher defense expenditures through Congress. Since the Administration's balanced budget was predicated upon reducing military spending, the President's economic programs were placed in jeopardy. Eisenhower tried to hold down the increased funding for missiles while reassuring the American people that even though "a purely materialistic dictatorship" had accomplished an impressive technological feat, he still retained the "complete conviction that the American people can meet every one of these problems and these threats if we turn our minds to it." His prestige as a military leader was enough to keep the lid on a potentially runaway defense budget, but he paid a political price for this successful effort to control the sense of panic that followed Sputnik.

Meanwhile, Eisenhower continued his efforts to reform the nation's military structure so as to reduce interservice rivalry and to bring the Pentagon under tighter civilian control. As he wrote U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in April, "I am, if I may use the expression, 'going to town' on the issue of Defense Reorganization." Energetic in his campaign to overcome entrenched congressional opposition, Eisenhower won the necessary support by marshaling a cadre of influential businessmen. He argued that the military establishment had to adopt modern business and organizational practices in order to meet the challenges of rapidly advancing technology: "All of us know that the competition faced by the Defense Department is the sternest in the world, that provided by the military might of the Soviet Union. The single objective of the Defense Department is the nation’s security; in this it must be successful." The resulting bill, which Eisenhower signed into law in August 1958, simplified command structures and consolidated power in the hands of the Secretary of Defense at the expense of the individual military services.

While these positive results were being achieved, Eisenhower was resisting congressional pressure to act on another front. In 1957 the economy had gone into recession due in large part, the President believed, to "the 1955 inflationary splurge by certain automobile companies," which had increased production of new cars far out of proportion to consumer demand. Whatever the cause, consumer spending fell and unemployment rose. Politicians, labor officials, and even some business leaders urged the White House to cut taxes and increase spending for public-works programs. Eisenhower was very reluctant to take steps that he thought would throw the nation back into a New Deal frame of mind. He feared that tax cuts and spending increases could not be repealed after the economic difficulties were over, and that a ruinous inflation would result. By formally requesting such measures, he would "open flood gates in the Congress that will never be closed." Freely wielding his veto against recovery bills he felt were unwise, Eisenhower refused to heed the calls for drastic action. The economy, as he predicted, slowly recovered, but the President found himself "tagged as an unsympathetic, reactionary fossil." Both he and the Republican party suffered a loss of political prestige for refusing to yield their long-range objectives to a quick economic fix.

Eisenhower also came under fire for his attempts to manage public policies dealing with three specific sectors of the economy. Particularly controversial were the farm policies that he and his Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson, employed in their efforts to reduce federal subsidies and agricultural surpluses. The problem seemed insoluble. "Every suggested cure seems to bring additional problems in its wake," he complained to a Kansas dairy farmer. He tried to get Benson to show more flexibility in trying to secure acceptable legislation, but he was forced to alienate Farm Belt residents and politicians by vetoing Congress's attempt to raise farm subsidies in 1958. In the field of transportation, Eisenhower tried in vain to reverse the continuing decline of the nation's railroad systems. He was able to remove certain federal restrictions, but this only resulted in limited relief. The development of the Interstate Highway System also caused the President concern. He attempted to accelerate construction of the great roadway net, but his efforts ran aground on the reluctance to raise taxes and the insistence that expensive projects through urban centers should be added to the original concept. Finally, Eisenhower's energy policy, which was predicated upon encouraging the freest possible market for petroleum products, was thwarted by political forces determined to foster and protect domestic oil producers. Attempting to find a middle way between consumer and producer interests, he imposed voluntary and then mandatory quotas on imported oil. Eisenhower took these steps reluctantly, for they alienated America's cold-war allies and slowed progress toward free trade in the world economy.

The most explosive domestic issue in Eisenhower's second term--civil rights--was only tangentially related to economic concerns. In deciding the best course to take in response to the growing demands of African Americans, Eisenhower discovered that the middle-way strategy that had served him so well in the realms of politics and the economy would not prevent conflict. Although he sympathized with the plight of white Southerners, he saw that the advocates of racial progress had justice on their side, most particularly in their quest for minority enfranchisement. He set forth his convictions in a letter to a supporter: "A President of all the people must defend the rights of all citizens, most especially he must do all he rightfully can to make sure that the basic right to vote is not denied any citizen entitled to it." He disliked "rigidly conceived laws" to protect civil rights, however, favoring instead a gradual, constitutional approach that would not risk tearing the fabric of Southern society. In 1957 he patiently cajoled the Congress to enact the first civil-rights legislation since Reconstruction, a measure that established the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and allowed the federal government to take limited steps to protect voting rights for African Americans. In 1960 he successfully pushed for amendments that strengthened the law by giving federal authorities greater enforcement powers.

The movement for social change and equality was, however, too powerful and too deeply grounded to be satisfied by these measures. The issue of school desegregation, which was far more volatile than even the question of voting rights, stirred mixed feelings within the President. He privately grumbled to a confidant that "no other single event has so disturbed the domestic scene in many years as did the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 in the school segregation case." He disliked the idea of "undesirable social mingling" and counseled a young African American girl to be patient in the face of injustice, explaining that "progress, to be lasting, must be steady and sometimes painfully slow." But in the fall of 1957 even his noted ability to be patient gave way when Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus defiantly obstructed a federal court's desegregation order in Little Rock. Faubus's actions provoked mob violence against African American students attempting to attend a segregated high school, and the President took decisive measures: "Failure to act in such a case would be tantamount to acquiescence in anarchy and the dissolution of the union." He placed the Arkansas National Guard, which had been used to prevent compliance with the federal court's order, under federal control and sent in units of the elite 101st Airborne Division to restore order and enforce the court's rulings. These dramatic actions provoked widespread resentment in the South, and a few school districts tried to evade the inevitable by closing their public school systems before federal judges could issue integration orders. But the process of creating a new order in the South would continue and accelerate in the following decade.

Although Eisenhower told a friend that "political problems--and by this I mean internal political problems--are the most wearing in this difficult job," he took his role of party leader seriously. After the 1956 election confirmed the widely held impression that voters liked Ike better than the Republican Old Guard, Eisenhower tried to bring more young people into the party and to remold it in his own Modern Republican image. Progress in recasting the party was slow, but by early 1958 Ike nevertheless hoped to regain control of the legislative branch: "If a Republican Congress could be elected it would be the neatest trick of the week." Two factors appear to have undermined his hopes: his reluctance to take fiscally irresponsible measures to alleviate the economic distress caused by the lingering effects of the recession; and a scandal involving one of his closest associates, Sherman Adams, the Assistant to the President, in reality a powerful White House Chief of Staff. It was revealed that Adams had accepted favors from, and performed services for, a shady New England businessman. Eisenhower, who believed that Adams typified "sturdiness, forthrightness and integrity," was dismayed. "Nothing that has occurred has had a more depressive effect on my normal buoyancy and optimism than has the virulent, sustained, demagogic attacks made upon him." Taking a political beating in the press, Eisenhower accepted Adams's resignation after warnings that Adams’s presence would drag the party down to certain defeat.

Dumping Adams did not help. In November 1958 the GOP lost thirteen seats in the Senate and forty-seven in the House of Representatives. The Democrats also won twenty-six of the thirty-four gubernatorial elections. One of these was in California, where Eisenhower had focused his attention and energy on the task of electing outgoing Senate Majority Leader William Knowland. Among the few bright spots was the dynamic Nelson Rockefeller's victory in his bid to be New York's governor, a victory that encouraged the President "to believe that people have decided that 'moderate government' when properly explained by a personable, intelligent candidate is still a goal of the majority of Americans." Rockefeller's triumph also marked him as a likely contender for the next Republican presidential nomination, a position on which Vice-President Nixon had seemed to have a lock.

Eisenhower found it difficult to choose and develop a successor. As the campaign intensified, he became grumpy about some of the proposals Nixon and Rockefeller were making. New initiatives seemed to imply criticisms of his efforts over the past eight years. For reasons of temperament and ideology he found it impossible to commit absolutely to Nixon. On the other hand, Rockefeller's dynamism seemed, on the other hand, to break too decisively with the Middle Way. Ike continually daydreamed about men who in fact had no chance to win the Republican nomination, including Democrats like Ohio Governor Frank Lausche and Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson. In the end, Nixon won the nomination because of the careful groundwork he had done in the Republican party.

Once Nixon, with Eisenhower's U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge as his running mate, started to campaign, the President entered the fray. But he did so in a constrained way. "Many people," he explained to a supporter, "seem to forget that I am seventy years old." He was, he said, avoiding overexposing himself on the stump so as to steer clear of "Mamie's wrath." Realizing that Nixon would have to appear as his own man in the campaign, he doubted "the wisdom of any president appearing in the role of mentor or sponsor of the individual he hopes to be his successor." These doubts and "Mamie's wrath" notwithstanding, Eisenhower hit the campaign trail in a last-minute effort to push Nixon over the top. It was not enough to keep Kennedy and the Democrats from capturing the White House. At first, Eisenhower wrote, he felt as though he had been "hit in the solar plexus with a ball bat," and he wondered whether his eight-year effort had been in vain. His "normal optimism" soon reasserted itself, however, and he began making plans for the presidential transition and an active retirement.

Throughout Eisenhower’s second administration, it was not only Mamie who was concerned about Eisenhower's health. Given his two serious illnesses in 1955 and 1956, this was indeed a matter of both personal and public concern. In November 1957 he suffered a cerebral occlusion--a stroke--that temporarily incapacitated him while he was working at his desk in the White House. He wrote a close friend from Abilene that "never at any time" did he "feel ill," and he minimized the event in a letter to Macmillan by telling him that he had experienced merely "a marked 'word confusion,' with, also, some loss of memory of words alone." Deciding that he could not continue in office if he were not physically capable of withstanding the demands of the office, Eisenhower set for himself, and passed, a rigorous personal test by attending the meeting of NATO heads of government three weeks after the onset of his illness. He made, virtually, a full recovery, and his health remained good for his final years in the presidency.

As the documents in these volumes show, Eisenhower's family played a significant role in his life from 1957 until January 1961. The saddest event of those years was the death of Arthur Eisenhower, whose ill-health had been a source of filial concern and whom he had described to a cabinet officer as "our 'big' brother--always dependable and always devoted." The President also continued his lively correspondence with Edgar Eisenhower, a conservative lawyer who never hesitated to criticize his famous brother whenever he detected deviation from Republican orthodoxy. As Dwight told another brother, Earl, who had worried that intra-family disagreements might become public knowledge, "all the Eisenhower brothers have fought for nearly sixty years--and loved every minute of it!" The President's youngest brother, Milton, had no such concerns. He continued to advise the President on a number of matters and to serve as special representative to the troubled nations of Latin America. As Ike explained to a friend, Milton had for many years been one of his "most respected and trusted counsellors and associates." The President and Mamie also delighted in the growing family of their son, John, who held an important national-security position in the White House. While Mrs. Eisenhower mentored and played with her three granddaughters, the President took great pleasure in paying special attention to the upbringing of his grandson, David. John and his family had even more opportunities to see the First Family after June 1959, when they moved to Gettysburg and settled in a location close to the Eisenhowers' cherished cattle farm.

Letters to Eisenhower's widespread network of friends are abundant in this collection. In addition to showing a warm and hidden side to this rather formal man, these writings also reveal new information about his ideas regarding public policy. Secure in the knowledge that his friends would not pass his letters along to the media, Eisenhower frequently expressed himself in a candid manner. The President suffered a blow when his favorite correspondent, Edward Everett "Swede" Hazlett, died late in 1958. Hazlett, a boyhood friend from Abilene, had been one of the few people to whom he could vent the full range of his emotions, and he told Hazlett's widow that his old friend's death had left "a permanent void" in his life. Eisenhower also asked his friends for help in such matters as fundraising for political and charitable causes and support for initiatives stalled in Congress. The materials presented here also testify to the fact that Eisenhower lived in a less suspicious age, when, despite the Sherman Adams scandal, public men could still receive gifts from their close friends with little thought of impropriety.

Eisenhower also corresponded with his friends from World War II. These letters were often characterized by warm remembrances and nostalgia, but they took on a more acerbic tone after his wartime associate Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery published a memoir that slighted Eisenhower's accomplishments. Although he told a friend that he "never allowed such matters to disturb me more than momentarily," few things enraged the President as much as the criticisms of a man he privately referred to as a "very small magpie." Although forced to abandon his plans to orchestrate a definitive joint reply to Montgomery, Eisenhower prompted a reunion of Allied leaders that revalidated his unspoken claim to have been a primary architect of the victory over Germany.

As 1961 approached, the President turned his attention to his impending retirement. He decided to accept an affiliation with Gettysburg College, which had offered to provide him with office space and facilities to conduct the business of an ex-President. Choosing among many competing offers, Eisenhower selected publishers for his memoirs and made arrangements to house his papers in a suitable repository. Resentful of the worshipful attention given to the President-elect, he nevertheless dutifully met with Kennedy and in the course of his briefing handed over, in effect, the problems he had not been able to solve during his eight years. Eisenhower acknowledged his many debts to staff members, colleagues, and subordinates as he made his final farewells. The most important of these was, of course, to the American people in a thoughtful farewell address, in which he repeated the themes that had characterized his stewardship and warned his fellow citizens about the dangers of both a military-industrial complex and a scientific-technological elite.

At the end of his presidency Eisenhower remained convinced that the basic course he had chosen for the United States had been correct. As he told a classmate from his days at West Point, "The middle-of-the-road is still the only constructive policy for dealing with human concerns of vast proportions." He had achieved a balanced budget and overall economic health without dislocating the economic system or unnecessarily burdening the population. He had ended one war, avoided another, and taken the first steps toward a peaceful accommodation with America's ideological enemies--all of this without surrendering either America's principles or her allies. As he told his old wartime colleague Hastings Ismay, "The verdict on my efforts will of course be left to history, and I don’t have to worry about it now." Several generations of historians have ground away at that task, and their verdicts, while far from unanimous, have gradually become more positive, more enthusiastic about Eisenhower's leadership in foreign affairs and more appreciative of his efforts to shape a domestic order that followed the middle way. Each reader of these documents will be able to debate that verdict, an intellectual process that we hope will continue for many decades to come.

Selection and Annotation

We are fortunate in this, our final set of volumes, to have been able to maintain continuity of our basic editorial policies regarding selection and annotation of documents. Our focus has remained on Eisenhower the man and not on the presidential office. Accordingly, we have selected for publication only documents that he wrote, dictated to a secretary, redrafted, or was closely involved with in some other way. We have excluded such routine correspondence as the large number of declinations sent out over his signature. These selection criteria were necessary given the amount of time and support available; they have also served to make manageable the overwhelming volume of material generated by the Chief Executive and his principal assistants.

As in Eisenhower's first administration, staff members drafted many of his letters. Our task was to determine the level of Eisenhower's involvement in the creation of the document. Using memorandums of conversation, lists of items signed by the President, diary entries, congressional mail summaries, records of telephone conversations, calendars, routing sheets, emended drafts, handwritten postscripts, and Presidential Secretary Ann C. Whitman's own detailed notes, we were almost always able to make an informed judgment on whether or not a particular letter was a true "Eisenhower" document. We excluded items prepared by the staff and merely signed by the President with minimal involvement on his part. In our annotations we have continued to identify the aide or, in some cases, the executive department or Cabinet official who drafted the letter or cable for Eisenhower. Readers may safely assume that unless otherwise noted, Eisenhower himself prepared, or caused to be prepared, the first draft. (For a relatively small number of personal items that we have selected, Ann Whitman drafted correspondence for the President, often at his express direction.) During Eisenhower's First Administration many of these drafts were saved; in the 1957 - 61 period most of the drafts were deliberately destroyed. All the evidence that we have seen indicates, however, that every significant letter that left the White House with Eisenhower's signature was, in the largest sense, Eisenhower's own.

Since it was the practice in the White House during these years to make multiple copies of letters and memorandums, we often had a choice of files from which to obtain Eisenhower documents. We have selected the best available copy as the source of our text. Frequently, however, we were able to locate a number of identical copies of the same Eisenhower document. Although in such cases we have cited those files that were most convenient for us, often the location where we first found the document or the folder containing the relevant supporting material, we have also tried to cite a variety of files in order to assist those doing research in the original sources. Our annotations will guide readers to the collections containing incoming and backup correspondence. Foremost among these, of course, are the Eisenhower Manuscripts, which we have abbreviated as "EM." Citations to the richest subset of EM, the Ann Whitman File, are given as "AWF," and we cite the almost equally valuable White House Central Files as "WHCF" (see the note on primary sources in vol. XVII).

As we stated in the introduction to volumes XIV - XVII, there is one other aspect of our editorial apparatus requires explanation. In his correspondence with foreign leaders Eisenhower often dictated letters or edited State Department drafts for dispatch via diplomatic pouch. When rapid communication was called for, as it often was, the State Department usually cabled the text of Eisenhower's letter to the appropriate American embassy for hand delivery. Occasionally both means of transmission were used for the same letter. In such cases we have normally taken the letter rather than the cable version as our source text. We have also noted any variations between the letter and cable versions.

We have tried to remain consistent in our editorial policies regarding annotations as well as document selection. Since we do not publish incoming letters and reports in their entirety, we have continued to provide a summary of the contents of the incoming letters or reports. Our aim, as always, has been to give the reader a context for understanding what prompted Eisenhower to dictate, draft, or approve his document. We have also provided thumbnail sketches of Eisenhower's correspondents and information concerning the formulation of specific documents. Of special importance have been the deletions the President made to earlier versions of his communications, which were often even more important than the additions. Whether the changes were made to his own dictations or to staff-drafted letters and cables, these editorial alterations provide, we feel, a glimpse into the decision-making process in the presidency of Dwight David Eisenhower.

Louis Galambos

Daun van Ee