Vietnam

14 Pages 3536 Words

enging Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota campaigned against the war. McCarthy roused fervent support among the young, and Vietnam swiftly became the major issue of the 1968 presidential race. Reconsidering his earlier policies, Johnson limited bombing in Southeast Asia and initiated peace talks with Hanoi and the NLF. After he was challenged by McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary, Johnson decided not to seek reelection and withdrew from the race. The president became a political casualty of the Vietnam War.
In 1968 an aura of crisis grew with the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., in April and of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in June. In Chicago during the summer of 1968, violence erupted when police attacked antiwar protesters at the Democratic National Convention. In the election that fall, Richard Nixon defeated Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, and third party candidate George Wallace.


Anti-Vietnam War Movement, political movement protesting United States involvement in the Vietnam War (1959-1975). The anti-Vietnam War movement was the most vocal and sustained antiwar movement in the nation’s history. It began in the early 1960s in response to increased U.S. participation in Vietnam. The movement eventually encompassed thousands of different groups and millions of people who participated in loosely organized protests to convince their fellow citizens, as well as their elected officials, that the war was wrong. By 1972 opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam had become a mainstream, if still controversial, political viewpoint.
The war protesters were inspired, in part, by the citizen-activism of the civil rights movement, in which ordinary people worked to change government policy. Most demonstrators practiced nonviolent tactics that included marches, protest rallies, teach-ins, and petitions. In addition, hundreds of thousands of young men refused to...