From Camelot to

Watergate, 1961–1975

From Camelot to

Watergate: 1961–1975 29

CONTENTS

■Robert McCall’s depiction of an American attack on Moscow appeared as

the cover of the Saturday Evening Poston October 13, 1962. Within two weeks,

the United States and the Soviet Union would be at the brink of a nuclear war.

765

Just before President John F. Kennedy sent the first

American troops to Vietnam in 1961, he confided doubts

to an aide: “The troops will march in; the bands will play;

the crowds will cheer... Then we will be told we have to

send more troops. It’s like taking a drink. The effect

wears off, and you have to take another.”

By 1963, despite the infusion of some 16,000 U.S. sol-

diers, South Vietnam was crumbling. In 1965, with a com-

munist takeover imminent, Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s

successor, increased U.S. troop levels to nearly a half mil-

lion. Yet victory remained elusive. In 1969, his successor,

Richard M. Nixon, promised to bring an honorable peace

to Vietnam; but American troops remained for another

four years.

The long war in Vietnam exposed deep fissures

within the nation. Racial divisions widened into gap-

ing holes. Student protests drew violent responses.

Nixon’s heated rhetoric and illegal campaign tactics

heightened tensions. And less than a year after he

resigned, communist North Vietnam completed its con-

quest of South Vietnam. For the United States, the war

ended in failure. ■

■Kennedy in Camelot

■The Cuban Crises

■JFK’s Vietnam War

■“We Shall Overcome”: The

Civil Rights Movement

■Tragedy in Dallas: JFK

Assassinated

■Lyndon Baines Johnson: The

Great Society

■New Racial Turmoil

■From the “Beat Movement”

to Student Radicalism

■Johnson Escalates the War

■The Election of 1968

■Nixon as President:

“Vietnamizing” the War

■The Cambodian “Incursion”

■Détente with Communism

■Nixon in Triumph

■Domestic Policy Under Nixon

■The Watergate Break-in and

Cover-up

■The Judgment on Watergate:

“Expletive Deleted”

■Nixon Resigns, Ford Becomes

President

■Mapping the Past:

School Segregation After the

Brown Decision

HeartheAudio Chapter 29 at http://www.myhistorylab.com