274 a short history of the united states
within five months registration of African-Americans in the South in-
creased forty percent. It was a major triumph for an administration that
had already achieved many notable successes.
Despite these many successes, the Cold War persisted. And
now it resurfaced as a paramount issue and ultimately drove Lyndon
Johnson from office. The Vietnam War was another extension of the
struggle between the free and communist worlds.
The fighting between the communist North Vietnamese and the
noncommunist South Vietnamese intensified, and that intensifi cation
made the South Vietnamese more dependent on the United States for
economic and military assistance. Consumed with the fear that a
victory for the communists in Vietnam would have a domino effect
throughout Asia, Johnson committed himself to providing aid at the
very beginning of his administration. By the summer of 1964 approxi-
mately 21 , 000 American servicemen were stationed in Vietnam as ad-
visers. But the need for additional troops rose each month
Then, on August 4 , 1964 , when two U.S. destroyers were attacked in
the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes and asked
Congress to approve his action. Three days later Congress passed the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, one of the most fateful and controversial
resolutions in U.S. history. Johnson signed it on August 10. This reso-
lution permitted the President as commander in chief to take all neces-
sary steps to repel an armed attack against U.S. forces and prevent
further aggression in Vietnam. The attack on the two destroyers had
actually been overblown by the administration and had been used as a
pretext for initiating a war with congressional approval.
Despite the massive number of American troops sent to Vietnam
and a two-phase plan to bomb North Vietnam, the situation in South
Vietnam continued to deteriorate as one civilian government followed
another in a series of coups that weakened the effort to bring the war to
an end. Johnson increased the number of troops in South Vietnam on
July 28 , 1965 , from 75 , 000 to 125 ,000, to serve as fighting personnel, not
merely as advisers. The first major ground battle of the war involving
American soldiers took place on August 18 , 1965 , on the Van Tuong
Peninsula. Military funds reached almost $ 2 billion.