2 thoughts on “Dwight Eisenhower’s Inaugural Addresses”

1. One issue which historians wish that Eisenhower had confronted publicly was Senator Joseph McCarthy’s attack on a World War II hero and the secretary of state who received credit for the European Recovery Program (the so-called Marshall Plan), General George Marshall. McCarthy was interested in getting re-elected in 1952 and so used the communism issue to give him leverage. His focus was communism within the U.S., and thus he went after Americans (generally Democrats but also ANYONE) as “soft” on communism and, in effect, traitors. Putting Marshall in that category was a horrifying step, and Eisenhower was outraged but stayed away from public criticism–probably in large part because ANY attack on McCarthy was manipulated by the senator who had astronomical popularity ratings by early 1953. As the class will discover, McCarthy did himself in the next year when he went after the U.S. Army and found himself outsmarted by the Army’s attorney in the famous Army-McCarthy hearings. (The House censured him soon after, and his power disappeared. He died a few years later, only in his 40s.)

   By 1957, a variety of Cold War events had unsettled world affairs (including Josef Stalin’s death in 1953 [after Eisenhower’s inauguration], the Korean War armistice, the Soviets’ testing of a hydrogen bomb [see below], the Suez Crisis, and uprisings in eastern Europe)–but more was to come, including the USSR’s launching of the Sputnik satellite and its shooting down of an American spy plane over its territory, both in the last years of the Eisenhower administration. The next president would inherit a tense world situation (to be made more tense by the growing problems in Southeast Asia).

   How dangerous? The ATOMIC bombs that ended WWII had the power of about 15 million tons of TNT; the HYDROGEN bomb tested by the U.S. in 1952 equaled 10,000 million tons of TNT. Plus, the research was progressing on delivery systems that would not depend on airplanes: missiles.

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   May 31, 2016 at 7:35 pm

2. I agree with your analysis of these two speeches. The only difference that I can find is that Eisenhower actually calls Russia out in 1957. Never having read either of these speeches, I found them to be inspiring. In both, Eisenhower is not only calling on America’s citizens, but the citizens of the world to help establish freedom by engaging in the mission of making peace a way of life. Additionally, he stresses that America will act as a beacon of light, with the quotes, “To produce this unity, to meet the challenge of our time, destiny has laid upon our country the responsibility of the free world’s leadership (1953), and “May the light of freedom, coming to all darkened lands, flame brightly — until at last the darkness is no more (1957).”

   He addresses the importance of world unity, and stress the significance of interdependence, especially in terms of economics through his nine fixed principles. Pledging that America will stand united and strong, “to engage with any and all others in joint effort to remove the causes of mutual fear and distrust among nations . . . (1953).” But in particular, I loved Eisenhower’s line from the second principle, “Americans, indeed, all free men, remember that in the final choice a soldier’s pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner’s chains” (1953). What is also interesting, if not atypical for most politicians is that he reaffirms these principles again in his second address, “Our pledge to these principles is constant, because we believe in their rightness” (1957).
   (I pledge, 254)

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   June 1, 2016 at 1:12 pm