Senator Joseph R. McCarthy was a little-known junior senator from Wisconsin until February 1950 when he claimed to possess a list of 205 card-carrying Communists employed in the U.S. Department of State. From that moment Senator McCarthy became a tireless crusader against Communism in the early 1950s, a period that has been commonly referred to as the "Red Scare." As chairman of the Senate Permanent Investigation Subcommittee, Senator McCarthy conducted hearings on communist subversion in America and investigated alleged communist infiltration of the Armed Forces. His subsequent exile from politics coincided with a conversion of his name into a modern English noun "McCarthyism," or adjective, "McCarthy tactics," when describing similar witchhunts in recent American history. [The American Heritage Dictionary gives the definition of McCarthyism as: 1. The political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence, and 2. The use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, in order to suppress opposition.] Senator McCarthy was censured by the U.S. Senate on December 2, 1954 and died May 2, 1957.
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Documents:
Draft page, "Sixth Draft" of Eisenhower speech given on October 3, 1952 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on "Communism and Freedom." The deleted paragraph refers to General George C. Marshall.
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Letter, Senator Joseph McCarthy to President Eisenhower re James B. Conant as High Commissioner in Germany, February 3, 1953
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Letter, President Eisenhower to his friend, Harry Bullis, May 18, 1953
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Letter, President Eisenhower to his brother, Milton Eisenhower, October 9, 1953 [page 3 only]
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Memorandum, President Eisenhower to Attorney General Herbert Brownell, November 4, 1953
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Letter, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr, U.S. Representative to the United Nations, to the President, November 25, 1953
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Letter, President Eisenhower to Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., November 30, 1953
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Notes from the day by C.D. Jackson, Speechwriter and Special Assistant to the President, November 27, 1953
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Notes from the day by C.D. Jackson, Speechwriter and Special Assistant to the President, November 30, 1953
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Memorandum, Stanley M. Rumbough, Jr. and Charles Masterson, Special Assistants in the White House, to Murray Snyder, Assistant White House Press Secretary, about responding to Senator McCarthy, December 1, 1953
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Notes from the day by C.D. Jackson, Speechwriter and Special Assistant to the President, December 2, 1953
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Diary entry by James C. Hagerty, White House Press Secretary, February 25, 1954 [handwritten & transcribed versions]
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Diary entry by James Hagerty, March 8, 1954 [handwritten & transcribed versions]
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Diary entry by James Hagerty, March 10, 1954 [handwritten & transcribed versions]
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Diary entry by James Hagerty, March 24, 1954 [handwritten & transcribed versions]
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Diary entry by James Hagerty, May 12, 1954
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Diary entry by James Hagerty, May 13, 1954
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Diary entry by James Hagerty, May 14, 1954 [page 2 only]
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Diary entry by James Hagerty, May 17, 1954
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Notes, by L. Arthur Minnich, Assistant White House Staff Secretary, concerning the McCarthy hearings, May 17, 1954
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Diary entry by Press Secretary James Hagerty, May 28, 1954
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Diary entry by James Hagerty, May 30, 1954
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Diary entry by James Hagerty, May 31, 1954
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Diary entry by James Hagerty, June 8, 1954
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Notes, by L. Arthur Minnich, concerning "McCarthyism," June 21, 1955
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Senate Resolution (S. Res. 116) introduced by Senator Joseph McCarthy, June 20, 1955 [attached in files to above notes by Minnich]
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For a listing of collections at the Eisenhower Library with materials on this topic, please see: McCarthySearchReport
Secondary sources on this topic include:
The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 by Dwight D. Eisenhower, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1963.
Who Killed Joe McCarthy? by William B. Ewald, Jr., Simon and Schuster, New York, 1984.
Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective by Richard M. Fried, Oxford University Press, New York, 1990.
The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate by Robert Griffith, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 1970.
Joseph McCarthy: The Politics of Chaos by Mark Landis, Susquehanna University Press, Selinsgrove, 1987.
McCarthy and McCarthyism in Wisconsin by Michael O'Brien, University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri, 1980.
A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy by David Oshinsky, Free Press, New York; Collier Macmillan, London, 1983.
Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America by Ellen Schrecker, Little, Brown, Boston, 1998.
