Both graduated from West Point, but without particular distinction. Each rose rapidly in the wartime army because each had a particular quality that proved indispensable. Grant, unlike other Union generals, understood that winning the Civil War required relentlessly pursuing and repeatedly engaging the Confederate Army. President Franklin D.
Grant lived and worked in an age that has vanished. That is unfortunate because he deserves to be remembered. It was the most difficult of all military operations, a seaborne assault against defended positions on land—in fact, the largest-scale and most complicated amphibious assault in the long history of warfare. Eisenhower had ultimate responsibility for planning and coordinating the activities of different national armed forces, of their separate armies, navies, and air forces, and of generals and admirals each of whom had his own ideas about how best to proceed.
He had to get , troops across the Channel in a single day, establish and hold beachheads on the French coast, bring hundreds of thousands more soldiers to France in subsequent days, and then attack and defeat the German army on the western front of the European war.
The stakes could not have been higher. Failure would certainly have cost him his career and, far more importantly not only in the greater scheme of things but in his own eyes, would have administered a severe setback to the allied war effort. Eisenhower had to make many decisions about the disposal and use of the forces under his command, the most difficult of which was when to launch them.
Bad weather over the Channel would have wrecked the assault, and the weather there in the late spring and early summer of was stormy. Meteorologists thought that the seas might be calm on June 6, and Eisenhower chose that date, which came to be known as D-Day. Personal information will not be shared or result in unsolicited email. We may use the provided email to contact you if we have additional questions.
See our privacy statement. Skip to main content. Badge, Dwight Eisenhower, Usage conditions apply. International Media Interoperability Framework. IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Eisenhower would beat Stevenson again four years later in a landslide to win reelection, despite health concerns after suffering a heart attack in As a moderate Republican, Eisenhower was able to achieve numerous legislative victories despite a Democratic majority in Congress during six of his eight years in office.
In addition to continuing most of the New Deal and Fair Deal programs of his predecessors Franklin Roosevelt and Truman, respectively , he strengthened the Social Security program, increased the minimum wage and created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
In , Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System, the single largest public works program in U. Eisenhower was even more hesitant, however, in the realm of civil rights for African Americans.
In , in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the U. Supreme Court had ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional. Eisenhower did sign civil rights legislation in and providing federal protection for black voters; it was the first such legislation passed in the United States since Reconstruction. Soon after taking office, Eisenhower signed an armistice ending the Korean War.
Aside from sending combat troops into Lebanon in , he would send no other armed forces into active duty throughout his presidency, though he did not hesitate to authorize defense spending. He also authorized the Central Intelligence Agency CIA to undertake covert operations against communism around the world, two of which toppled the governments of Iran in and Guatemala in In , Eisenhower decided against authorizing an air strike to rescue French troops from defeat at Dien Bien Phu, avoiding a war in Indochina, though his support for the anti-communist government in South Vietnam would sow the seeds of future U.
Eisenhower sought to improve Cold War-era relations with the Soviet Union , especially after the death of Josef Stalin in Though U. His warnings would go unheeded, however, amid the ongoing tensions of the Cold War era.
While weathering criticism from both left and right, Eisenhower enjoyed high approval ratings throughout his administration. After leaving office in January , he retired to his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
He worked largely on his memoirs, and would publish several books over the following years. Two decades later, his ranking had moved up to 11th, and by , he placed 8th, the same position he held in a C-SPAN poll of presidential historians in Among Presidents who held office in the last 75 years, he ranked behind only Franklin D.
Roosevelt and Harry S. Eisenhower's reputation has changed as more records and papers have become available to study his presidency. Contemporaries remembered Eisenhower's frequent golfing and fishing trips and wondered whether he was leaving most of the business of government to White House assistants. They also listened to his meandering, garbled answers to questions at press conferences and wondered whether he grasped issues and had clear ideas about how to deal with them.
Previously closed records that started to become available at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, in the s revealed that the President had thoughtful views about most major issues and frequently took an active role in discussing them with the cabinet or at meetings of the National Security Council. Historians now appreciate that Eisenhower recognized the political advantages of working behind the scenes to deal with controversial issues, using his "hidden hand" to guide policy while allowing subordinates to take any credit—as well as the political heat.
While critics in the s scorned Eisenhower as a "do-nothing" President, historians in the 21st century sometimes praise him for not taking action.
Eisenhower did not lead the country into war, although he might have chosen to do so in Indochina in He negotiated an armistice in the Korean War only six months after taking office. For the rest of his presidency, peace prevailed, even if at times Cold War tensions were high. Eisenhower also did not adopt policies that jeopardized the strong economic growth during the s, and he made decisions that stimulated the economy, such as supporting the construction of the Interstate Highway System.
Although national security spending was high during the Eisenhower years, the President did not give in to temptations to spend even more. After the Soviets launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik, on October 4, , Eisenhower resisted panicked public demands for huge increases in military spending since he knew that the nation's defenses remained strong.
He insisted that he would not spend one penny less than was necessary to maintain national security—nor one penny more.
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