Red Scare: Rise Of Mccarthyism
...period known to history as the "Red Scare". A coup of power in American life was recently completed in Senator Joseph McCarthy's rise to national attention as "judge, jury, prosecutor, castigator, and press agent, all in one." (Army-McCarthy Hearings) The Wisconsin Republican Senator was successfully trampling the State Department and other federal agencies, filling each day's headlines with new accusations of Communists inside American society. Perhaps the biggest change in communication, the television, was just now coming into trend. Notably successful in spreading both news and hysteria, it would prove to be crucial during McCarthy's reign and his subsequent downfall. McCarthy's unceasing avalanche of panic came at a time where many Americans were indeed concerned with or totally in fear of Communism. Less than a year after the conclusion of combat in Korea, the American nation was increasingly on the lookout for possible "Reds". (Joe McCarthy) The recent electrocutions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage during World War II had hardened American's beliefs about espionage. America's once kind neighborhoods had been transformed into hardened trench lines full of false accusations and neighbor's turning one another in as possible Communist infiltrators. (Morgan, 290)
In reality, no American was safe, not even the highest government officials from the grasp of Senator McCarthy. Yet the saving grace of America lay in a quiet yet firm Boston lawyer, Mr. Joseph Nye Welch. In the spring of 1954, McCarthy commenced the now famous Army-McCarthy hearings, during which he made charges of lax security at a top-secret military facility. It was during these crucial hearings when Welch boldly stood his ground against the perceivably unstoppable Senator. Therefore, due to Welch's stand against McCarthy America was liberated from McCarthy's reign. The...
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