Sec. 3 The Vietnam Years at Home

2. Sec. 3 The Vietnam Years at Home Many Americans opposed the nation’s involvement in Vietnam. Many others believed that U.S. leaders were not doing enough to win the war. Guiding Question: What factors contributed to the rise of the protest movement? Essential Vocabulary: counterculture, doves, hawks, Tet Offensive, “silent majority”

3. The Vietnam Years at Home Youth Protest • The war seemed to split America – division resulted from what people called the generation gap. • Some felt conflict in Vietnam was a civil war and should not involve the U.S. • Others concerned the costs of U.S. involvement in the war was hurting domestic programs. • Many opposed to the Vietnam war were part of the counterculture, a movement that rejected traditional American values.

4. Opposition to the draft forced an end to the draft. • Students and other opponents of the war were called doves. • Supporters were known as hawks. • In October 1967 more than 50,000 people marched to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. • Conscientious objectors burned their draft cards and military registration forms - some fled to Canada.

6. 1968 – Year of Crisis • January 23, North Korean boats seized the U.S.S. Pueblo in international waters off Korea. • January 31, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong launched a series of attacks throughout South Vietnam known as the Tet Offensive. In military terms the Americans and South Vietnamese won Tet offensive. • Back home however, the Tet offensive turned many more Americans against the war and against Pres. Johnson. His administration developed a credibility gap.

8. Two anti-war candidates declared their intentions to run for President in the 1968 election – Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy. • On March 31, 1968 President Johnson announced he would not seek, and would not accept his party’s nomination for another term as president.

9. Violence Erupts • April 4, 1968 – A sniper shot and killed Martin Luther King, Jr. • June, 1968 – assassin shoots and kills Robert F. Kennedy • Violence erupts in Democratic Convention in Chicago where Hubert Humphrey wins the nomination – it damaged his candidacy because it appeared the Democrats were unable to control their own convention.

11. Election of 1968 • George C. Wallace was the third party candidate. • Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon pledged to represent the “quiet voice” of the great majority of Americans, the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators he called the “silent majority”. Nixon wins the 1968 presidential election.