The Army-McCarthy Hearings
“Until this moment, Senator, I think I had never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness… little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad… I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think that I am a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me. “
With these words, Joseph Welch, attorney for the U.S. Army, sharply focused the spotlight of national attention that television had brought to the hearings and exposed the vicious and malevolent manner in which Senator McCarthy conducted the proceedings.
Welch had been questioning Roy Cohn, counsel to the McCarthy sub-committee in its investigation of alleged communists in the Army. The Army countercharged that McCarthy and Cohn sought special treatment for sub-committee aide G. David Schine, a recent draftee into the Army. McCarthy had interrupted to advise the audience on this nationally televised hearing that a young lawyer in Welch’s office had been a member {in law school) of the National Lawyer’s Guild which McCarthy labeled as a Communist front organization. Now, McCarthy again began to go over the young lawyers record. Welch then finished:
“Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator…. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency?”
“There was silence, and then the room rang with applause. Welch walked from the room, and reporters followed him…. That coverage did McCarthy in… People started to laugh at him. He became a joke. “
-Joe McCarthy and the Press by Edwin R Bayley, U. Wisconsin Press 1981
“McCarthy had done himself in with his ugliness. “
– The Fifties by David Halberstam, Villard Books, NY 1993
“It was a time of national paranoia in which the greatest power on earth expended its energies hunting for communists under every bed; in which millions of average Americans looked fearfully over their shoulders, wondering whether they would be tapped next to explain themselves before the grand inquisitors.
The hydrogen bomb hung menacingly over the heads of men, capable of turning the earth into a wasteland as barren as the moon…. It was a period dominated by the most effective demagogue ever to practice the arts of mass passion on this continent – Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin…. The effect was that of a nazi bullyboy glaring at you from your television screen…. But there was no gale of unfavorable publicity, no cry of public outrage… the entire nation ran cowed. A whisper * could ruin a life, a career…. Americans have always admired the “stand-up guy”, but in these years few stood up… on the highest levels of intellect and leadership, the abdication of responsibility was all but complete. “
“The damage that Joe McCarthy did is incalculable. There are no scales on which to weigh his impact on the soul of the nation, but it is safe to say that he left America less free than he found it. He made dissent suspect. He made rational debate of major political issues impossible. “
– The Nightmare Decade by Fred J. Cook, New York 197l
“Those among us who would bar us from attempting our economic and social duty are quick with accusations, with defamatory hints and whispering campaigns when they see a chance to scare or silence those with whom they disagree. Rudely, carelessly, they invade the field of conscience, of thought, the field which belongs to God, and not to senators.”
-Adlai Stevenson Campaign Address, 1952 [The Fifties by David Halberstam, NY 1993]
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