A Crossroads Resource

Unit XI: Leader of the Free World: 1945-1975

Question/Problem 4: How and why did the Vietnam War divide Americans?

Divisive Issue: Undeclared War

Directions: Locate a reading describing how Congress came to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964. One such passage can be found on pages 84-85 in _America and Vietnam: The Elephant and the Tiger_ (New York: Viking, 1992) by Albert Marrin. (Permission to reprint passage not granted.) In an open letter to Congress, this father of a Marine who had died in Vietnam complained of Congressional inaction:

WE WISH TO EXPRESS our sincere thanks to the Congress of the United States for their continuing inactivity in regard to their Constitutional responsibilities regarding the Vietnam war.

Because of your inactivity towards stopping our participation in this useless and senseless war, we have lost our only son, and only child, to a Vietnam contracted disease.

In fact, because I am an only son of an only son, the senseless death of our son will eliminate our family name for all time.

Yes, we know we are not the only ones who have lost a loved one in this nonsensical war-- and that makes it even more senseless.

How, Gentlemen, can you justify the loss of over 45,000 young American boys' lives in that hell-on-earth for what we have gotten in return, or ever hope to get in return? In fact, Gentlemen, how can you possibly sleep at night when you know that you have been able all along to stop this useless slaughter, if by no other means, than to stop the flow of money to the Armed Forces.

If I understand our Constitution correctly, no President of the United States has the right to commit anywhere near the number of troops being used in Vietnam combat, on foregn soil, without first obtaining the full sanction of the U.S. Congress. Yet you have stood by and let three successive Presidents do just exactly that.

An, Gentlemen, for every week you continue to sit on your hands, another 200-300 or more American boys die over there-- and for what?

From The Annals of America, vol. 19, pp. 84-85.

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