Nicholas Flores

Dr. Mickey
History 300
Four Years of Fear:

A Historiographic Study of the McCarthy Era

It has been sixty years since Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy led one of the most

widespread human hunts in United States history. In the decades after his service in the

government, the memory of McCarthy has become synonymous with reckless prejudice,

paranoia, and discrimination against aliens. The years that he held power and influence are

remembered as the “McCarthy Era”, and the phenomenon he led is now known as

“McCarthyism.” Tying him to an era or a phenomenon is not a tribute to his accomplishments

but a reminder of the political and social hysteria he ignited. However, McCarthyism was not the

first communist scare in America, nor was it achieved by the efforts of one man. Although

McCarthy became a symbol for American anti-communism, public fears in the U. S. about

danger from political radicals date back to the early twentieth century.

The rejection of communism in American existed well before McCarthy set foot on the

political stage. Communism became a controversial issue in America after the outbreak of

Russian Revolution in 1917. The fear that the American government would face a similar

revolution ignited what is known as the First Red Scare, a short anti-communist flare-up from

1919-1920 that led to tighter immigration regulations and harsh treatment of aliens and

dissenters. As the growing threat of Fascism disturbed both capitalist and communist powers,

there was a decrease in tension against radicals in the early 1930s. The rise of fascist regimes,

however, renewed distrust towards communism since any sort of radicalism was a threat to the

American lifestyle. By the late 1930s and early 40s, the government had taken precautions

against subversive activity by establishing the Special House Committee for the Investigation of
Un-American Activities (HCUA). The Committee’s questionable methods of investigation built

the tension that Joseph McCarthy needed to convince the public that the communist threat

existed within the U.S. government. In February of 1950, McCarthy made speeches to political

clubs, committees, and the Senate claiming that he had evidence that there were, at most, 205

members in the State Department had participated in past communist activities. Though the

number of accused persons fluctuated and the evidence he claimed to have had was proven false,

McCarthy found support from fellow Senators and the public by raising the fears of espionage

and Soviet sympathizers within the political system. Subsequent charges that he made resulted

with thousands of innocent people losing their jobs and freedom. Although many opposed his

methods from the beginning, an increase in public opposition to McCarthy led to his decline in

1954, and subsequently the end of the era.

The connection to the history of anti-communism gave McCarthyism an academic

audience almost immediately after its end. Since the McCarthy era was a political drama that

resembled others before it, its contemporary intellectuals began its study with a political lens;

historians then used the same lens in the next decade. They narrowed the focus, however, from

the defense of democratic ideals, which had been common among intellectuals throughout the

1940s and 50s, to exposing specific causes, methods, and victims of the McCarthy hearings. This

brought focus to McCarthy as an individual to analyze his personal motives and actions.

Historians then explored the reasons for the rise of McCarthyism that existed apart from the man

and politics in fields like education, journalism, and entertainment media. The separation of

focus between McCarthy the man and McCarthyism caused a rift in its historiography. The focus

on the Senator appeared to be fixed in political history for several decades. McCarthyism, on the

other hand, continued to be examined with a wide social lens with concern for how its anti-
radical foundation harmed more than just communist suspects, and how it was justified as

national security for all of society. It has become a term related to alien discrimination in any

social section beyond communist activity. The quickly changing scope is the heart of this paper’s

argument. The main claim that evidence in the following paragraphs will support is that the

historiography of McCarthyism begins with a political lens, then separates from McCarthy

himself, and expands from there to a socially expansive view. The fact that it has only existed for

six decades makes this historiography remarkably fast in its transitions, but also leaves room for

further examination and revisionism for historians to address.

As mentioned, anti-communism sparked a political controversy several years before

McCarthy was in the spotlight. The creation of HCUA in 1938 proved that the American

government would take action against communist activity by using any and all legal and illegal

means necessary. August Raymond Ogden provides a study in the mid-1940s of the committee

in its first six years under the leadership of Congressman Martin Dies. Ogden examines the

aggressive methods that Dies used in HCUA and raises the question of its negative effect on

democracy, but he does so without doubting its positive purpose in America. He sympathizes

with the motives behind HCUA when saying that “nearly all thinking men must, perforce, admit

the danger to the United States inherent in any and all types of un-American activities.” He goes

on, however, to use the study as a warning and reminds readers that “thinking men must also

admit that, if we use undemocratic means to preserve our democracy, we, in the act of so doing,

destroy that very democracy.”1 Dies was able to find support in his claims despite the use of

questionable tactics, which signaled the country’s slippage into another communist scare. Ogden

argues that there is a constant need to defend democracy, and though HCUA attempted to

1
August Raymond Ogden, The Dies Committee: A Study of the Special House Committee for the Investigation of
Un-American Activities 1938-1944 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1945), 296.
preserve national security, it failed to do so democratically. Dies did not run for the chairman of

the HCUA after 1944, and the committee was then renamed as the House of Un-American

Activities Committee (HUAC), but these changes did not dissolve the anti-communist attitude

the nation had projected. This national atmosphere then allowed McCarthy to quickly gain

support and ignite the Second Red Scare.

In 1954 support for McCarthy’s claims and investigations declined as the Red Scare

began eroding. As he faded from the public stage, intellectuals from the left and the right wasted

no time in debating the damage he caused. Professor Edward Berry Burgum attacked McCarthy

for inciting the less-educated Americans to attack those with higher educations: “We cannot,

therefore, conclude that is it only the majority of our population, the half-educated or illiterate,

which has fallen prey to the false logic of McCarthyism. The tragedy of the present situation is

that as many proportionately of the highly educated and highly placed are its victims.”2 On the

right, journalists William F. Buckley Jr. and William Schlamm, founders of the National Review

magazine, and conservative activist L. Brent Bozell came to McCarthy’s defense by arguing that

his intentions were to protect democracy and thus justified his actions. They attack liberals who

had opposed McCarthy, stating that “the difference [between McCarthy and his liberal

opponents] is, in truth, that he, often crudely instructed, takes man seriously, while they insist

that man is morally a vegetable and intellectually an eternal child.”3 Buckley, Schlamm, and

Bozell offer McCarthyism support while defending human accountability over and individual’s

free will. This then justified that suspects of communism should in fact be “criticized and held to

an accounting both at the polls and before investigating committees.”4 Historians addressing this

2
Edwin Berry Burgam, “McCarthyism and the Academic Mind,” Chicago Review 8, no. 3 (1954): 59.
3
William F. Buckley, Jr., L. Brent Bozell, and William Schlamm, McCarthy and His Enemies: The Record and its
Meaning (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1954), viii.
4
Buckley, Jr., Bozell, and Schlamm, McCarthy and His Enemies, 335.
matter in the 1960s would ultimately drift away from defending democracy and toward the

examination of who helped McCarthy come to power.

By the start of the 1960s, McCarthyism became a permanent symbol of extreme anti-

communism. Scholars from numerous social corners reached a common understanding of the

mass manipulation had McCarthy had achieved. Vincent P. De Santis, one of the earliest

historians to address McCarthyism makes it clear that McCarthy used fear to manipulate the

public and prevent opposition. He claims that “not many Americans were willing to oppose

McCarthy publicly, for fear that they, too, would be accused of being disloyal to the United

States. For McCarthy’s favorite response to criticism of his methods was his contention that to

oppose him was to follow the Communist party line.”5 De Santis’s claim was widely accepted,

but fellow historians became concerned about the people and events that aided McCarthy’s rise

to power. Writers with the Peace Education Division for the American Friends Service

Committee, an organization established to promote peace and social justice after the First World

War, described the domestic and international events that made up the anatomy of American

anti-communism. They point to the mistakes of the Truman presidential administration as major

contributors to McCarthy’s success. The information on federal and FBI reports of public

communist activity had been “proved unreliable on hundreds of occasions; it was unchecked and

unedited, often based on testimony by informers fearful of deportation or prosecution for various

crimes unless they testified against erstwhile associates.” Despite executive efforts to keep them

out of reach from committees and the public, these reports leaked and helped fuel HUAC’s

accusations and investigations. Furthermore, Truman did not clarify that the information was

unevaluated before the reports leaked. When they unintentionally reached his desk, McCarthy

5
Vincent P. De Santis, “American Catholics and McCarthyism,” The Catholic Historical Review 51, no. 1. (Apr.
1965), 2-3.
“had a field day with his fluctuating charges of the continued employment of Communists in

government.”6 The writers with Peace Education Division for the AFSC helped promote scrutiny

toward high government officials, a trend that remains a part of the McCarthyism today.

Throughout the 1970s, Truman’s administration continued to be examined and seen as

being responsible for the conditions that made McCarthy’s rise possible. Athan Theoharis, a

historian who had been worked with the AFSC, argues that Truman’s presidency helped create

the origins of McCarthyism. In his book Seeds of Repression: Harry S. Truman and the Origins

of McCarthyism, he proposes that Truman’s attempts to contain communism intensified the

emerging Cold War between the Soviet Union and the U.S., and that intensification allowed for

McCarthy to attract many followers: “The Cold War created the context, and Truman’s rhetoric

and leadership the political vacuum, that made the charges and appeals of McCarthyism not

merely visible but persuasive to a great many Americans.”7 Theoharis is among the first to

consider the role of a president as a contributing cause of the phenomenon. This provided a

foundation for historians to analyze the roles played by other presidents and high government

officials.

In his book The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower,

Historian David Caute examines McCarthyism as an intrinsic force that drove the Second Red

Scare and analyzes the widespread fear under both Presidents Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.

Early in his monograph he agrees with Theoharis in saying that “the style—tactical and

rhetorical—of Truman’s immersion in the Cold War…emerges as crucial; it was here that the

6
James E. Bristol et al., Anatomy of Anti-Communism (New York: Hill and Wang, Inc., 1969), 37-38.
7
Athan Theoharis, Seeds of Repression: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism (Chicago: Quadrangle
Books, 1971), ix.
seeds of McCarthyism were sown.”8 However, Caute later parts from Theoharis by expanding

the focus to other political figures. He highlights the notion that with rallying several Republican

Congress members for anti-communist support, and with Congress support “McCarthy could be

sure that even his wildest rampages would be treated with indulgence….”9 Caute continues by

claiming that President Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon were influenced by the

McCarthyism. Nixon attempted to outmatch McCarthy by announcing that the Eisenhower

administration would kick out thousands of communists and security risks employed by the

government. He was not exaggerating about the president’s attitude toward communists, either,

and “in his 1954 State of the Union message, Eisenhower himself went so far as to propose

depriving Communists of citizenship.”10 Caute polished and expanded Theoharis’s argument and

helped highlight the main figures within the federal government that contributed to McCarthy’s

success. This popular focus on political reasoning led historians to look at McCarthyism beyond

the political realm.

Before discussing the next decade, it should be noted that the course of McCarthy’s

historiography began to change during the 1970s. Scholars increasingly split the focus between

McCarthyism as a phenomenon and McCarthy the man. Historian Thomas C. Reeves argues that

the interpretations of McCarthyism had changed considerably within the two decades after its

decline, providing a historiography of the communist hunt until that point. He focus’s little on

Senator McCarthy and heavily on the practice of reckless accusations that bared his name and

had existed before his popularity.11 On the opposite end stands Robert Griffith, a fellow historian

8
David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1978), 30.
9
Caute, The Great Fear, 36.
10
Caute, The Great Fear, 49.
11
Thomas C. Reeves, “McCarthyism: Interpretations since Hofstadter,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History 60, no.
1 (Fall, 1976), 42-54.
who argues that the 1952 Republican campaign in Wisconsin was center stage for a political

drama that starred President Eisenhower and Senator McCarthy as intellectual rivals. Griffith’s

article relies heavily on the statements and decisions that McCarthy made that directly impacted

the outcome of the campaign.12 Both scholars focus on events that took place during the

McCarthy era, but Reeves’s interests lay with the fearful politics of McCarthyism and its

historical revision while Griffith’s were primarily with a more specific, lesser-known event in

which McCarthy also played an individual role. These accounts are examples of McCarthyism

developing its place in American history apart from McCarthy himself.

Historian Murray B. Levin separates the two by arguing that McCarthy’s support was a

product of the time, while McCarthyism is a brand of political paranoia that can be repeated by

those believing their suspicions to be true. In Political Hysteria in America: The Democratic

Capacity for Repression, Levin writes that “the American people were…susceptible to Senator

Joseph McCarthy because of the rise to power of Chinese Communists, the Russian explosion of

the atomic bomb, and the Korean War.”13 However, he identifies McCarthyism as the fight

against false truths that aliens and radicals can bring to the nation: “…for the American people

the power and passion of the Red Scare and McCarthyism and the entire paranoid style in

American politics…is a power and passion based on sincere conviction and on true belief. To

most of America it is a very real thing. That is why elites get the response they seek.”14 By

replacing a reference to Senator McCarthy with saying “elites,” Levin implies that officials can

use passionate belief to gain public support, regardless of the official or the era.

12
Robert Griffith, “The General and the Senator: Republican Politics and the 1952 Campaign in Wisconsin,” The
Wisconsin Magazine of History 54, no. 1 (Fall, 1970), 23-29.
13
Murray B. Levin, Political Hysteria in America: The Democratic Capacity for Repression (New York: Basic
Books, Inc., 1971), 255.
14
Levin, Political Hysteria in America, 249.
 Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism were no longer limited to be researched as a single

entity and could now be studied as heavily intertwined historical focuses. Since McCarthyism

was a wider study than McCarthy himself, it had a faster pace of moving forward. Starting in the

1980s, historians transitioned from looking at it through a political scope to a social one,

analyzing how various branches of society were affected differently. Historian Ellen Schrecker

has devoted much of her research to the social scope of McCarthyism and starts the transition by

examining the role played by those in the academic world. In her book No Ivory Tower:

McCarthyism and the Universities, Schrecker argues that many academic professionals

participated in the purge despite believing that they were opposing it: “At no point did the

college teachers, administrators, and trustees who cooperated with McCarthyism by evicting

unfriendly witnesses and other suspected Communists from their faculties admit that they were

repressing dissent. On the contrary . . . they often claimed that they were standing up to

McCarthyism and defending free speech and academic freedom.”15 This contradiction helps

show that although the university system was one of several institutions victimized by

McCarthyism, it did not help end the problem since the fear had turned members against one

another.

Schrecker’s work in expanding the scope to academic institutions motivated historians to

look at McCarthyism in additional areas. The social lens was then dominantly used, now for

McCarthy as well, during the late 1980s and throughout the 90s. In his book McCarthyism and

New York’s Hearst Press: A Study of Roles in Witch Hunt, historian Jim Tuck argues that

journalists had an important role in projecting McCarthy’s accusations and statements,

specifically the journalists at the Hearst publishing company. His research found that “Joe

15
Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986),
10.
McCarthy was truly a loose cannon. Extending the metaphor, the Hearst organization was for a

time able to seize the cannon to great effectiveness. Then it got away and resumed its destructive

course. At that point it had to be dumped overboard.”16 Although the Hearst organization

separated itself from McCarthy toward the end of his campaign, it supported him and his anti-

communist hunt by publishing the paranoia and selling it to the nation. Whether the publishers

genuinely believed in the purge, or just knew the stories would sell, the respect and popularity

the public had for the Hearst Company indicates that the best journalists of the time were

succumbing to McCarthy’s influence

Journalists and educators were important contributors to McCarthyism, but they were not

the only groups that were under examination in the 90s. Historian Richard Fried used his work to

put the McCarthy era in the historical perspective for the audience of the decade. In Nightmare in

Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective, he argues that many groups and persons were confronted

by McCarthyism in one way or another, with each having their loyalty to America questioned:

“The anti-Communist drive touched thousands of lesser [known] figures: . . .local public housing

officials, janitors, and even men’s room attendants. . . . Lawyers, other professionals, and . . .

even wrestlers had to document their loyalty. . . . Labor leaders and unions rose or fell according

to their sympathy or hostility toward communism. Entertainers faced a ‘blacklist.’ Ordinary

people responded to the anti-Communist fervor by reining in their political activities, curbing

their talk, and keeping their thoughts to themselves.”17 Fried, like Shrecker and Tuck, helped

widen the social scope of McCarthyism by directing attention to many different groups of people

16
Jim Tuck, McCarthyism and New York’s Hearst Press: A Study of Roles in Witch Hunt (Lanham: University Press
of America, Inc., 1995), 196.
17
Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press,
1990), 3-4.
in society that had to face its injustice. In the next decade, McCarthyism would not see more

expansion in scope, but rather its first and most recent revisionism.

McCarthyism went through major historiographic changes in the four decades after the

campaign ended, and it experienced its most radical change throughout the 2000s. At the start of

the twenty-first century, the history of McCarthy and McCarthyism underwent a revision that

aimed to alter the negative attitudes that had shrouded the subjects in each decade prior. R. Bruce

Bonham, a history master’s student at the University of Ottawa in the early 2000s, provides a

fresh argument in his thesis when he attempts to convince his audience that McCarthy’s

reputation should be reconsidered since there has been newer evidence that shows there may

have been a high communist threat in working within the government: “. . . there were a

significant number of security risks inhabiting important positons in the American government.

And while it has been well-documented that many of these people were known and that the

Executive failed to prosecute . . . there were many more who were unknown. Thus, McCarthy

may have served a useful purpose.”18 Although Bonham focuses on McCarthy’s evidence and

factuality, his work revises the attitude of McCarthyism from a fearful phenomenon to a

necessary mission.

Bonham’s ideas were radical compared to the work of historians before him, but other

intellectuals joined in his efforts to revise McCarthy’s reputation. In his book Blacklisted by

History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and his Fight against America’s Enemies,

journalist and educator M. Stanton Evans argues that the current opinion of McCarthy the man is

based on erroneous information that therefore confuses the truth in the. He claims that “many

18
R. Bruce Bonham, “McCarthyism Reconsidered: A Look at How the Historiography of Joseph McCarthy and
McCarthyism has Changed in Light of New Information” (master’s thesis, University of Ottawa, 2001), 142,
accessed June 3, 2016, https://www.ruor.uottawa.ca/handle/10393/9044.
who say and write things about McCarthy simply repeat what they have read somewhere,

without the necessary checking. The net effect of such compounded error is an almost complete

inversion of the empirical record on McCarthy and his cases.”19 Bonham and Stanton’s revisions

are important changes in the historiography, since they could lead to a change in the public

opinion of McCarthy and McCarthyism in the future. Since the revision of the McCarthy era is

still in progress, however, public opinion has not changed and McCarthyism has become a term

embedded with paranoia, prejudice, and reckless prosecution. It remains a reminder of what

could happen when widespread fear overshadows logic and reason, which will be a challenge for

revisionists to change.

The historiography of McCarthyism has been one of expansion, division, and revision.

Intellectuals wasted no time in debating what the McCarthy era meant for the U.S. during and

after its existence. When the debate dimmed in the 1960s, historians stepped in to examine what

helped McCarthy grab hold of America’s attention and support for four years. They first found

political figures as a major factor, ranging from congressmen to presidents. They also focused on

victims to highlight the damage McCarthy had done and show the scare he made on American

history. As politics remained the dominant reason for McCarthyism, historians began to split the

historiography in the 1970s. They increasingly viewed McCarthy the man and McCarthyism as

separate but heavily connected entities. The split allowed for a social lens to be applied to

McCarthyism while McCarthy remained under the political lens. The social focus on

McCarthyism was the main trend throughout the decade and the 1980s and 1990s, but historians

continued to examine it in search of new reasoning and maintained the same negative view as

they had in the 60s. Intellectuals began to apply revisionism to McCarthy the man during the

19
M. Stanton Evans, Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and his Fight against
America’s Enemies (New York: Crown Forum, 2007), 12.
2000s in an attempt to change his reputation and bring him into a more positive light. Although

revisionism allows for McCarthy and McCarthyism to be viewed differently in the future, there

has not been enough to change the overall negative opinion of the era. Nevertheless, the

historiography of the McCarthy era is young and has room for more examination and revision.

Historians and other intellectuals may be motivated to discuss the era further and uncover more

information, or they can also apply revisionism to help change the national memory of McCarthy

and the anti-Communist campaign. Whether it is to be remembered as a time of heightened fear

or is later seen as a period of necessary security practices, the McCarthy era continues to be a

fascinating topic of study since its history influences political ideas and shapes social behaviors

sixty years later.