McCarthy's Life

Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy charged that communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department. He became chair of the Senate's subcommittee on investigations.
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Synopsis

Joseph McCarthy was born November 14, 1908, near Appleton, Wisconsin. In 1946 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and in 1950 he publicly charged that 205 communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department. Reelected in 1952, he became chair of the Senate's subcommittee on investigations, and for the next two years he investigated various government departments and questioned innumerable witnesses.

Early Years

Joseph McCarthy was born on November 14, 1908, near Appleton, Wisconsin. After high school, McCarthy attended Marquette University in Milwaukee, where he was elected president of his law school class. A few years after earning his law degree in 1935, McCarthy ran for the judgeship in Wisconsin’s Tenth Judicial Circuit, a race he worked at relentlessly and won, becoming Wisconsin’s youngest circuit judge ever elected.

McCarthy took a leave of absence in July 1942 and entered WWII as a first lieutenant in the Marines. He was still on active duty when he embarked upon his next political campaign: for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate. He was defeated but soon began planning for the 1946 Senate race.

U.S. Senate

In 1946, McCarthy won his race and entered the U.S. Senate as the youngest member of the Senate. As a senator, McCarthy leaned toward conservatism and generally flew under the radar, working on such issues as housing legislation and sugar rationing. All that would change in 1950, when it became suspected that communists had infiltrated the U.S. government in the wake of high-profile espionage trials.

Taking the lead on the issue, McCarthy claimed that 205 communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department, and soon after he claimed to have the names of 57 State Department communists. As he released his charges, he called for a wide-reaching investigation that would lead to what was termed the “red scare.”

Red Scare

McCarthy was reelected in 1952 and became chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Government Operations, where he occupied the spotlight for two years with his anti-communist investigations and questioning of suspected officials. McCarthy’s charges led to testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, but he was unable to substantiate any of his claims against a single member of any government department.

Despite this setback, McCarthy’s popularity nevertheless continued to rise, as his claims had struck a nerve with an American public tired of the Korean War and concerned with communist activity in China and Eastern Europe. Undaunted by his testimonial shortcomings, McCarthy ratcheted up the rhetoric, going on a colorful anticommunist “crusade” through which he cast himself as an unrelenting patriot and protector of the American ideal. On the other side of the argument, his detractors claimed McCarthy was on a witch hunt and used his power to trample civil liberties. His aggressive tactics, in the end leading to the persecution of countless innocent people, came to be known as McCarthyism.

His charges affected more and more powerful people, including President Eisenhower, until 1954 when a nationally televised, 36-day hearing illustrated clearly to the nation that he was overstepping his authority and any ideas of common sense. (The hearings also famously prompted special counsel for the Army Joseph Nye Welch to ask McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”)

Later Years

In the aftermath, McCarthy was eventually stripped of his chairmanship and condemned on the Senate floor (Dec. 2, 1954) for conduct “contrary to Senate traditions.” That turned out to be the final nail in the coffin of the McCarthyism era, and Joseph McCarthy himself fell from the public eye.

Just a few years later, on May 2, 1957, McCarthy died of acute hepatitis at the Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington, with his wife, the former Jean Kerr, at his side.

Mafer