Tag: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: After nearly being thrown off the Korean peninsula during the previous summer, by fall 1950 victorious United Nations forces, mostly Americans, were moving back into North Korea. Things went very well until Thanksgiving when China entered the war and her troops forced the allies into another demoralizing retreat. This continued until late winter when under Matthew Ridgeway the Eighth Army recouped its losses and began to move slowly back north. When they reached the vicinity of the 38th parallel, Harry Truman felt the time was ripe for a cease-fire. Theater commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur disagreed and without permission from Washington began to issue public statements on his own threatening and taunting the Chinese. In addition he allowed himself to be used in a not-so-subtle public attempt to undermine the policy of his commander-in-chief. A letter from MacArthur to the Republican leader was read on the floor of the House of Representatives. In it he said that if we were not in Korea to win the administration should be indicted for the murder of American boys. It was clear that despite his military leadership and tactical genius, MacArthur was becoming a loose cannon and a serious liability to American policy. After much consultation and with the unanimous support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Truman fired him.

The public support for MacArthur was enormous and the president endured a body-blow to his popularity from which he never recovered, but he knew he had done the right thing. About this event Truman occasionally told Abraham Lincoln's story of a man who, when his horse kicked up and stuck a foot through the stirrup, said to the horse, "If you are going to get on, I am going to get off." Douglas MacArthur had strayed beyond the bounds permitted military officials by the Constitution. Douglas MacArthur had to go.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

Copyright 1995 by Educational Broadcast, Inc. Resources

Manchester, William Raymond. American Caesar, Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964. Boston : Little, Brown, 1978. McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.