that resulted in smaller forces and reliance on strategic deterrence for defense. Several weeks after taking office, he created a new cabinet office, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. To promote the development of the postwar economy, he successfully lobbied Congress to pass the Federal Aid Highway Act in 1956. This project launched the biggest peacetime construction program in the nation's history. In 1957 he used federal troops to enforce school desegregation in Little Rock after Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas refused to comply with the 1954 Supreme Court decision that ordered integration. In 1958, following the launch of Explorer 1, the first American satellite, Eisenhower signed into law a bill that created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In his second term Alaska and Hawaii became states. After turning the presidency over to John F. Kennedy in January 1961, Eisenhower retired to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

The central fact about Dwight David Eisenhower is that he accepted the responsibility for making pivotal decisions at critical points in the history of his nation and the western alliance. The most dramatic of those decisions, and the ones for which he had consciously prepared himself throughout a long military career, produced the Allied victory in Europe in 1945. Less spectacularly, but just as resolutely, Eisenhower dedicated himself to the cause of peace and sought the national good as he conceived it during eight years in the White House. He won the trust and confidence of the common man, both in the United States and abroad, and personified the goodwill and altruism of American policy in his era. As soldier and as statesman, duty came first. Perhaps the best characterization of the man comes from his own words in a speech he delivered in June 1945, to acknowledge being awarded the Freedom of the City of London. "Humility," he said, "must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends."