NIXON'S TIME

After the termination of Johnson's term, President Richard Nixon was elected to office. Nixon, along with many of his advisors, believed that the antiwar movement was a negative force because it prolonged the war.  It was not long before the American people realized that the state of the war was not improving, despite Nixon's promises to end the war.  Antiwar critics were prepared for another campaign of petitions and demonstrations. The public, led by a strong antiwar sentiment, demanded a more rapid withdrawal from Vietnam than Nixon had anticipated.

In May of 1970, Nixon endeavored to buy time via an attack on Cambodia. Unfortunately for him, this action provoked a series of fervent antiwar protests across the nation. On May 4, 1970, protest ended in tragedy at Kent State University, when Ohio National Guardsmen killed four students following an antiwar demonstration. Between May 4 and May 8, campuses witnessed an average of 100 demonstrations a day, 350 campus strikes, 536 college shutdowns, and 73 reports of violent campus protests.  By May 12, only eight days after the tragedy at Kent State, over 150 colleges were on strike.

The overwhelming response to the invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State crisis soon became too much for President Nixon. On December 15, he announced his intention to withdraw fifty thousand troops from Vietnam in 1970.

At the closing of many of the nation's universities, Americans witnessed a dramatic decline in antiwar activity.  Campus demonstrations and dove rallies, as well as the size of the crowds participating in them, greatly declined after the spring of 1970. In general, the movement was winding down and Nixon gradually regained popularity.

The Movement's Effect on the War

While many believe that the movement contributed to the end of the war by exerting pressures directly on Johnson and Nixon, perhaps more significant was the indirect pressure manifested by the movement. It is clear that the criticism of the Vietnam War instigated by the antiwar movement had a significant impact on the American withdrawal from Vietnam. 

Through constant confrontation and demonstration, the antiwar activists, the media, and the nation's college students helped to turn public support away from the war and those in Washington who managed it. The movement affected even those at the highest ranks of the government and the media, putting pressure on government officials to end the war in order satisfy an angry American public.