Michael Joseph Mansfield’s start in life did not portend his future interest in the Far East. Born in Greenwich Village, New York, on March 16, 1903, he was the first of three children born to Irish immigrant parents. Soon after Mansfield’s sixth birthday, his mother died of pneumonia. His father asked Mansfield’s great-uncle Richard Mansfield and his wife Margaret to care for his young children until he could assume their care. In the summer of 1909 the three Mansfield children took the train from New York to their new home in Great Falls, Montana.¹

Young Mansfield was a marginal student...

Mansfield would come to be viewed asthecongressional expert on Indochina, but he had little knowledge of the region when he was elected to the Senate. While his lecture notes as a Professor of Far Eastern History are comprehensive when dealing with Japan and China, only one and one-half pages of lecture material on Indochina are extant. In 1949 he said, “unfortunately, I do not know too much about the Indochinese situation. I do not think that anyone does.” Two foreign policy speeches Mansfield delivered in his last House term talked of the Far East without mentioning Indochina.¹

This...

The idea for a defensive alliance that included Asia had been discussed as early as 1948. President Dwight D. Eisenhower originally called for such a treaty in Southeast Asia in 1953. In order to compensate for the potential loss of Indochina, the president made the decision to seek an alliance on March 21, 1954. “United Action” was delayed because the British were unwilling to begin discussions until after a settlement for the Indochina crisis was found at Geneva.¹

Before the beginning of the Manila conference in September 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called Alexander Wiley (R-Wis.), chairman of...

The end of 1954 and the first part of 1955 were the busiest periods for Mansfield in defining America’s effort at nation-building in South Vietnam. President Dwight Eisenhower called the situation “strange and inexplicable”; theNew York Timesdescribed it as “weird.”¹ J. Lawton Collins wrote a military friend in the early days of 1955 about how bizarre the situation was in South Vietnam:

We have five separate armies ... gambling houses and worse, all operated with the tacit approval of the Chief of State; two religious sects with their own private domains; a pope; an active underground Viet Minh;...

Mansfield never again achieved the influence over Indochina policy that he wielded in the spring of 1955. During the remainder of the Eisenhower administration, the senator started to moderate his cold war vision. By the end of the decade, Mansfield had developed serious doubts about Ngo Dinh Diem, but his sense of loyalty kept him from ever publicly expressing his skepticism. However, Mansfield did turn against the U.S. aid program to Diem’s government.

In January of 1956 Mansfield was still solidly behind Diem and the American commitment to him. The senator wrote Diem in January, thanking him for an “exquisite...

When the position of majority whip had opened up in 1956 Mansfield had been the compromise choice to assist Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. Mansfield initially declined, maintaining that he preferred to concentrate on his Foreign Relations Committee assignment, but he accepted after much urging. Mansfield admitted: “Lyndon insisted I had to take it because I was the least objectionable to most of the Democratic senators. It was not a flattering argument, but after several meetings I finally lost my resolve against becoming whip.”¹

Mansfield had little power as Johnson’s Whip. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak referred to Mansfield’s “loose guidance”...

Soon after the disturbing report from the Tran Van Chuongs, at the request of John Kennedy, Mansfield made his fourth visit to Vietnam along with Senators J. Caleb Boggs (D-Del.), Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), and Benjamin Smith (D-Mass.). Once again Francis Valeo, Mansfield’s assistant, accompanied the group. The visit led to a “secret” report to Kennedy on December 18, 1962 and a public report in February 1963.¹

Before arriving in Vietnam, Mansfield stayed in Cambodia and talked to Herbert Spivack, the Counselor of the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh. Spivack chronicled the continuing problems between Cambodia and the United States. Since...

Lyndon Johnson expressed little interest in Indochina during the Eisenhower administration, and his experience with the issue that would bring down his administration was limited. During the Kennedy years, Johnson was more cautious than Kennedy or his advisors regarding Laos. He thought that Laos was “one hell of a poor place to fight.”¹

Kennedy sent his vice president to South Vietnam in May 1961. Before embarking on the trip, Johnson discussed his mission with Mansfield and J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.). As majority leader, Johnson had always deferred to Fulbright on foreign policy issues, and Johnson respected Mansfield’s expertise on Vietnam....

At the beginning of 1965 President Lyndon Johnson confided to Adlai Stevenson that he was

having trouble with Senator Mansfield, whom he considered “mean and small,” who would not give [Hubert] Humphrey’s wife a ticket to the State of the Union ceremonies, who refused to give Vice President Humphrey a suitable office in the Capitol, and who had once told Johnson that he, Mansfield, would run the Senate and that if Johnson sent Humphrey to run it Mansfield would oppose him.¹

Humphrey later wrote “what friendship I had with Mike Mansfield had been damaged by my years as Vice President,...

When President Lyndon Johnson announced his decision to commit ground troops on July 28, 1965, reactions were generally favorable. There was little opposition to the president’s decision from his defense advisors, academicians who served as civilian strategists for the Pentagon. A search through theCongressional Recordshows only praise for the president’s decision. Mansfield continued his strategy of public support for the president, responding to Johnson’s address by saying that the president was “doing his very best, and that is all that anyone man can do.” He put a positive spin on Johnson’s openness, asserting “I know of no President...

Lyndon Johnson and Mike Mansfield got along reasonably well when serving as leader and whip in the late 1950s. When LBJ became vice president and Mansfield majority leader, the relationship remained cordial. The real strain started when Johnson moved to the White House, and differences over Vietnam policy were the major cause for the split. Mansfield’s 1965 report seems to have contributed to a cooling in his relationship with the president. James Rowe knew Johnson since the Roosevelt administration and Mansfield since his days in Butte, and no one knew the pair better than he. Rowe described them as “temperamentally...

Mansfield faced unfamiliar challenges in 1969-1970. The Montanan had served for eight years as majority leader, but always with a Democratic president. With the election of Richard Nixon, Mansfield became an “out” for the first time since his election to the leadership. Furthermore, Mansfield lacked the personal clout that he enjoyed based on friendships with presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The positive side of having a Republican in the White House was Mansfield’s freedom to criticize without constraint by his elected party position.

Another challenge involved Mansfield’s old friend, Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Since Mansfield’s 1953 visit to Indochina, Cambodia...

Mansfield’s rhetoric quickly began to reflect his new belief that the Senate would have to take responsibility for ending the war. The Senate was already acting to restrict Nixon’s freedom of movement in Southeast Asia, and Mansfield became more involved in those steps. His new thinking freed him to support measures that he was unable to support earlier. Yet Mansfield and other Democrats feared Nixon’s ability to effectively use the media, which was now paired with the vicious attacks by Vice President Spiro Agnew on administration critics. The majority leader claimed that “the President charms the TV audiences; the Vice...

Congressional Democrats entered the new year in a belligerent mood, threatening to cut off funds if President Richard Nixon failed to quickly end the war in Indochina. Nixon met privately with Majority Leader Mike Mansfield on January 2, 1973, in an effort to lessen the tension with Congress. It is not clear whether Nixon’s Christmas bombing was the catalyst, but negotiations with North Vietnam resumed on January 8 and differences were quickly resolved. The peace agreements formally signed in Paris on January 27 were substantially the agreements arrived at in October. Mansfield praised both National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and...