Gerald Ford and the Vietnam War

1. Use the following as a guide for a teacher-led discussion with students of the importance of using primary sources.

Why Use Primary Sources?

Primary sources provide a window into the past—unfiltered access to the record of artistic, social, scientific and political thought and achievement during the specific period under study, produced by people who lived during that period.

Bringing young people into close contact with these unique, often profoundly personal, documents and objects can give them a very real sense of what it was like to be alive during a long-past era.

A. Engage students

• Primary sources help students relate in a personal way to events of the past and promote a deeper understanding of history as a series of human events.
• Because primary sources are snippets of history, they encourage students to seek additional evidence through research.
• First-person accounts of events help make them more real, fostering active reading and response.

B. Develop critical thinking skills

• Many state standards support teaching with primary sources, which require students to be both critical and analytical as they read and examine documents and objects.
• Primary sources are often incomplete and have little context. Students must use prior knowledge and work with multiple primary sources to find patterns.
• In analyzing primary sources, students move from concrete observations and facts to questioning and making inferences about the materials.
• Questions of creator bias, purpose, and point of view may challenge students’ assumptions.

C. Construct knowledge

• Inquiry into primary sources encourages students to wrestle with contradictions and compare multiple sources that represent differing points of view, confronting the complexity of the past.
• Students construct knowledge as they form reasoned conclusions, base their conclusions on evidence, and connect primary sources to the context in which they were created, synthesizing information from multiple sources.

Integrating what they glean from comparing primary sources with what they already know, and what they learn from research, allows students to construct content knowledge and deepen understanding.

Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/whyuse.html

2. Provide students with a copy of the following Stanford “Historical Thinking Chart.” Select one document from    

the National Archives DocsTeach Documents related  to President Ford and the closing days of  the Vietnam War

https://www.docsteach.org/documents/documents?filter_searchterm=vietnam+and+president+ford&searchType=all&filterEras=&filterDocTypes=&sortby=relevance&filter_order=&filter_order_Dir=&rt=E4GbxZxEHT6a

 Use it to model how students can investigate historical questions by employing the following reading strategies: sourcing, contextualizing, close reading and corroborating.

http://sheg.stanford.edu/upload/V3LessonPlans/HT%20Skills%20chart_0.pdf

3. Assign students  (through a cooperative endeavor) to access the following political cartoon and use the “Cartoon Analysis Worksheet” to analyze the political cartoon through a teacher led discussion.

https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/155990

Cartoon Analysis Worksheet

National Archives.   http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/

The following information provides the teacher with information needed to analyze the political cartoon.

After President Nixon resigned, Vice-President Gerald R. Ford became America’s 38th President.

Because he had been appointed as Vice President, Ford took office as Commander-in-Chief without standing for a national election.

One of the first major things Ford did, as President, was to pardon Richard Nixon (on September 8, 1974). As a result of that presidential pardon, no legal action could be taken against Nixon for any alleged wrongdoing regarding the “Watergate Break-in" and its ensuing cover-up.

Although President Ford thought that pardoning Nixon was the best thing for the country—to allow a deeply divided nation to heal—not everyone agreed with him (or his reasoning).

Another of Ford’s major decisions troubled many people. He decided not to open an investigative inquiry into any aspect of the Vietnam War.

Americans were upset, among other things, that after so many years of combat—and so many American casualties—South Vietnam fell to the North Vietnamese in April of 1975. The last telegram, sent from the American embassy in Saigon, was President Ford’s order that all American personnel had to evacuate from Saigon.

Images of that evacuation—including people hanging on to helicopters in desperate attempts to leave Saigon—made it very clear that America had lost the Vietnam War. Why not investigate what had gone wrong?

Once again, however, President Ford believed that the country—which was still deeply divided—would not benefit from such an inquiry.

Doug Marlette, a political cartoonist, took aim at the President for this decision. His drawing, of Ford as a young boy, reveals many inaccurate answers which the lad has written on the blackboard.

Perhaps those obviously incorrect answers should call into question Ford’s judgment regarding an investigation into Vietnam?

The Library of Congress, which maintains a copy of this political cartoon—which Marlette published in the Charlotte Observer on May 8, 1975—provides commentary about it:

Editorial cartoon shows President Ford as a schoolboy who has filled a blackboard with erroneous information including a math sum showing 2 plus 2 equaling 5, a drawing showing $ plus bombing equals victory crossed out and replaced by $ plus bombing equals peace, the statements "If only we sent more money and arms we’d get peace with honor," "Presidents know best," and "Vietnam policy was always right."

Ford says, "I think the lessons of the past in Vietnam have already been learned."

In April 1975, two years after the last American ground troops left Vietnam, South Vietnam fell to the Communists. In his first news conference after the fall of Saigon, Ford rejected the idea of a Congressional investigation, saying it would be "divisive" and it was now time to "focus on the future."

The cartoonist reflects the position of many Americans who saw Ford’s position as a betrayal.

When President Ford stood for election in 1976, he was defeated by Jimmy Carter. Despite this disappointing defeat, he did not regret the decisions he had made on issues which he realized could harm his own political future:

I only did what I thought was right. (Quoted by John McCollister in God and the Oval Office: The Religious Faith of Our 43 Presidents, at page 142.) 

To this day, people dispute whether those decisions were, in fact, “right.”

Gerald Ford. Lessons of the Past in Vietnam..Marlette, Doug.  Political Cartoon

 Awesomestories.    https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/155990

4. Have students use the following National Archives guide to analyze the following document from the Gerald Ford Library

                                        Analyze a Written Document

Meet the document.

Type (check all that apply):

Describe it as if you were explaining to someone who can’t see it. Think about: Is it handwritten or typed? Is it all by the same person? Are there stamps or other marks? What else do you see on it?

Observe its parts.

Who wrote it?

Who read/received it?

When is it from?

Where is it from?

Try to make sense of it.

What is it talking about?

Write one paragraph summarizing this document.

Why did the author write it?

Quote evidence from the document that tells you this.

What was happening at the time in history this document was created?

Use it as historical evidence.

What did you find out from this document that you might not learn anywhere else?

What other documents or historical evidence are you going to use to help you understand this event or topic?

 Materials created by the National Archives and Records Administration are in the public domain.

https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/document.html

Digitized from Box 18 of the NSA. Presidential Country Files: East Asia and the Pacific at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

Talking points

DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Washington, D.C. 20520

September 12, 1974

MEMORANDUM FOR LIEUTENANT GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT THE WHITE HOUSE

Subject: Ambassador Graham Martin’s Call on the President

Our Ambassador to the Republic of Viet-Nam, Graham Martin, will call on the President at 11:30 am,

September 13. There are attached points which we believe Ambassador Martin will raise with the President and a suggested line of response by the President.

Secret

GDS ~~~ GDH  2/10/00

7417589

Digitized from Box 18 of the NSA. Presidential Country Files: East Asia and the Pacific at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

TALKING POINTS

-- Ambassador Martin believes that, if we are able
to provide adequate economic and military assistance to Vietnam for the next two years, the nation can go into the 1976 electoral campaign with Vietnam so obviously an American success story that it will not be an election issue.

If the amounts provided are inadequate, he believes the destabilizing effects of a seriously deteriorating situation in Vietnam will have such damaging repercussions, far beyond Southeast Asia, that serious questions about American foreign policy will inevitably be a 1976 campaign issue.

Consequently, Ambassador Martin w ill briefly allude to what he believes is the vital necessity of having a clear understanding within the Executive Branch of the President’s own strong support of a centralized and tightly coordinated effort to secure the maximum possible aid levels from the Congress.

Ambassador Martin will probably request that DOD
be directed to absorb all costs now charged to Vietnam military aid by DOD administrative decision but not required by law, and that he be authorized to inform President
Thieu that the President will request a supplemental appropriation at an appropriate time, should this be needed

to assure the success of Vietnam’s defense against aggression.

He will express his conviction that, under the pressures of the last two years, the Executive Branch has largely abdicated its responsibility to correct the pervasive campaign of distortion about Vietnam which has been waged so effectively by Vietnam’s opponents and which has been largely responsible for the erosion of support for Vietnam aid in the Congress. He will offer some suggestions how the performance of the Executive Branch can be improved in providing to the Congress and the American people a truthful and candid picture of the current realities in Vietnam.

GDS

Digitized from Box 18 of the NSA. Presidential Country Files: East Asia and the Pacific at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

Secret

-2-

-- He will wish the President’s authority to convey to President Thieu reassurances of the constancy of American support for Vietnam along the lines of the President’s letter to President Thieu when he assumed the Presidency.

-- None of the above points is controversial and
we believe they will elicit affirmative responses from the President. We assume the President will wish to authorize Ambassador Martin to convey to President Thieu the reiteration of the assurances the President has already provided.

September 12, 1974

Secret

https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/exhibits/vietnam/032400070-001.pdf