February 9, 1950: Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, facing re-election in 2 years, finds an angle, one that has worked for other Republicans in the last 4 years: Anti-Communism. He decides to use it, regardless of the truth.
For this night, he had been invited to give a Lincoln Day speech to the Republican Women's club of Wheeling, West Virginia. While the Democratic Party had Jefferson-Jackson Day, to honor 2 of their "founding fathers," Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, usually in February, the Republicans came up with Lincoln Day, on or close to Abraham Lincoln's birthday, February 12.
Why would women in Wheeling, a a small town of about 25,000 people in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia -- 270 miles northwest of Washington, 60 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, and 140 miles southeast of Cleveland -- in what was then a heavily Democratic area invite a 1st-term Senator from Wisconsin? Probably because, for the moment, he came cheap.
His words in the speech are a matter of some debate, as no audio recording was saved. However, it is generally agreed that he produced a piece of paper that he claimed contained a list of "known Communists" working for the United States Department of State, which runs American foreign policy.
McCarthy is usually quoted to have said, "The State Department is infested with Communists. I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five, a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party, and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department."
There is some dispute with whether or not McCarthy actually gave the number of people on the list as being "205" or "57." In a later telegram to President Harry S Truman, and when entering the speech into the Congressional Record, he used the number 57.
As for the list itself, it has never been found. You won't find it on display in the National Archives, the Smithsonian Institution, or the Library of Congress. How many names were actually on the list? Some people have suggested it was just a blank piece of paper, or a shopping list, or a laundry list.
The origin of the number 205 can be traced: In later debates on the Senate floor, McCarthy referred to a 1946 letter that then–Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, a conservative Democrat from the Southern State of South Carolina, sent to Congressman Adolph J. Sabath of Illinois. In that letter, Byrnes said State Department security investigations had resulted in "recommendation against permanent employment" for 284 persons, and that 79 of these had been removed from their jobs. If so, this left 205 still on the State Department's payroll.
In fact, by the time of McCarthy's speech, only about 65 of the employees mentioned in the Byrnes letter were still with the State Department, and all of these had undergone further security checks.
This speech of McCarthy's came 19 days after Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury (in connection with his alleged espionage with the Soviet Union, as the statute of limitations on that charge had run out), 221 days after Mao Zedong's Communist takeover of China, and 229 days after President Truman announced that the U.S. Department of Defense could confirm that the Soviets had successfully tested a nuclear bomb. So international Communism was a viable threat at the time. This was a chilly point in the Cold War -- and the start of the Korean War was less than 5 months away, so it was going to get frigid.
So there was a firestorm of interest, and even McCarthy was taken aback by the massive media response to the Wheeling speech. He was accused of continually revising both his charges and figures. A few days later, in Salt Lake City, Utah, he cited a figure of 57. On February 20, on the Senate floor, he claimed 81, presenting a case-by-case analysis of these "loyalty risks" employed at the State Department.
It is widely accepted that most of McCarthy's cases were selected from the so-called "Lee List," a report that had been compiled three years earlier for the House Appropriations Committee. In reciting the information from the Lee List cases, McCarthy consistently exaggerated, representing the hearsay of witnesses as facts and converting phrases such as "inclined towards Communism" to "a Communist."
In the nearly 5 years between the Wheeling speech and his censure by his fellow Senators, Joe McCarthy never exposed one single Communist. Everybody he ever accused was either already exposed as such elsewhere, or was later found to be innocent.
The March 29, 1950 edition of The Washington Post included a cartoon by Herbert Block, a.k.a. Herblock, showing a "tower of tarbuckets," topped by a leaking bucket labeled "McCARTHYISM," with a Republican elephant being pushed by men labeled, and representing Senators Robert Taft of Ohio, Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, and Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska; and the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Guy Gabrielson, a former Speaker of the New Jersey General Assembly. They want the elephant to get on top of the platform on top of the barrel on top of the 10 tarbuckets.
The cartoon made "McCarthyism" the byword for reckless charges of Communism, and made Herblock a national star.
Suffice it to say, this was not the Republican Party of quiet conservative leadership and prosperity. Republican voters who trusted Calvin Coolidge or Theodore Roosevelt no longer recognized their Party. If they wanted to end 20 years of Democratic leadership in the 1952 election, they were going to need a nominee not like McCarthy, or Taft, or the other firebrands. They were going to need a unifying figure.
In the end, they would get that figure, Dwight D. Eisenhower. But even he would be tainted by McCarthyism. Not enough to defeat him, but enough to put a cloud over him that he would have to remove.
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February 9, 1950 was a Thursday. Baseball and football were out of season. There were 4 games played in the NBA, none by a team still playing in the same city:
* The Baltimore Bullets beat the St. Louis Bombers, 79-67 at the Baltimore Coliseum.
* The Philadelphia Warriors beat the Fort Wayne Pistons, 64-61 at the gym of North Side High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
* The Sheboygan Red Skins beat the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, 104-82 at the Sheboygan Municipal Auditorium in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
* And the Minneapolis Lakers beat the Washington Capitols, 71-59 at Minneapolis Auditorium.
There was 1 game in the NHL: The New York Rangers beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 5-3 at the Chicago Stadium.
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