Senator Joseph McCarthy did not create the national obsession with communist subversion. It had arisen in the late 1930s, years before McCarthy had come to public notice. Angry that they had been barred from the corridors of power for 20...

In February 1950, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy had charged that the Department of State knowingly harbored Communists. Hearings on McCarthy's accusations were held under the chairmanship of Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland. The...

Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman elected to both houses of Congress. She was the first woman to enter the Senate without being appointed to the position. During World War II, she was the only civilian woman to go to sea in a Navy...

In May 1950, at the very moment that Senator Joseph McCarthy was beginning his crusade against communist subversion, the U.S. Senate created a special committee to investigate another "enemy within": organized crim

[Free Registration/Login Required] An essay tracing the anti-Communist hysteria beginning in earnest at the end of World War II that resulted in Truman's federal Loyalty Security program and ending with McCarthyism in the 1950s.

A charismatic demagogue, Joe McCarthy grew up on a Wisconsin farm and attended a one-room schoolhouse. While still a teenager, he established a thriving business as a chicken farmer. He dropped out of school after eighth grade, but...