“True” Conservatives in Fifties AmericaRobert A. Taft and the Politics of a Hoosier Soldier in Korea Douglas A. Dixon (bio) On November 6, 1952, a Hoosier soldier serving in Korea, Private David Dixon, declared in a letter to his mother that “the biggest news . . . is the election results. . . . We can say we put our man in; now I hope he continues to do what he has said he would in all those campaign speeches.”1 Dwight Eisenhower, the president-elect, had promised to bring the boys home, the most important campaign pledge no doubt for Dixon’s mother and for many soldiers.2 Yet Eisenhower missed the mark in at least one notable comparison to this private’s first choice, Republican presidential candidate Robert A. Taft. Dixon told his mother: “I myself still stick to Taft and his isolationist ideas.”3 These words flowed in the context of the Hoosier soldier’s lamentations about the lack of the war’s progress, US involvement in it, and the Korean people’s bitterness toward the war and perceived corruption of South Korean president Syngman [End Page 58] Rhee. His vote of confidence in Taft, just months after the Republican National Convention had put Ike on top, followed the line of reasoning that Americans had no business fighting in faraway places as a “bunch of suckers.”4 Taft had publicly voiced similar aspersions on intervention abroad while participating in World War I relief and later during the Second World War: “I am an isolationist” if that means “isolation from European wars.”5 A teenager during Hitler’s advances, Dixon very likely would have heard of Taft’s ideas, particularly as they differed from 1940s presidential candidate and Indiana native Wendall Willkie. By 1948, during the young man’s final year of high school, Taft was receiving plenty of coverage as a presidential candidate.6 Dixon’s anti-interventionist foreign policy preference, however, hardly skimmed the surface of this Hoosier private’s political ideology. The totality of his Korean War correspondence very likely put him firmly in the midfifties Republican column, in turn, fitting in neatly with the majority of citizens from Indiana who went to the polls during a time that has been characterized as the “Republican revival.”7 There was, perhaps, little to recommend him to Adlai Stevenson’s candidacy, though this is an area worthy of exploration beyond the focus here. Indianans have had a long tradition of intense somewhat evenly divided partisanship, especially in southwestern Indiana.8 More importantly [End Page 59] for this investigation, Dixon’s preference for Taft over Eisenhower may suggest more nuanced points of comparison, that of institutional self-identity among the most critical. These differences between the two leading Republican presidential candidates and how they may have resonated with the values of Private Dixon and conservatives in Indiana and the nation are the primary focus here. Dixon’s Korean War letters discuss numerous beliefs and values of consequence to Hoosiers and the nation in political contests during the early Cold War period. Moreover, his ideas may reflect specific coalitions within Indiana.9 His firsthand experience with army bureaucracy, the army’s lack of determination to seek victory wholeheartedly, and inefficiency likely colored negatively perceptions he held of government generally. Dixon was no army regular, either, and this, too, may partly explain why he was sensitive to the differences he felt between many of his fellow soldiers and himself in his letter of November 6, 1952: “The [presidential election] news was received with rather shocking results to true army men, for they seem to be against Ike.”10 His correspondence leaves little doubt that he viewed national news surrounding the war with suspicion (while favoring the local perspective), that he believed money should be spent frugally, that hard work toward a useful purpose was central to living right, and that communism was bad—though war worse.11 The Hoosier private’s images of Koreans are mixed, but generally, he emphasized American superiority. A strong attachment to beliefs connected to his Protestant upbringing and commitment to religious duties also defined him, [End Page 60] with important implications for political identity. Family and rural roots no doubt...
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Apr 12, 2021
Suneal Kolluri 
Open Access