As 1970 began, public concern about the long American involvement in the Vietnam War seemed to decline as the Nixon administration withdrew ground troops, announced future troop reductions, and escalated the air war, with a resulting decline in American casualties. This had not been true the previous autumn when religious leaders, mostly Roman Catholic and Mainline Protestant, were prominent in the great, peaceful demonstrations in October and November 1969 called the Vietnam Moratorium. Crowds, large and small, clerical and lay, met in cities and communities around the country in the most extensive protest in the nation's history to express their disappointment with the new administration's failure to end the war more quickly. At this time Middle America seemed to be speaking about what liberals considered a moral and political issue.

Nixon's Response.

In response to the moratorium President Nixon appealed to another part of the middle...