1916-
U.S. Senator, 1958-1971;
Democratic Presidential Candidate, 1968

A Leader for the "Doves."

As the first antiwar candidate to declare his candidacy for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination, the scholarly and reserved Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota became a surprisingly strong magnet for college-age opponents of the Vietnam War. He pulled students back into mainstream politics, where they enthusiastically campaigned door-to-door for their candidate, who on at least one occasion was late for a campaign appearance because he was busy discussing literature with poet Robert Lowell.

Background.

Born in Watkins, Minnesota, McCarthy, a devout Roman Catholic, spent most of the first thirteen years after his graduation from Saint John's University in that state teaching economics and sociology at Catholic high schools and colleges. He also spent nine months in 1942-1943 as a novice in a Benedictine monastery. He entered politics in the late 1940s when...