Dear Senator Smith: Small-town Maine Writes to Senator Margaret Chase Smith about the Vietnam War, 1967-1971

In the years 1967-1971, Senator Margaret Chase Smith was the only female member of the Senate and her reputation of integrity and independent thinking attracted the attention of those seeking to understand and voice their opinion on the Vietnam War experience. Dear Senator Smith is an edited collection of letters that shed light on the far-reaching and polarized tensions that exploded on the scene during Lyndon Johnson's government and continued into Richard Nixon's administration. These letters written by ordinary people living in Maine touch on class, race, gender, foreign policy, patriotism, and dissent and provide valuable insight on the impact of the war on the home front, the threat of communism, and the strength of the anti-war movement. By going beyond the circle of political and anti-war elites, Dear Senator Smith shows how ordinary small-town Americans upheld or protested Cold War ideology, offered new paradigms, and generally experienced the new challenges that correlated with the battles being fought both in Southeast Asia and on the home front.