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After reports of attacks on U.S. destroyers, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This resolution gave President Lyndon B. Johnson authority to use military force in Vietnam without a declaration of war. It was later revealed that one of the incidents was never real and was used in order to create a war in Vietnam. -
Marines first landed at Da Nang, Vietnam, which became the first American Deployment of the Vietnam War. 3,500 Marines were released there to protect and secure a US airbase there. By the end of this same year, the troop level would surge to 184,300. -
This was a siege where US Marines and South Vietnamese troops were cut off from help and were surrounded by 20,000 Viet Cong. There were only 6,000 Marines. After 77 days they were able to push out of Khe Sanh. -
The Tet Offensive was a number of coordinated attacks by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong against South Vietnam and the US. These attacks lasted from May 1968 to September 1968. Allied forces had over 12,000 casualties while communist forces had over 58,000 casualties. -
In 1968 there was a massacre of hundreds of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. soldiers. When it was brought to light in 1969 it fueled international outrage and intensified anti-war sentiment at home. This was one of the biggest controversies of the war. -
President Richard Nixon had decided to send U.S. and South Vietnamese troops into a neutral Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese supply lines. This caused outrage because Cambodia had no place in the war, they just caught a stray from the US. This also lead to the Kent State shooting. -
After many protests (caused by the invasion of Cambodia) on the Kent State University campus, the Ohio governor called the National Guard to put an end to the protests. On May 4th, the National Guard retreated to a hill and starting firing on protesters. The shooting left 4 dead and 9 wounded. It sparked national outrage. -
The Pentagon Papers were files that leaked United States involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. They were leaked in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg and they revealed that multiple presidents had misled the American public and Congress about the war. Whether this was legal or not was taken all the way to the Supreme Court where it was decided that the leaking of these documents was legal. -
The Paris Peace Accords were a treaty signed on January 27, 1973, that ended U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. It included a ceasefire, and US troops and advisors had to be pulled out of Vietnam in 60 days. After this it was all up to South Vietnam to win. -
North Vietnamese forces captured the South Vietnamese capital, 2 years after the US left. This marked the end of the war and the reunification of Vietnam under communist rule. This also showed the failure of the United States to stop communist Vietnam from coming to fruition.