Joseph R. McCarthy was raised by parents of modest means on a farm near Appleton, Wisconsin. He received a bachelor of laws degree from Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee and, once admitted to the bar, went into private practice. In 1939 McCarthy became a circuit judge, where he worked for several years before joining the Marines and serving as ground staff in the Pacific theater of the Second World War. As judges were exempt from the draft, McCarthy’s decision to join the Marines was plausibly opportunistic, as military experience would bolster his political credentials. Upon discharge, McCarthy ran for a Republican Senate seat and won in the Republican sweep of 1946. Richard Nixon won a seat in the house in the same election and in the following years played a much fiercer roll regarding the issue of anti-Communism than McCarthy, whose record as a senator was unexceptional.

On February 9, 1950, McCarthy was scheduled to give a routine Lincoln Day speech to the Republican Women’s Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, as other Republican politicians fanned out to other cities for similar events. He arrived with his briefcase, in which he kept the assembled notes for a speech on Communists in government. The speech, which came to be known as the “Enemies from Within” speech, would dramatically alter the face of American politics and inaugurate a movement that would bear his name.