he didn't listen to brownell, right? he was going to follow that policy of moderation right through to the very end. so in failing to begin a modification before the whole thing blew up, i would say that's's weakness. now strength, along with the ones that i recounted here, it is very easy, by the way, to say it sure is. a strength, i would say is once the man made up his mind is overwhelming force. let me tell you a caveat here. in '62 we went through it with ol' miss, if you recall. it was a complete disaster for eisenhower. we can do this with federal marshall. what we didn't figure out was how many it would take. so they started pulling guys from everywhere, and parking lot, security people and giving them a federal marshall's badge. no weapon and sending them down to oxford. we'll do this with all civilian people, right? and then bobby and ross barnett worked this elaborate ballet by which barnett would say there's a television conversation. you have to pull your guns and they said -- you have to pull your guns. yea

the president appointed herbert brownell as the attorney general, a man who was committed to civil rights and whose legal brief supporting integration of public schools comprised part of the supreme court's information package on the brown versus board of education case. in addition, the appointments to the federal judiciary that eisenhower made shaped it for decades. the most obvious example of this was the chief justice of the supreme court, earl warren, who spearheaded the judiciary's dismantling of jim crow. in addition, judges like elbert tuttle, john brown, john minor wisdom and frank johnson jr. were appointed to lower federal courts and played key roles in desegregating the south in the 1960s. to screen candidates for such posts, eisenhower relied on his attorney general brownell, who was instructed not to place a known segregationist on the list of judicial candidates, so true to greenstein's thesis, eisenhower gave considerable power to a man he trusted, who could make the president's objectives a reality. nichols also reminded readers of the other accomplishments of the adminis