Morse and Ernest Gruening—the original dissenters to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution—called for a de-escalation of the U.S. war effort and a review of national policy in regard to Southeast Asia. The first student anti-war protest had been staged at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, and more protests were cropping up on and off college campuses in the spring of 1965. Though the congressional critics and anti-war protesters were still small clouds on Johnson’s horizon, he was concerned enough about such opposition that he returned to diplomacy with Hanoi in order to still dissent.
