What orders did President Nixon give regarding the Kent State protests and National Guard deployment?
Executive summary
President Nixon did not directly order the Ohio National Guard to Kent State; the Guard was activated by Governor James Rhodes after local officials requested help amid riots [1]. Nixon privately used dismissive rhetoric toward student protesters—calling them “bums” and discussing political damage—while creating the national Scranton Commission to investigate campus unrest [2] [3] [4].
1. Who actually ordered the Guard onto Kent State’s campus — and why
The immediate legal authority to send troops to Kent was Ohio Governor James Rhodes, who responded to requests from city officials after disturbances in downtown Kent; those disturbances prompted Rhodes to call in the Ohio National Guard to “maintain order” [1]. Contemporary accounts and historical summaries emphasize that the National Guard at Kent operated under state, not federal, authority — a critical distinction for responsibility and command [5] [1].
2. What President Nixon said and how it mattered
Nixon publicly and privately used harsh language about students in the days surrounding the shootings. Reporters overheard him referring to protesters as “bums” and his aides’ diaries and tapes capture strategic, sometimes cold-blooded conversations focused on political consequences rather than consolation [6] [2] [7]. Historians argue that such rhetoric contributed to an atmosphere in which local officials and the Guard felt empowered to treat campus dissent as a law-and-order problem [2] [5].
3. Did Nixon order federal troops or give operational directives to the Guard?
Available sources indicate Nixon did not federalize or directly deploy federal troops to Kent State; the Guardsmen who fired were under state control [5] [1]. Sources do not show a presidential order directing specific tactical rules of engagement for the Ohio National Guard at Kent State; instead, operational command rested with state and local officials [1]. If you seek a verbatim presidential order detailing use-of-force rules at Kent, available sources do not mention one.
4. After the shootings: investigation and the Scranton Commission
In the aftermath, Nixon established the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest (the Scranton Commission) to examine Kent State and Jackson State, signaling a federal investigative response rather than a direct admission of operational fault [4]. Kent State archives note Nixon’s limited engagement with proposed follow-up actions—his aides recorded terse orders and decisions about appointments and timing, underscoring a political management of the crisis [3].
5. Competing interpretations among historians and contemporaries
Some historians and commentators place weight on Nixon’s rhetoric and the administration’s posture as a causal factor that “inflamed” tensions, linking presidential language to local responses [2] [6]. Other accounts emphasize the constitutional and practical division of authority: governors, not presidents, activate state Guards and thus bore direct command responsibility for Kent [5] [1]. Both perspectives appear in the record: Nixon’s words are documented, and the legal chain of command is also clear.
6. Broader context: Cambodia, campus anger, and political calculation
Nixon’s April 30 order to expand the war into Cambodia triggered a surge in campus protest that set the scene for Kent State [8]. The president’s reaction after the shootings—concern about political fallout and setting up a commission—fit a pattern scholars describe as prioritizing containment of political damage and law-and-order framing over immediate public empathy [2] [3].
7. What remains unclear in the sources provided
Sources here document rhetoric, commission creation, and the legal authority for the Guard, but they do not provide any declassified presidential orders directing the Ohio National Guard’s specific deployment, rules of engagement, or operational commands on campus [1] [3]. For those documents or verbatim transcripts of presidential orders tied directly to Guard movements, available sources do not mention them.
Conclusion
Responsibility for sending the troops to Kent rested with Governor Rhodes and local officials; President Nixon did not issue a direct operational order to the Ohio National Guard in the sources provided. Nixon’s documented rhetoric and political handling of the crisis influenced public perception and historical debate, and he authorized a federal commission to investigate the events rather than federal intervention at the scene [1] [2] [4] [3].