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March 16, 1964   To the Congress of the United States: We are citizens of the richest and most fortunate nation in the history of the world. One hundred and eighty years ago we were a small country struggling for survival on the margin of a hostile land. Today we have established a civilization of free men which spans an entire continent. With the growth of our country has come opportunity for our people--opportunity to educate our children, to use our energies in productive work, to increase our leisure-opportunity for almost every American to hope that through work and talent he could create a better life for himself and his family. The path forward has not been an easy one. But we have never lost sight of our goal: an America in which every citizen shares all the opportunities of his society, in which every man has a chance to advance his welfare to the limit of his capacities. We have come a long way toward this goal. We still have a long way to go. The distance which remains is the measure of the great unfinished work of our society. To finish that work I have called for a national war on poverty. Our objective: total victory. There are millions of Americans--one fifth of our people--who have not shared in the abundance which has been granted to most of us, and on whom the gates of opportunity have been closed. What does this poverty mean to those who endure it? It means a daily struggle to secure the necessities for even a meager existence. It means that the abundance, the comforts, the opportunities they see all around them are beyond their grasp. Worst of all, it means hopelessness for the young. The young man or woman who grows up without a decent education, in a broken home, in a hostile and squalid environment, in ill health or in the face of racial injustice-that young man or woman is often trapped in a life of poverty. He does not have the skills demanded by a complex society. He does not know how to acquire those skills. He faces a mounting sense of despair which drains initiative and ambition and energy. Our tax cut will create millions of new jobs--new exits from poverty. But we must also strike down all the barriers which keep many from using those exits. The war on poverty is not a struggle simply to support people, to make them dependent on the generosity of others. It is a struggle to give people a chance. It is an effort to allow them to develop and use their capacities, as we have been allowed to develop and use ours, so that they can share, as others share, in the promise of this nation. We do this, first of all, because it is right that we should. From the establishment of public education and land grant colleges through agricultural extension and encouragement to industry, we have pursued the goal of a nation with full and increasing opportunities for all its citizens. The war on poverty is a further step in that pursuit. We do it also because helping some will increase the prosperity of all. Our fight against poverty will be an investment in the most valuable of our resources--the skills and strength of our people. And in the future, as in the past, this investment will return its cost many fold to our entire economy. If we can raise the annual earnings of 10 million among the poor by only $1,000 we will have added 14 billion dollars a year to our national output. In addition we can make important reductions in public assistance payments which now cost us 4 billion dollars a year, and in the large costs of fighting crime and delinquency, disease and hunger. This is only part of the story. Our history has proved that each time we broaden the base of abundance, giving more people the chance to produce and consume, we create new industry, higher production, increased earnings and better income for all. Giving new opportunity to those who have little will enrich the lives of all the rest. Because it is right, because it is wise, and because, for the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty, I submit, for the consideration of the Congress and the country, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The Act does not merely expand old programs or improve what is already being done. It charts a new course. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty. It can be a milestone in our one-hundred eighty year search for a better life for our people. This Act provides five basic opportunities. It will give almost half a million underprivileged young Americans the opportunity to develop skills, continue education, and find useful work. It will give every American community the opportunity to develop a comprehensive plan to fight its own poverty--and help them to carry out their plans. It will give dedicated Americans the opportunity to enlist as volunteers in the war against poverty. It will give many workers and farmers the opportunity to break through particular barriers which bar their escape from poverty. It will give the entire nation the opportunity for a concerted attack on poverty through the establishment, under my direction, of the Office of Economic Opportunity, a national headquarters for the war against poverty. This is how we propose to create these opportunities. First we will give high priority to helping young Americans who lack skills, who have not completed their education or who cannot complete it because they are too poor. The years of high school and college age are the most critical stage of a young person's life. If they are not helped then, many will be condemned to a life of poverty which they, in turn, will pass on to their children. I therefore recommend the creation of a Job Corps, a Work-Training Program, and a Work Study Program. A new national Job Corps will build toward an enlistment of 100,000 young men. They will be drawn from those whose background, health and education make them least fit for useful work. Those who volunteer will enter more than 100 Camps and Centers around the country. Half of these young men will work, in the first year, on special conservation projects to give them education, useful work experience and to enrich the natural resources of the country. Half of these young men will receive, in the first year, a blend of training, basic education and work experience in Job Training Centers. These are not simply camps for the underprivileged. They are new educational institutions, comparable in innovation to the land grant colleges. Those who enter them will emerge better qualified to play a productive role in American society. A new national Work-Training Program operated by the Department of Labor will provide work and training for 200,000 American men and women between the ages of 16 and 21. This will be developed through state and local governments and non-profit agencies. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans badly need the experience, the income, and the sense of purpose which useful full or part-time work can bring. For them such work may mean the difference between finishing school or dropping out. Vital community activities from hospitals and playgrounds to libraries and settlement houses are suffering because there are not enough people to staff them. We are simply bringing these needs together. A new national Work-Study Program operated by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare will provide federal funds for part-time jobs for 140,000 young Americans who do not go to college because they cannot afford it. There is no more senseless waste than the waste of the brainpower and skill of those who are kept from college by economic circumstance. Under this program they will, in a great American tradition, be able to work their way through school. They and the country will be richer for it. Second, through a new Community Action program we intend to strike at poverty at its source--in the streets of our cities and on the farms of our countryside among the very young and the impoverished old. This program asks men and women throughout the country to prepare long-range plans for the attack on poverty in their own local communities. These are not plans prepared in Washington and imposed upon hundreds of different situations. They are based on the fact that local citizens best understand their own problems, and know best how to deal with those problems. These plans will be local plans striking at the many unfilled needs which underlie poverty in each community, not just one or two. Their components and emphasis will differ as needs differ. These plans will be local plans calling upon all the resources available to the community-federal and state, local and private, human and material. And when these plans are approved by the Office of Economic Opportunity, the federal government will finance up to 9070 of the additional cost for the first two years. The most enduring strength of our nation is the huge reservoir of talent, initiative and leadership which exists at every level of our society. Through the Community Action Program we call upon this, our greatest strength, to overcome our greatest weakness. Third, I ask for the authority to recruit and train skilled volunteers for the war against poverty. Thousands of Americans have volunteered to serve the needs of other lands. Thousands more want the chance to serve the needs of their own land. They should have that chance. Among older people who have retired, as well as among the young, among women as well as men, there are many Americans who are ready to enlist in our war against poverty. They have skills and dedication. They are badly needed. If the State requests them, if the community needs and will use them, we will recruit and train them and give them the chance to serve. Fourth, we intend to create new opportunities for certain hard-hit groups to break out of the pattern of poverty. Through a new program of loans and guarantees we can provide incentives to those who will employ the unemployed. Through programs of work and retraining for unemployed fathers and mothers we can help them support their families in dignity while preparing themselves for new work. Through funds to purchase needed land, organize cooperatives, and create new and adequate family farms we can help those whose life on the land has been a struggle without hope. Fifth, I do not intend that the war against poverty become a series of uncoordinated and unrelated efforts--that it perish for lack of leadership and direction. Therefore this bill creates, in the Executive Office of the President, a new Office of Economic Opportunity. Its Director will be my personal Chief of Staff for the War against poverty. I intend to appoint Sargent Shriver to this post. He will be directly responsible for these new programs. He will work with and through existing agencies of the government. This program--the Economic Opportunity Act--is the foundation of our war against poverty. But it does not stand alone. For the past three years this government has advanced a number of new proposals which strike at important areas of need and distress. I ask the Congress to extend those which are already in action, and to establish those which have already been proposed. There are programs to help badly distressed areas such as the Area Redevelopment Act, and the legislation now being prepared to help Appalachia. There are programs to help those without training find a place in today's complex society--such as the Manpower Development Training Act and the Vocational Education Act for youth. There are programs to protect those who are specially vulnerable to the ravages of poverty--hospital insurance for the elderly, protection for migrant farm workers, a food stamp program for the needy, coverage for millions not now protected by a minimum wage, new and expanded unemployment benefits for men out of work, a Housing and Community Development bill for those seeking decent homes. Finally there are programs which help the entire country, such as aid to education which, by raising the quality of schooling available to every American child, will give a new chance for knowledge to the children of the poor. I ask immediate action on all these programs. What you are being asked to consider is not a simple or an easy program. But poverty is not a simple or an easy enemy. It cannot be driven from the land by a single attack on a single front. Were this so we would have conquered poverty long ago. Nor can it be conquered by government alone. For decades American labor and American business, private institutions and private individuals have been engaged in strengthening our economy and offering new opportunity to those in need. We need their help, their support, and their full participation. Through this program we offer new incentives and new opportunities for cooperation, so that all the energy of our nation, not merely the efforts of government, can be brought to bear on our common enemy. Today, for the first time in our history, we have the power to strike away the barriers [p.380] to full participation in our society. Having the power, we have the duty. The Congress is charged by the Constitution to "provide . . . for the general welfare of the United States." Our present abundance is a measure of its success in fulfilling that duty. Now Congress is being asked to extend that welfare to all our people. The President of the United States is President of all the people in every section of the country. But this office also holds a special responsibility to the distressed and disinherited, the hungry and the hopeless of this abundant nation. It is in pursuit of that special responsibility that I submit this Message to you today. The new program I propose is within our means. Its cost of 970 million dollars is 1 percent of our national budget--and every dollar I am requesting for this program is already included in the budget I sent to Congress in January. But we cannot measure its importance by its cost. For it charts an entirely new course of hope for our people. We are fully aware that this program will not eliminate all the poverty in America in a few months or a few years. Poverty is deeply rooted and its causes are many. But this program will show the way to new opportunities for millions of our fellow citizens. It will provide a lever with which we can begin to open the door to our prosperity for those who have been kept outside. It will also give us the chance to test our weapons, to try our energy and ideas and imagination for the many battles yet to come. As conditions change, and as experience illuminates our difficulties, we will be prepared to modify our strategy. And this program is much more than a beginning. Rather it is a commitment. It is a total commitment by this President, and this Congress, and this nation, to pursue victory over the most ancient of mankind's enemies. On many historic occasions the President has requested from Congress the authority to move against forces which were endangering the well-being of our country. This is such an occasion. On similar occasions in the past we have often been called upon to wage war against foreign enemies which threatened our freedom. Today we are asked to declare war on a domestic enemy which threatens the strength of our nation and the welfare of our people. If we now move forward against this enemy--if we can bring to the challenges of peace the same determination and strength which has brought us victory in war--then this day and this Congress will have won a secure and honorable place in the history of the nation, and the enduring gratitude of generations of Americans yet to come. LYNDON B. JOHNSON Source: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-proposing-nationwide-war-the-sources-poverty

A Speech upon the Foreign Slave Trade to the South Carolina State Legislature by L. W. Spratt. December 13, 1858 Mr. Speaker:—In advance of discussion on the resolutions I have had the honor to present;—if they be discussed, I would ask the indulgence of the House while I state a little more at length their aim and purport. It will be seen that they do not propose a further importation of foreign slaves.  Upon the propriety of that measure there well may be a diversity of opinion, and as it is a measure which will only come in question when the States of the South shall be in a condition to act for themselves upon the subject, it is enough for the present to consider the importance of emancipating slavery from the control of Congress, while we leave that question of ulterior policy to the time when it will come in proper order for investigation. It would be but fair to say, however, that even in reference to that ulterior policy I can have little question; and that, if restrictions by the general government should be removed, I would certainly oppose this imposition by the State. I have long been convinced that the foreign slave trade, and that alone, will solve the problem of progress of the South, and it will not be out of place, perhaps, even on the special question now before us, to briefly state the grounds of that conviction.  In the first place I conceive that it is the only road to political power, and that without political power there is no security for social and political rights. By reference to the census returns of 1808, it will be seen that the slave and hireling States were equal in number and nearly equal in population.  Since that time no slaves have come to the South, but since that time five millions of foreigners have come to the North, and while therefore the South at present has but fifteen States and ten millions of people, the North has seventeen States and sixteen millions of people, and an increase of at least three hundred thousand per annum from abroad.  In view of these facts it would seem certain that the South has come to be at the mercy of the North in legislation, and that these restrictions have been the causes of it. But, as equality was lost to the South by the suppression of the slave trade, so would it seem that the slave trade would of necessity restore it. That trade re-opened, slaves would come, if not to the sea-board, at least to the western frontier, and for all who come there would be a direct increase of representation in the national legislature.—There would also be a broader base for the ruling race to stand on. 3,500,000 slaves, support 6,000,000 masters now. Still more would give a broader basis for still more, and every slave that comes, therefore, might be said to bring his master with him, and thus to add more than twice his political value to the importance of the South. But to political power there is a necessity for States as well as men, and slaves would quite as surely give them to us. Ten thousand masters have failed to take Kansas, but so would not have failed ten thousand slaves. Ten thousand of the rudest Africans that ever set their feet upon our shores, imported, if need be, in Boston ships and under Boston slave drivers, would have swept the free soil party from that land.  There is not an abolitionist there who would not have purchased a slave at a price approaching the costs of importation, and so purchasing a slave, there is not an abolitionist there who would not have become as strong a propagandist of slavery as ever lived. As they would have taken Kansas, so if imported freely, would they take every territory offered to the west. And thus, in giving States and population to the south, it is reasonably certain that it is within the power of these rude untutored savages to decide this great political question, to restore the South to power, and, perhaps, to save this Union. As they give a road to power for the South, so also I have thought they give the only road. To an increase of power there must be population, and of such a population as is necessary to extend the institutions of the South, there is no other source than Africa. Europeans will not come. They would come to enterprises in connection with slave labor, if these were possible, but they will not come to [competition] with our slaves, and while therefore they come in millions to the North, they will not come to us. But if they should, it is to be feared they would not come to strengthen us, or to extend slavery, but to exclude the slave. If slaves were abundant, there would be offices of direction to which the foreigner could come;—if they were cheap, cheap enough to be employed in competition with European operatives in the arts, there would be opportunities of enterprise to which the foreigner could come, but not so abundant, nor so cheap; the hireling only comes to competition with them and to their exclusion, therefore, and thus it is that from Maryland and Delaware, and from the northern counties of Virginia, and from Baltimore, Richmond, Charleston, Mobile, New Orleans and St. Louis, slaves have been driven from almost all the employments to which they were accustomed, and have been sent in thousands to the rural districts of the further South.  Through such a population there is no road to power for the South.  Without slaves enough for combination, they would abolitionize the States they came to strengthen, and would break, the very centres of our institution. But grant the condition of abundant slaves at prices to be used in trade and we could draw an army of defenders from every State in Europe. As the foreign slave trade would give political power to the South, so also would it give prosperity and progress. There is one thing at the South, the importance of which I think is not sufficiently estimated and this is the want of opportunity. When slaves are offered in our markets, they are competed for by planters from the South and West.  To us they are worth what the lines of business open to them here, will justify; to planters from the South and West, they are worth the price that is justified by eight bales of Cotton per annum, at fifty dollars per bale. At such prices, they can hardly be employed on lighter lands in the older States; at such prices, they can never be employed by tradesmen in competition with pauper labour elsewhere.  The higher prices of labour raise the price of provisions upon artisans and operatives.  That still more increaes the charges upon mechanical employments; there thus comes to be no margin between the costs of labour and the value of its products,—and no opportunity, therefore, in ordinary lines of business.  Without such opportunity, there is no advancement in population; without advancement in population there is no profit in lines of Railroads and Steamboats; no increase in the value of lands and other permanent property, and so it is therefore, that beyond the cultivation of the soil and the sale and transportation of its products to a foreign market, it is hard to say what business there is in which enterprise and capital can be invested with the certainty of success; and while we teem with enterprise, while we pour millions into undertakings that never pay, and at the call of public spirit, are ready to pay many millions more, we do not stagnate, as is complacently asserted by holiday economists, for the reason that we have not enterprise, or fail for ihe reason that we are simpletons and sluggards, but we stagnate for the want of opportunity, and we fail for the reason, that we have hoped ageinst hope, and have staked our fortunes upon the achievement of success, where success was never possible. This tale of facts would be altered by the foreign slave trade. The slaves that come, could be purchased at the costs of importation. At such prices, they could find employment on our lighter soil: the means of living would become more abundant and more cheap; with cheap slaves and cheap subsistence, our enterprising tradesmen could compete with tradesmen in other sections, of the world; instead of importing articles and implements for use, we could supply ourselves; we could turn the tide of trash back upon the older countries; a larger population would result,—a larger amount of products and fabrics would solicit transportation; hotels, railroads and steamboats would begin to pay; wealth would flow in upon us;—importance would come to us and instead of standing as we now stand, in provincial admiration of the Hoes [???] and Vanderbilts of the North resplendent in the prosperity that has come upon them with 5,000,000 slaving foreigners, we ourselves could stand up still more resplendent in the prosperity to be poured upon us by the teeming thousands from the plains of Africa. That this is not a visonary speculation, may be seen from the records of our seaboard districts.  When foreign slaves were introduced, the rural parishes of Charleston district were the brightest spots in all America. Taken from the marts of Charleston to the lands adjacent they gave to every thing they touched the spring of progress. From the labour of one year, came as many more the next.  They gave drainage to the land, cultivation to the soil, and provisions in abundance to the artisans and operatives of the city. These, in turn, with labor and provisions cheap, struck boldly out upon the field of competition. Leather was tanned, cloth was manufactured, shoes, hats, clothes, and implements were made for consumption and for export. The town advanced; the country prospered; swamps were reclaimed; mansions rose; avenues were planted; pleasure grounds laid out; commerce started; ships sailed to every quarter of the world; parish churches in imposing styles of architecture were erected and spots more progressive, and more true to the principles of religion, and more warmed by hospitality were never seen than the town and parishes of Charleston District.—But upon the suppression of that trade their splendors waned; their glories departed; progress left them for the North; cultivation ceased; the swamps returned; mansions became tenantless and roofless; values fell; lands that sold for $50 per acre now sell for less than $5; churches are abandoned, trade no longer prosecuted—of twenty tanyards, not one remains—of shoes, hats and implements of industry once put upon the trade of foreign towns, none now are put upon our own; and Charleston, which was once upon the road from Europe to the North, now stands aside, and while once the metropolis ol America, is now the unconsidered seaport of a tributary province.  Such are the effects of the foreign slave trade as exhibited in the history of Charleston District.  The experience of that District, to a greater or a less extent, has been the experience of other sections of our Southern seaboard, and this would seem to be conclusive upon the question whether that trade would once, again, give progress to the South. So, also, is there reason to believe it would give integrity to the social constitution of the South. There are now 3,500,000 slaves to 6,000,000 masters, and thus, therefore, there are 3,000,000 masters without slaves. These, it is said, will be true to the South; and so they will be. If slavery be an evil, “the ulcer is at least their own, and they will let no others scratch it.” So, also, they would not let it be abolished, for they, too, would share in the ruin of its abolition. But while there is not a white man who would not own a slave if he could—and if there were slaves at importer’s prices, there is scarcely a white man who could not if he would—yet if he cannot do so, and at present prices many cannot; if forced to work in competition with the slave from the inability to get above him, there is no single white man who will not feel the instinct of repulsion—who will not use his franchise to widen his sphere—who will not elbow slaves from employments, rather than be elbowed from employments by slaves; and thus it is, that they have driven them from Northern States to the South—thus it is, that they have driven them from the larger cities of the South to the country—thus it is, that they feel themselves, and will force the Legislature to acknowledge, that there is a difference between free labor and slave labor—and thus it is, and must be, that until Ethiopia be colonized, man will ever act from the centre of his own individual interest. To be clear of this, there must be no conflict of interests—no class in competition with our slaves.  There would be no such class, if there were slaves, at prices low enough, for every line of business.  Such as might be imported would be so cheap; and it is thus, therefore, that the foreign slave trade, to every human apprehension, would harmonize discordant interests, and restore integrity the most perfect, to the social system of the South. In view of these considerations, then—in view of the assurance that the slave trade would restore political power to the South; that it would give progress to the South; that it would restore integrity to the social system of the South; I am free to confess that, for my own part, I would be willing, as a mere measure of policy, to reopen and legitimate, at once, the foreign slave trade. But there is another consideration, apart from the practical operation of that measure, which, in my opinion, renders it necessary that the South shall take a decided stand upon it: And it is a consideration which, I trust, will address itself to all who feel for the honor and importance of the South, whatever may be their convictions as to those ultimate results to which I have alluded. This Union is a democracy. Of that, I presume, there is little question. It is a democracy in name, and I suppose there are none to doubt but that it is also a democracy in nature. In fact, the social principle that triumphed in the revolution was simply this, that “Equality is the right of man;” and it is very certain that this Union, as a whole, has been at little pains to disaffirm it.  It entered the Constitution of our present government—it declared the law that majorities shall govern—that suffrage shall be universal—that all offices shall be elective, and that all restrictions on individual liberty shall be removed. It was at the dictate of this principle that the word slave was not admitted in the Constitution—that, in 1794, as far as we could, we prohibited the transportation of slaves from one foreign country to another—that, in 1808, we prohibited the introduction of slaves to this country—that, in 1819, we sent armed ships to cruise against the slave trade—that, in 1820, we made it piracy to engage in it—that, in 1820 also, we restricted slavery to the region south of 36-30—that, in 1842, we joined England in a maritime crusade against it, and that, in 1850, we cleansed the national capitol of the pollution of that execrable traffic. It is also under the influence of this principle that Abolition petitions have come to Congress—that we rejoice when European people cut the throats of their rulers, and that gentle-hearted dames and damsels, in shedding tears and ink upon the crimes and horrors of the age, see no single thing so deeply deplorable as the crime and horror of man’s dominion over man. But while this Union is a democracy, the South is not a democracy. It is so in its external character, and so in sentiment perhaps, for there are very many of us who yet sympathise in the feeling that equality is the right of man, but in its social condition the South is not a democracy. On the contrary, it is perhaps the purest form of aristocracy, the world has ever seen. Elsewhere, aristocracies have been forced and artificial, here it is natural and necessary, and the cases are as rare as comets, that individuals of the one class have passed into the other. The principle that equality is the right of man, is true to an extent, and to that extent we have adopted it. It is true that men of the same race are equal, and they are not divided, therefore, by any political distinctions. But it is not true that men of all races are equal. It is not true that the negro is the equal of the white man. He has never been able to rear a structure of civilization in his native land; he has not been able to sustain the structure prepared for him in the West Indies; he has not been able to stand up to the structure sustained over him at the North, and neither in his native land or in a foreign land, in a savage or a civilized condition, has he ever been able to illuminate one living truth with the rays of genius. Not so equal, he has not been admitted to an equality. He has not been forced to a position which nature has fitted him to claim. The South has been content to act rather on fact than theory. She has asigned him to his true condition—she has inexorably held him to it, and in doing so, she has announced in social practice, despite the teachings of philanthropy, what I now would have her proclaim to the world, that "equality it not the right of man, but is the right of equals only " Such being the social attitude of the South, I would ask whether we shall not affirm it and proclaim it? and whether it is not now the time, and this the occasion, upon which we should demand of the general government, the recognition of our right to be supreme upou the questions which affect it? Shall we not affirm it?  And why shall we not affirm it?  Is it for the reason that democracy is right? There is one sense in which it may be right. It is right, where one section of a people is elevated above another by political distinctions, merely,that those distinctions should be done away with. It was right that the distinctions between the Plebeian and Patrician should have given way in Rome; that the vassal should have risen to tbe level of the lord in France, and it is, right, perhaps, that the Commons should advance upon the hereditary peers of England, and tell them ever, as upon the passage of the reform bill, that they must pass their measures, or ' that the king should make a house of lords to pass them; and so it is right, perhaps, that peer and peasant, of the same race, and with no difference in natural ability to distinguish them, should come at length to the same horizontal plane of a democracy. It is right, at least in this, that it is natural and necessary that it should be so.  But is the social condition that results from that democratic plane a thing to be commended?  Let the inquirer look at the fearful vibrations from anarchy to despotism in Rome. Let him look at the rivers of blood that flowed from free and equal France along the streets of Paris. Let him look at the brigandage that rules in Mexico. Let him look at the fearful portents at the North. Let him took at the prostration of all that is elevated;—at the rise of all that is low. Let him look at the reptiles that crawl from the sinks of vice to brandish their forked tongues about the pillars of the capitol; at the bands of patriots that march the streets of New York with banners inscribed wiih “liberty” on one side, “we will have bread” upon the other, and then say, whether, if equality be indeed the right of man, there be not conditions in it ihat render it illusory, and whether inequalities of some sort,—whether distinct social orders, no matter how objectionable in theory—are not of necessity to social practice. Is it for the reason slavery is wrong, that we are not to affirm our attitude? That the slavery of one man to another no better than himself, is wrong, may be admitted. It is a condition that can only be maintained by force, and no condition may be right when force is necessary to sustain it. But is the slavery of the negro to the white man wrong?  To that as little force is necessary to hold oil and water at unequal levels.  Is it of injury to the negro?  I venture to affirm that no negroes that were ever born, have been so blessed, in themselves and their posterity, as the 400,000 Africans imported to this country.  Is it of injury to the white man?  I venture to affirm that there are no men, at any point upon the surfaice of this earth, so favored in their lot, so elevated in their natures, so just to their duties, so up to the emergencies and so ready for the trials of their lives, as are the 6,000,000 masters in the Southern States  Is it of injury to society?  In every state of society that is artificial—and all are artificial where classes arc placed in unnatural relations to each other— there must be collisions of conflicting interests, and the throes of an irregulated nature.  It is so, that social revolutions have disturbed the constitution of almost every nation. It is so, that the props of social order have been stiieken down in France, and it is so, that democracy advances upon the conservatisms of every European Constitution.  But from this source of evil the slave society is free; there can be no march of slaves upon the ranks of masters; they hate no reachings to a higher sphere; there is no contest of classes for the same position; each is in its order balanced, and I have a perfect confidence that when France shall fall again into the delirium of liberty—when the peerage of England shall have yielded to the masses—when democracy at the North shall hold its carnival—when all that is pure and noble shall have been dragged down—when all that is low and vile shall have mantled to the surface—when woman shall have taken the places and habiliments of man, and man shall have taken the places and habiliments of woman—when Free Love unions and phalansteries shall pervade the land—when the sexes shall consort without tbe restraints of marriage, and when youths and maidens, drunk at noon-day and half-naked, shall reel about the market places, the South will stand serene and erect as she stands now,—the slave will be restrained by power, the master by the trusts of a superior position,—she will move on with a measured dignity of power and progress as conspicuous as it is now; and if there be a hope for the North—a hope that she will ever ride the waves of bottomless perdition that roll around her—it is in the fact that the South will stand by her and will lend a helping hand to rescue and to save her. Why, then, shall we not affirm and proclaim the nature of our institution?  And why not demand of the government the recognition of our right to be supreme upon this question?  Is it that such legislation does not injure us?  It may be that to some, if not to all, the Southern States, there would be material advantage in a further importation of slaves.  To such this legislation is an injury. It may be that a further importation of slaves would give political power to the South; and to the South, therefore, this legislation is an injury.  But admit that to neither is there such a requisition, and still these Acts are of irreparable wrong and injury.  They are wrong in that they are the censure of the Government, of which we are an equal party; and an injury in the fact that they are a brand upon our institution.  The spread of slavery may be wrong, and therefore the Missouri Compromise; but slavery itself must be wrong, when the ships and seamen of our country are kept upon the seas to preclude the means to its formation. By no dexterity can we dodge the logical accuracy of this conclusion.  We may show, as we can show, that this union of unequal races is right; that it exhibits the best form of society the world has ever seen; that it exhibits order and the securities of order; that it has raised the savage to an agency in civilization; that it has given the ruling race a higher point to start from in its reach to nobler objects—still the mind will follow the wrong to its results; still, if the trade be piracy, the slave is plunder; if it be a crime to take him, it is a crime to keep him; and sense and reason tell us we abandon slavery, when we admit a wrong in the means to its formation. Why, then, shall we not demand the repeal of these restrictions?  Is it that it will precipitate an issue?  That is the one thing, perhaps, the most devoutly to be wished for.  The contest is impending and inevitable, unless we shall escape it in submission. The North has seventeen States and sixteen million people ; the South has fifteen States, and but ten million people; the North has thus the power of legislation, and she has shown that she will use it; she has used it already to the limits of endurance; she entertains petitions to abolish slavery; she has put restrictions on the slave trade; she has fixed limits to the spread of slavery; she has prohibited the trade in slaves within the limits of the Capitol; she has made an effort to grasp the helm of government; she is marshalling her forces for another grasp in 1860; she proscribes the men who will not literally carry out her evil edicts; and thus, therefore, there is revealed already the power and purpose of oppression.  But it is more important still, that there is, of that aggression, the necessity.  The proclivities of power are certain and resistless. It runs to oppression as naturally and necessarily as waters flow or sparks fly upwaids. No logic, no policy, no feeling, can avert it. Its leaders, so-called, are as powerless to control it as the reeds the current upon which they float. It is true, they may see the precipice and may recoil from the verge, but only to be trampled by the mass that plunges after; and we must stem the current, or we must erect political barriers against it.  If, then, it is our purpose to preserve the fortunes and the form of that society an Eternal Providence has committed to our keeping, the issue is inevitable, and wise and prudent men must own the sooner it is made the better. The power and patronage of the Government are already in the hands of our antagonists, and every hour’s delay but strengthens them and wears away from us the nerve and spirit of resistance. Then why not now demand repeal?  Is it for the reason that it is not policy to import more slaves? If so, we will not import them. The several Southern States can decide that question for themselves. If Texas, with her broad domain, may want them, she may admit them; if we may not want them, we may exclude them. It is not now policy to admit the introduction of free negroes, and we now exclude them without an Act of Congress. So, also, could we exclude the slave. Is it that it would not be right to import them?  If so, are we notable to restrain ourselves?  Must we have aid of Congress to keep us from the wrong? Is that Congress more wise, more prudent, more virtuous, than ourselves?  Do they know better than we do what is honest and becoming?  And are we willing to confess, not only that our slaves are plunder, and that they come to us through piracy, but that such is our state of helplessness and degradation if it were not for the General Government, we would rush again, with inebriate alacrity, to the criminal indulgence? But say that no Southern State may want them, or may ever want them— say even, that it may be wrong to import them— and yet is it of extreme importance that we should be supreme upon this question.  The power assumed by the General Government to legislate upon this subject, if supreme above tho States, will be as supreme at some other time to force them in, as it is now to keep them out; and will any say that it is safe and right to be upon both questions at the mercy of the General Government; that when the South shall be reduced to the condition of a conquered province—when manliness and independence shall have left us—when literature and fashion shall have followed to the North—when there will be no hope of political power from a further importation of slaves—no assurance that we will have the physical ability to control them, to our own security and order—that then it will not be of interest to the North to force them in, and that then it will not be of the very last importance to the South to keep them out. If this be so, it is now time for the South to determine whether she will be sui juris upon this vital subject, and if not prepared to hold our institution at the mercy of the North, it is now the time to strike for independence. Is it for the reason that the North will not yield to our demands? This is not to be assumed.  It is true the North will not allow the South a road to power if she can help it. But it must be remembered that the existence of the North depends upon the Union.  Her every interest is parasitic. Her cities are dependent on the South for custom. Her factories are dependent on the South for a market.  They would have our trade and custom upon their own terms; but they must have them: without them their factories would fail and New York would be shriveled to the dimensions of a common town. If the South were independent they could not have them; the South would trade direct to foreign countries; upon foreign fabrics ahe would exact no higher duties than on fabrics from the North. If the factories of the North can barely stand now, when protected by an average impost duty of twenty-five per cent., they could not then stand under such a competition; and the stake, therefore, is one of existence, which the North can never risk on such a venture.  The North would preserve dominion, but it is imperative upon her to preserve the Union. The madness of the North, increases, and the time may come when considerations of interest even will not control her action; but it has not come yet—and now I believe that there is not a demand to be made by the South, no matter how extravagant, which, if made as the condition of this Union, would not be accepted by the North. But say that it is so.  Say that though we repudiate restrictions on the slave trade, and demand the repeal of them, the North shall not assent to it. Then an issue will have been made, and if not conceded, it is possible the South may be forced to the intrepidity of acting for herself upon the subject.  But if not, she will at least have put herself right upon the record.  She will have averted the reproach of being a party to the censure of her own institutions—of concurring in her own condemnation—of meanly practising what she does not dare to preach—of holding to the world a sentiment which in every action of her life she contradicts—and it is time that she should do so. It is time that we should speak out like men upon this subject. If we practice slavery, let us avow it—let us own it as a right, rather than allow it to be imputed as a wrong—let us demand of our common Government that it will depart from the office of dis­crimination, and let us bare our institutions in their proper aspect and condition to the world, or let us bury them. Is it for the reason that we would shock the moral sentiment of other countries?  It is convenient for the North to execrate our institution, for she finds her profit in keeping it at a discount. It is convenient for England to execrate the institution, for she regards it as a principle of strength to the North, and as the prop therefore of her most imperious rival. But it is an error to suppose that any of these States are tender on the score of human rights. England crushes India—France, Algeria—Russia, Prussia and Austria have portioned Poland—all match to opportunity; and if forced to look for European morality in the history of European States, we will find everywhere an unequivocal assertion of the one great principle that strength is virtue, and weakness only crime. Nor is it true that European States are hostile to the spread, of slavery at the South. They are hostile to this Union, perhaps; they see in it a threatening rival in every branch of art, and they see that rival armed with one of the most potent productive agents the world has ever seen. They would crush India and Algeria to make an equal supply of cotton with the North, and failing in this, they would crush slavery to bring the North to a footing with them; but to slavery without the North they have no repugnance.—On the contrary, if it were to stand out for itself, free from the control of any other power, and were to offer to all a fair and open trade in its commodities, it would not only not be warred upon, but the South would be singularly favored; crowns would bend before her; kingdoms and empires would enter the lists for her approval, and quitting her free estate, it would be in her option to become the bride of the world, rather than remain, as now, the miserable mistress of the North.  The repugnance to Southern slavery therefore, is not due to its nature, but to the relations only in which, by the accidents of its history, it has been placed; and if there be a measure which will teach the North that the South is to be no longer the passive subject of oppression—which will teach the world that the North is not the Union, and which, therefore, will not only not shock the world, but will inspire a feeling of respectful consideration—it will be that which declares that the South will henceforth be supreme upon the questions which affect her own peculiar institutions. Is it from an unwillingness in this State to run again in advance of public opinion at the South?  I know there are those who have been panic- stricken at the fearful intrepidity of some of our political movements; but they mav be relieved of apprehension of any evil from it.—South Carolina has been too far advanced for placemen and politicians, if we have such characters among us.  But she has never been too far advanced for liberty and the respect of other Southern States.  She has made no call upon the South that has not been jusiified by the occasion; none that the South, to the best of her ability, has not ultimately answered; and if there be a State in this Union distinguished by the respect and confidence of other States, whose professions are unquestioned, whose principles are regarded as authority, and whose delegates, whether to the National Legislature or to Conventions of its own political section, are received with high consideration, and who are looked upon as banner-bearers in every just and honorable cause, that State is South Carolina.  That she is so distinguished, is for the reason only that her principles have always been pronounced; that her action has always been decided; that she has always been ready for emergencies without considerations of expediency; and if we would emulate the deeds of those who have gone before us, and would merit and transmit their honors and their virtues, it is now for us to follow their example. Mr. Speaker, it is possible that there never may be a peaceful solution to the questions at issue between these sections.  Within this Union there are distinct principles of nationality, and it is possible that they may never be torn apart without the throes of revolution.  It is an ordinance of nature, wise and right as nature’s ordinances always are, that the germs of animal life can only come through hemorrhage and rupture.  to existence. And it may be an ordinance of nature also, that the germs of society can only come through hemorrhage and rupture to development.  The Realm of Britain, pregnant of the principle that Equality is the right of man, was delivered only through the Revolution. This Union, pregnant of the greater principle, that equality is the right of equals only, may need another Revolution to deliverance. But if it be possible to escape that trial; if it be possible for the South to come, as she will come, to the functions of her social nature without the severance of existing lies, without the rupture of relations that are still fondly cherished, without embracing her hands in the blood of kindred, it must be in the way that we propose. It must be by giving play to the elements of her system, by permitting of the subject race enough to meet her requisitions, by giving her thus a path to political power, and through political power to the security of her rights. But without this, there is no power on earth to save this Union; and if there were, there would be no conceivable calamity so dreadful as its preservation. If slavery stand, and it must stand—for it is too abundant of blessings and too prodigal of promise to be given up—it must start from its repose—it must take the moral strength of an aggressive attitude. Though strong, strong as a tempest slumbering, with latent energies of infliction and endurance to meet the world in arms, it is still unsafe unless those energies are called to action. The passive subject of a foreign sentiment it has been too long already. It was thus that slavery fell in Domingo and Jamaica.  It is thus that it may fall in Cuba, and here, also, for here already the toils are thrown around it.  It is proscribed and reprobated—its foreign sources of support are cut away from it—the reins of its government are held by other hands than its own—its own property is used to corrupt its own people. Men, diffident of its endurance, move away from it. Its pious people are instructed to deplore it. Its women and children are taught to turn against it. Its friends who speak for its integrity, and who claim the means to its extension, are looked upon as agitators, and I now, who speak truly what I believe for its advancement and the advancement of humanity, in which, under Heaven, I believe it to be the most potent agent this world has ever seen—am sure tbat scarce a woman’s heart in all this land responds to what I say, or that, from the pious and pure, whom most I would wish to please, if to please them were consistent with my duty, will rise one prayer for the measure we propose. These things being so, it is time that slavery should be routed to a consciousness of responsibility for its own preservation; that it should become an actor in the drama of its own fate; that it should speak for itself upon this great question.  It never yet has spoken.  The world speaks of slavery, the North speaks of slavery, we speak of slavery at a thing apart from us, but slavery never yet has spoken, and it is time that it should speak.  When it does, its first utterance will be, “We must be free—free to expand according to our own nature—free of the touch of any hostile hand upon us—we are right in that existence which it has pleased Almighty God to give as, and we can admit no declaration of a wrong in the means to our advancement.” Mr. Speaker, we have been elected here at the South to a fearfully momentous trust. It is a trust of moment to have liberty and hopes at stake, with the hand of power already stretched to grasp them. But there is a trust for time and man of even greater moment.  It is the precept of human experience that equals must be equal, and that political distinctions must therefore yield to that necessity. But it is the precept, also, that to power and progress there must be separate orders in the State, and to us, the first in human history, has been committed a society combining these conditions.  There has been equality in France, but despotism has been a welcome refuge from its enormities; there were slaves in Greece and Rome, but they were the natural equals of their masters, and the relation therefore was forced and transitory ; but here there is a perfect compliance with the requisition—there is, among equals, equality the most perfect, and there are orders that can never merge; and in this the Eternal Ruler of the world has committed to us a sacred social truth, which we are under the most sacred obligations to transmit to other ages. To that transmission we are committed by the highest sanctions that were ever incumbent upon any people. If we do transmit it we shall find as our rewaid a career of greatness and of glory more extended than was ever opened to the hopes of man. If we do not, if we bend in the execution of that trust to the requisitions of another people not so charged with that responsibility, and so fail, we shall leave to our land and our posterity a heritage of calamity and crime, the darkest that ever came to any people.  States have been subjugated, and Rome was plundered by barbarians, yet carnage ended with resistance; but here, with subjugation comes a war of races, hand to hand, that will not end while a remnant of the weaker race remains. In view of these considerations, then—in view of the hopes and glories of success—in view of the crimes and calamities of failure—in view of the blessings to be conferred upon other lands and other ages, and of the smiles of an approving Heaven, it is incumbent upon us to start now upon the performance of our duty, and it is not an indiscreet or an unbecoming act in that performance to tell this government that, charged with this momentous trust, we cannot yield to them the office of determining its conditions—that that, of right, belongs to us, not to be affected by them, and that upon the rights and obligations of that office we can take no judgment but our own. To do this is the object of the resolutions I have had the honor to present, and I hope, therefore, that they will meet the approbation of the House. Source: https://archive.org/details/speechuponforeig00spra/page/n1/mode/2up

In the Senate on February 6, 1837 If the time of the Senate permitted, I would feel it to be my duty to call for the reading of the mass of petitions on the table, in order that we might know what language they hold towards the slaveholding States and their institutions; but as it will not, I have selected, indiscriminately from the pile, two; one from those in manuscript, and the other from the printed, and without knowing their contents will call for the reading of them, so that we may judge, by them, of the character of the whole. [Here the Secretary, on the call of Mr. Calhoun, read the two petitions.] Such is the language held towards us and ours. The peculiar institution of the South—that, on the maintenance of which the very existence of the slaveholding States depends, is pronounced to be sinful and odious, in the sight of God and man; and this with a systematic design of rendering us hateful in the eyes of the world—with a view to a general crusade against us and our institutions. This, too, in the legislative halls of the Union; created by these confederated States, for the better protection of their peace, their safety, and their respective institutions;—and yet, we, the representatives of twelve of these sovereign States against whom this deadly war is waged, are expected to sit here in silence, hearing ourselves and our constituents day after day denounced, without uttering a word; for if we but open our lips, the charge of agitation is resounded on all sides, and we are held up as seeking to aggravate the evil which we resist. Every reflecting mind must see in all this a state of things deeply and dangerously diseased. I do not belong to the school which holds that aggression is to be met by concession. Mine is the opposite creed, which teaches that encroachments must be met at the beginning, and that those who act on the opposite principle are prepared to become slaves. In this case, in particular, I hold concession or compromise to be fatal. If we concede an inch, concession would follow concession—compromise would follow compromise, until our ranks would be so broken that effectual resistance would be impossible. We must meet the enemy on the frontier, with a fixed determination of maintaining our position at every hazard. Consent to receive these insulting petitions, and the next demand will be that they be referred to a committee in order that they may be deliberated and acted upon. At the last session we were modestly asked to receive them, simply to lay them on the table, without any view to ulterior action. I then told the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Buchanan), who so strongly urged that course in the Senate, that it was a position that could not be maintained; as the argument in favor of acting on the petitions if we were bound to receive, could not be resisted. I then said, that the next step would be to refer the petition to a committee, and I already see indications that such is now the intention. If we yield, that will be followed by another, and we will thus proceed, step by step, to the final consummation of the object of these petitions. We are now told that the most effectual mode of arresting the progress of abolition is, to reason it down; and with this view it is urged that the petitions ought to be referred to a committee. That is the very ground which was taken at the last session in the other House, but instead of arresting its progress it has since advanced more rapidly than ever. The most unquestionable right may be rendered doubtful, if once admitted to be a subject of controversy, and that would be the case in the present instance. The subject is beyond the jurisdiction of Congress—they have no right to touch it in any shape or form, or to make it the subject of deliberation or discussion. In opposition to this view it is urged that Congress is bound by the constitution to receive petitions in every case and on every subject, whether within its constitutional competency or not. I hold the doctrine to be absurd, and do solemnly believe, that it would be as easy to prove that it has the right to abolish slavery, as that it is bound to receive petitions for that purpose. The very existence of the rule that requires a question to be put on the reception of petitions, is conclusive to show that there is no such obligation. It has been a standing rule from the commencement of the Government, and clearly shows the sense of those who formed the constitution on this point. The question on the reception would be absurd, if, as is contended, we are bound to receive ; but I do not intend to argue the question; I discussed it fully at the last session, and the arguments then advanced neither have been nor can be answered. As widely as this incendiary spirit has spread, it has not yet infected this body, or the great mass of the intelligent and business portion of the North; but unless it be speedily stopped, it will spread and work upwards till it brings the two great sections of the Union into deadly conflict. This is not a new impression with me. Several years since, in a discussion with one of the Senators from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster), before this fell spirit had showed itself, I then predicted that the doctrine of the proclamation and the Force Bill,—that this Government had a right, in the last resort, to determine the extent of its own powers, and enforce its decision at the point of the bayonet, which was so warmly maintained by that Senator, would at no distant day arouse the dormant spirit of abolitionism. I told him that the doctrine was tantamount to the assumption of unlimited power on the part of the Government, and that such would be the impression on the public mind in a large portion of the Union. The consequence would be inevitable. A large portion of the Northern States believed slavery to be a sin, and would consider it as an obligation of conscience to abolish it if they should feel themselves in any degree responsible for its continuance,—and that this doctrine would necessarily lead to the belief of such responsibility. I then predicted that it would commence as it has with this fanatical portion of society, and that they would begin their operations on the ignorant, the weak, the young, and the thoughtless,—and gradually extend upwards till they would become strong enough to obtain political control, when he and others holding the highest stations in society, would, however reluctant, be compelled to yield to their doctrines, or be driven into obscurity. But four years have since elapsed, and all this is already in a course of regular fulfilment. Standing at the point of time at which we have now arrived, it will not be more difficult to trace the course of future events now than it was then. They who imagine that the spirit now abroad in the North, will die away of itself without a shock or convulsion, have formed a very inadequate conception of its real character; it will continue to rise and spread, unless prompt and efficient measures to stay its progress be adopted. Already it has taken possession of the pulpit, of the schools, and, to a considerable extent, of the press; those great instruments by which the mind of the rising generation will be formed. However sound the great body of the non-slaveholding States are at present, in the course of a few years they will be succeeded by those who will have been taught to hate the people and institutions of nearly one-half of this Union, with a hatred more deadly than one hostile nation ever entertained towards another. It is easy to see the end. Ву the necessary course of events, if left to themselves, we must become, finally, two people. It is impossible under the deadly hatred which must spring up between the two great sections, if the present causes are permitted to operate unchecked, that we should continue under the same political system. The conflicting elements would burst the Union asunder, powerful as are the links which hold it together. Abolition and the Union cannot co-exist. As the friend of the Union I openly proclaim it—and the sooner it is known the better. The former may now be controlled, but in a short time it will be beyond the power of man to arrest the course of events. We of the South will not, cannot surrender our institutions. To maintain the existing relations between the two races, inhabiting that section of the Union, is indispensable to the peace and happiness of both. It cannot be subverted without drenching the country in blood, and extirpating one or the other of the races. Be it good or bad, it has grown up with our society and institutions, and is so interwoven with them, that to destroy it would be to destroy us as a people. But let me not be understood as admitting, even by implication, that the existing relations between the two races in the slaveholding States is an evil: — far otherwise; I hold it to be a good, as it has thus far proved itself to be to both, and will continue to prove so if not disturbed by the fell spirit of abolition. I appeal to facts. Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually. It came among us in a low, degraded, and savage condition, and in the course of a few generations it has grown up under the fostering care of our institutions, reviled as they have been, to its present comparatively civilized condition. This, with the rapid increase of numbers, is conclusive proof of the general happiness of the race, in spite of all the exaggerated tales to the contrary. In the mean time, the white or European race has not degenerated. It has kept pace with its brethren in other sections of the Union where slavery does not exist. It is odious to make comparison; but I appeal to all sides whether the South is not equal in virtue, intelligence, patriotism, courage, disinterestedness, and all the high qualities which adorn our nature. I ask whether we have not contributed our full share of talents and political wisdom in forming and sustaining this political fabric; and whether we have not constantly inclined most strongly to the side of liberty, and been the first to see and first to resist the encroachments of power. In one thing only are we inferior—the arts of gain; we acknowledge that we are less wealthy than the Northern section of this Union, but I trace this mainly to the fiscal action of this Government, which has extracted much from, and spent little among us. Had it been the reverse,—if the exaction had been from the other section, and the expenditure with us, this point of superiority would not be against us now, it was not at the formation of this Government. But I take higher ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good. I feel myself called upon to speak freely upon the subject where the honor and interests of those I represent are involved. I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other. Broad and general as is this assertion, it is fully borne out by history. This is not the proper occasion, but if it were, it would not be difficult to trace the various devices by which the wealth of all civilized communities has been so unequally divided, and to show by what means so small a share has been allotted to those by whose labor it was produced, and so large a share given to the nonproducing classes. The devices are almost innumerable, from the brute force and gross superstition of ancient times, to the subtle and artful fiscal contrivances of modern. I might well challenge a comparison between them and the more direct, simple, and patriarchal mode by which the labor of the African race is, among us, commanded by the European. I may say with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age. Compare his condition with the tenants of the poor houses in the more civilized portions of Europe—look at the sick, and the old and infirm slave, on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poor house. But I will not dwell on this aspect of the question; I turn to the political; and here I fearlessly assert that the existing relation between the two races in the South, against which these blind fanatics are waging war, forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions. It is useless to disguise the fact. There is and always has been in an advanced stage of wealth and civilization, a conflict between labor and capital. The condition of society in the South exempts us from the disorders and dangers resulting from this conflict; and which explains why it is that the political condition of the slaveholding States has been so much more stable and quiet than that of the North. The advantages of the former, in this respect, will become more and more manifest if left undisturbed by interference from without, as the country advances in wealth and numbers. We have, in fact, but just entered that condition of society where the strength and durability of our political institutions are to be tested; and I venture nothing in predicting that the experience of the next generation will fully test how vastly more favorable our condition of society is to that of other sections for free and stable institutions, provided we are not disturbed by the interference of others, or shall have sufficient intelligence and spirit to resist promptly and successfully such interference. It rests with ourselves to meet and repel them. I look not for aid to this Government, or to the other States; not but there are kind feelings towards us on the part of the great body of the non-slaveholding States; but as kind as their feelings may be, we may rest assured that no political party in those States will risk their ascendency for our safety. If we do not defend ourselves none will defend us; if we yield we will be more and more pressed as we recede; and if we submit we will be trampled under foot. Be assured that emancipation itself would not satisfy these fanatics:—that gained, the next step would be to raise the negroes to a social and political equality with the whites; and that being effected, we would soon find the present condition of the two races reversed. They and their northern allies would be the masters, and we the slaves; the condition of the white race in the British West India Islands, bad as it is, would be happiness to ours. There the mother country is interested in sustaining the supremacy of the European race. It is true that the authority of the former master is destroyed, but the African will there still be a slave, not to individuals but to the community, forced to labor, not by the authority of the overseer, but by the bayonet of the soldiery and the rod of the civil magistrate. Surrounded as the slaveholding States are with such imminent perils, I rejoice to think that our means of defence are ample, if we shall prove to have the intelligence and spirit to see and apply them before it is too late. All we want is concert, to lay aside all party differences, and unite with zeal and energy in repelling approaching dangers. Let there be concert of action, and we shall find ample means of security without resorting to secession or disunion. I speak with full knowledge and a thorough examination of the subject, and for one, see my way clearly. One thing alarms me—the eager pursuit of gain which overspreads the land, and which absorbs every faculty of the mind and every feeling of the heart. Of all passions avarice is the most blind and compromising—the last to see and the first to yield to danger. I dare not hope that any thing I can say will arouse the South to a due sense of danger; I fear it is beyond the power of mortal voice to awaken it in time from the fatal security into which it has fallen. Source: https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcmassbookdig.speechesofjohncc00calh/?sp=224&st=image&r=-0.645,0.446,2.29,1.243,0

July 22, 1920   Chairman Lodge, Members of the Notification Committee, Members of the National Committee, Ladies and Gentlemen: The message which you have formally conveyed brings to me a realization of responsibility which is not underestimated. It is a supreme task to interpret the covenant of a great political party, the activities of which are so woven into the history of this Republic, and a very sacred and solemn undertaking to utter the faith and aspirations of the many millions who adhere to that party. The party platform has charted the way, yet, somehow, we have come to expect that interpretation which voices the faith of nominees who must assume specific tasks. Let me be understood clearly from the very beginning: I believe in party sponsorship in government. I believe in party government as distinguished from personal government, individual, dictatorial, autocratic or what not. In a citizenship of more than a hundred millions it is impossible to reach agreement upon all questions. Parties are formed by those who reach a consensus of opinion. It was the intent of the founding fathers to give to this Republic a dependable and enduring popular government, representative in form, and it was designed to make political parties, not only the preserving sponsors, but the effective agencies through which hopes and aspirations and convictions and conscience may be translated into public performance. Popular government has been an inspiration of liberty since the dawn of civilizations. Republics have risen and fallen, and a transition from party to personal government has preceded every failure since the world began. Under the Constitution we have the charted way to security and perpetuity. We know it gave to us the safe path to a developing eminence which no people in the world ever rivalled. It has guaranteed the rule of intelligent, deliberate public opinion expressed through parties. Under this plan, a masterful leadership becomingly may manifest its influence, but a people's will still remains the supreme authority. The American achievement under the plan of the fathers is nowhere disputed. On the contrary, the American example has been the model of every republic which glorifies the progress of liberty, and is everywhere the leaven of representative democracy which has expanded human freedom. It has been wrought through party government. No man is big enough to run this great Republic. There never has been one. Such domination was never intended. Tranquillity, stability, dependability—all are assured in party sponsorship. and we mean to renew the assurances which were rended in the cataclysmal war. It was not surprising that we went far afield from safe and prescribed paths amid the war anxieties. There was the unfortunate tendency before; there was the surrender of Congress to the growing assumption of the executive before the world-war imperilled all the practices we had learned to believe in; and in the war emergency every safeguard was swept away. In the name of democracy we established autocracy. We are not complaining at this extraordinary bestowal or assumption in war, it seemed temporarily necessary; our alarm is over the failure to restore the constitutional methods when the war emergency ended. Our first committal is the restoration of representative popular government, under the Constitution, through the agency of the Republican Party. Our vision includes more than a Chief Executive; we believe in a Cabinet of highest capacity, equal to the responsibilities which our system contemplates, in whose councils the Vice President, second official of the Republic, shall be asked to participate. The same vision includes a cordial understanding and coordinated activities with a House of Congress, fresh from the people, voicing the convictions which members bring from direct contact with the electorate, and cordial co-operation along with the restored functions of the Senate, fit to be the greatest deliberative body of the world. Its members are the designated sentinels on the towers of constitutional Government. The resumption of the Senate's authority saved to this Republic its independent nationality, when autocracy misinterpreted the dream of a world experiment to be the vision of a world ideal. It is not difficult, Chairman Lodge, to make ourselves clear on the question of international relationship. We Republicans of the Senate, conscious of our solemn oaths and mindful of our constitutional obligations, when we saw the structure of a world super-government taking visionary form, joined in a becoming warning of our devotion to this Republic. If the torch of constitutionalism had not been dimmed, the delayed peace of the world and the tragedy of disappointment and Europe's misunderstanding of America easily might have been avoided. The Republicans of the Senate halted the barter of independent American eminence and influence, which it was proposed to exchange for an obscure and unequal place in the merged government of the world. Our Party means to hold the heritage of American nationality unimpaired and unsurrendered. The world will not misconstrue. We do not mean to hold aloof. We do not mean to shun a single responsibility of this Republic to world civilization. There is no hate in the American heart. We have no envy, no suspicion, no aversion for any people in the world. We hold to our rights, and mean to defend, aye, we mean to sustain the rights of this nation and our citizens alike, everywhere under the shining sun. Yet there is the concord of amity and sympathy and fraternity in every resolution. There is a genuine aspiration in every American breast for a tranquil friendship with all the world. More we believe the unspeakable sorrows, the immeasurable sacrifices, the awakened convictions and the aspiring conscience of human kind must commit the nations of the earth to a new and better relationship. It need not be discussed now what motives plunged the world into war; it need not be inquired whether we asked the sons of this Republic to defend our national rights, as I believe we did, or to purge the old world of the accumulated ills of rivalry and greed, the sacrifices will be in vain if we cannot acclaim a new order, with added security to civilization and peace maintained. One may readily sense the conscience of our America. I am sure I understand the purpose of the dominant group of the Senate. We were not seeking to defeat a world aspiration, we were resolved to safeguard America. We were resolved then, even as we are today, and will be tomorrow, to preserve this free and independent Republic. Let those now responsible, or seeking responsibility, propose the surrender, whether with interpretations, apologies or reluctant reservations— from which our rights are to be omitted—we welcome the referendum to the American people on the preservation of America, and the Republican Party pledges its defense of the preserved inheritance of national freedom. In the call of the conscience of America is peace, peace that closes the gaping wound of world war, and silences the impassioned voices of international envy and distrust. Heeding this call and knowing as I do the disposition of Congress, I promise you formal and effective peace so quickly as a Republican Congress can pass its declaration for a Republican executive to sign. Then we may turn to our readjustment at home and proceed deliberately and reflectively to that hoped-for world relationship which shall satisfy both conscience and aspirations and still hold us free from menacing involvement. I can hear in the call of conscience an insistent voice for the largely reduced armaments throughout the world, with attending reduction of burdens upon peace-loving humanity. We wish to give of American influence and example; we must give of American leadership to that invaluable accomplishment. I can speak unreservedly of the American aspirations and the Republican committal for an association of nations, co-operating in sublime accord, to attain and preserve peace through justice rather than force, determined to add to security through international law, so clarified that no misconstruction can be possible without affronting world honor. This Republic can never be unmindful of its power, and must never forget the force of its example. Possessor of might that admits no fear, America must stand foremost for the right. If the mistaken voice of America, spoken in unheeding haste, led Europe, in the hour of deepest anxiety, into a military alliance which menaces peace and threatens all freedom, instead of adding to their security, then we must speak the truth for America and express our hope for the fraternized conscience of nations. It will avail nothing to discuss in detail the League Covenant, which was conceived for world super-government, negotiated in misunderstanding, and intolerantly urged and demanded by its administration sponsors, who resisted every effort to safeguard America, and who finally rejected it when such safeguards were inserted. If the supreme blunder has left European relationships inextricably interwoven in the League compact, our sympathy for Europe only magnifies our own good fortune in resisting involvement. It is better to be the free and disinterested agent of international justice and advancing civilization, with the covenant of conscience, than be shackled by a written compact which surrenders our freedom of action and gives a military alliance the right to proclaim America's duty to the world. No surrender of rights to a world council or its military alliance, no assumed mandatory, however appealing, ever shall summon the sons of this Republic to war. Their supreme sacrifice shall only be asked for America and its call of honor. There is a sanctity in that right we will not delegate. When the compact was being written, I do not know whether Europe asked or ambition insistently bestowed. It was so good to rejoice in the world's confidence in our unselfishness that I can believe our evident disinterestedness inspired Europe's wish for our association, quite as much as the selfish thought of enlisting American power and resources. Ours is an outstanding, influential example to the world, whether we cloak it in spoken modesty or magnify it in exaltation. We want to help; we mean to help; but we hold to our own interpretation of the American conscience as the very soul of our nationality. Disposed as we are, the way is very simple. Let the failure attending assumption, obstinacy, impracticability and delay be recognized, and let us find the big, practical, unselfish way to do our part, neither covetous because of ambition nor hesitant through fear, but ready to serve ourselves, humanity and God. With a Senate advising as the Constitution contemplates, I would hopefully approach the nations of Europe and of the earth, proposing that understanding which makes us a willing participant in the consecration of nations to a new relationship, to commit the moral forces of the world, America included, to peace and international justice, still leaving America free, independent and self-reliant but offering friendship to all the world. If men call for more specific details, I remind them that moral committals are broad and all-inclusive, and we are contemplating peoples in the concord of humanity's advancement. From our own viewpoint the program is specifically American, and we mean to be American first, to all the world. Appraising preserved nationality as the first essential to the continued progress of the Republic, there is linked with it the supreme necessity of the restoration—let us say the revealment—of the Constitution, and our reconstruction as an industrial nation. Here is the transcending task. It concerns our common weal at home and will decide our future eminence in the world. More than these, this Republic, under constitutional liberties, has given to mankind the most fortunate conditions for human activity and attainment the world has ever noted, and we are today the world's reserve force in the great contest for liberty through security, and maintained equality of opportunity and its righteous rewards. It is folly to close our eyes to outstanding facts. Humanity is restive, much of the world is in revolution, the agents of discord and destruction have wrought their tragedy in pathetic Russia, have lighted their torches among other peoples, and hope to see America as a part of the great Red conflagration. Ours is the temple of liberty under the law, and it is ours to call the Sons of Opportunity to its defense. America must not only save herself, but ours must be the appealing voice to sober the world. More than all else the present-day world needs understanding. There can be no peace save through composed differences, and the submission of the individual to the will and weal of the many. Any other plan means anarchy and its rule of force. It must be understood that toil alone makes for accomplishment and advancement, and righteous possession is the reward of toil, and its incentive. There is no progress except in the stimulus of competition. When competition—natural, fair, impelling competition—is suppressed, whether by law, compact or conspiracy, we halt the march of progress, silence the voice of inspiration, and paralyze the will for achievement. These are but common sense truths of human development. The chief trouble today is that the world war wrought the destruction of healthful competition, left our storehouses empty, and there is a minimum production when our need is maximum. Maximums, not minimums, is the call of America. It isn't a new story, because war never fails to leave depleted storehouses and always impairs the efficiency of production. War also establishes its higher standards for wages, and they abide. I wish the higher wage to abide, on one explicit condition—that the wage-earner will give full return for the wage received. It is the best assurance we can have for a reduced cost of living. Mark you, I am ready to acclaim the highest standard of pay, but I would be blind to the responsibilities that mark this fateful hour if I did not caution the wage-earners of America that mounting wages and decreased production can lead only to industrial and economic ruin. I want, somehow, to appeal to the sons and daughters of the Republic, to every producer, to join hand and brain in production, more production, honest production, patriotic production, because patriotic production is no less a defense of our best civilization than that of armed force. Profiteering is a crime of commission, underproduction is a crime of omission. We must work our most and best, else the destructive reaction will come. We must stabilize and strive for normalcy, else the inevitable reaction will bring its train of sufferings, disappointments and reversals. We want to forestall such reaction, we want to hold all advanced ground, and fortify it with general good-fortune. Let us return for a moment to the necessity for understanding, particularly that understanding which concerns ourselves at home. I decline to recognize any conflict of interest among the participants in industry. The destruction of one is the ruin of the other, the suspicion or rebellion of one unavoidably involves the other. In conflict is disaster, in understanding there is triumph. There is no issue relating to the foundation on which industry is builded, because industry is bigger than any element in its modern making. But the insistent call is for labor, management and capital to reach understanding. The human element comes first, and I want the employers in industry to understand the aspirations, the convictions, the yearnings of the millions of American wage-earners, and I want the wage earners to understand the problems, the anxieties, the obligations of management and capital, and all of them must understand their relationship to the people and their obligation to the Republic. Out of this understanding will come the unanimous committal to economic justice, and in economic justice lies that social justice which is the highest essential to human happiness. I am speaking as one who has counted the contents of the pay envelope from the viewpoint of the earner as well as the employer. No one pretends to deny the inequalities which are manifest in modern industrial life. They are less, in fact, than they were before organization and grouping on either side revealed the inequalities, and conscience has wrought more justice than statutes have compelled, but the ferment of the world rivets our thoughts on the necessity of progressive solution, else our generation will suffer the experiment which means chaos for our day to re-establish God's plan for the great tomorrow. Speaking our sympathies, uttering the conscience of all the people, mindful of our right to dwell amid the good fortunes of rational, conscience-impelled advancement, we hold the majesty of righteous government, with liberty under the law, to be our avoidance of chaos, and we call upon every citizen of the Republic to hold fast to that which made us what we are, and we will have orderly government safeguard the onward march to all we ought to be. The menacing tendency of the present day is not chargeable wholly to the unsettled and fevered conditions caused by the war. The manifest weakness in popular government lies in the temptation to appeal to grouped citizenship for political advantage. There is no greater peril. The Constitution contemplates no class and recognizes no group. It broadly includes all the people, with specific recognition for none, and the highest consecration we can make today is a committal of the Republican Party to that saving constitutionalism which contemplates all America as one people, and holds just government free from influence on the one hand and unmoved by intimidation on the other. It would be the blindness of folly to ignore the activities in our own country which are aimed to destroy our economic system, and to commit us to the colossal tragedy which has both destroyed all freedom and made Russia impotent. This movement is not to be halted in throttled liberties. We must not abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of press, or the freedom of assembly, because there is no promise in repression. These liberties are as sacred as the freedom of religious belief, as inviolable as the rights of life and the pursuit of happiness. We do hold to the right to crush sedition, to stifle a menacing contempt for law, to stamp out a peril to the safety of the Republic or its people, when emergency calls, because security and the majesty of the law are the first essentials of liberty. He who threatens destruction of the Government by force or flaunts his contempt for lawful authority, ceases to be a loyal citizen and forfeits his rights to the freedom of the Republic. Let it be said to all of America that our plan of popular government contemplates such orderly changes as the crystallized intelligence of the majority of our people think best. There can be no modification of this underlying rule, but no majority shall abridge the rights of a minority. Men have a right to question our system in fullest freedom, but they must always remember that the rights of freedom impose the obligations which maintain it. Our policy is not of repression, but we make appeal today to American intelligence and patriotism, when the Republic is menaced from within, just as we trusted American patriotism when our rights were threatened from without. We call on all America for steadiness, so that we may proceed deliberately to the readjustment which concerns all the people. Our party platform fairly expresses the conscience of Republicans on industrial relations. No party is indifferent to the welfare of the wage-earner. To us his good fortune is of deepest concern, and we seek to make that good fortune permanent. We do not oppose but approve collective bargaining, because that is an outstanding right, but we are unalterably insistent that its exercise must not destroy the equally sacred right of the individual, in his necessary pursuit of livelihood. Any American has the right to quit his employment, so has every American the right to seek employment. The group must not endanger the individual, and we must discourage groups preying upon one another, and none shall be allowed to forget that government's obligations are alike to all the people. I hope we may do more than merely discourage the losses and sufferings attending industrial conflict. The strike against the Government is properly denied, for Government service involves none of the elements of profit which relate to competitive enterprise. There is progress in the establishment of official revealment of issues and conditions which lead to conflict, so that unerring public sentiment may speed the adjustment, but I hope for that concord of purpose, not forced but inspired by the common weal, which will give a regulated public service the fullest guaranty of continuity. I am thinking of the railroads. In modern life they are the very base of all our activities and interchanges. For public protection we have enacted laws providing for a regulation of the charge for service, a limitation on the capital invested and a limitation on capital's earnings. There remains only competition of service, on which to base our hopes for an efficiency and expansion which meet our modern requirements. The railway workmen ought to be the best paid and know the best working conditions in the world. Theirs is an exceptional responsibility. They are not only essential to the life and health and all productive activities of the people, but they are directly responsible for the safety of traveling millions. The government which has assumed so much authority for the public good might well stamp railway employment with the sanctity of public service and guarantee to the railway employees that justice which voices the American conception of righteousness on the one hand, and assures continuity of service on the other. The importance of the railway rehabilitation is so obvious that reference seems uncalled for. We are so confident that much of the present-day insufficiency and inefficiency of transportation are due to the withering hand of government operation that we emphasize anew our opposition to government ownership; we want to expedite the reparation, and make sure the mistake is not repeated. It is little use to recite the story of development, exploitation, government experiment and its neglect, government operation and its failures. The inadequacy of trackage and terminal facilities, the insufficiency of equipment and the inefficiency of operation—all bear the blighting stamp of governmental incapacity during Federal operation. The work of rehabilitation under the restoration of private ownership deserves our best encouragement. Billions are needed in new equipment, not alone to meet the growing demand for service, but to restore the extraordinary depreciation due to the strained service of war. With restricted earnings, and with speculative profits removed, railway activities have come to the realm of conservative and constructive service, and the government which impaired must play its part in restoration. Manifestly the returns must be so gauged that necessary capital may so be enlisted, and we must foster as well as restrain. We have no more pressing problem. A state of inadequate transportation facilities, mainly chargeable to the failure of governmental experiment, is losing millions to agriculture, it is hindering industry, it is menacing the American people with a fuel shortage little less than a peril. It emphasizes the present-day problem, and suggests that spirit of encouragement and assistance which commits all America to relieve such an emergency. The one compensation amid attending anxieties is our new and needed realization of the vital part transportation plays in the complexities of modern life. We are not to think of rails alone, but highways from farm to market, from railway to farm, arteries of life-blood to present-day life, the quickened ways to communication and exchange, the answer of our people to the motor age. We believe in generous federal cooperation in construction, linked with assurances of maintenance that will put an end to criminal waste of public funds on the one hand and give a guaranty of upkept highways on the other. Water transportation is inseparably linked with adequacy of facilities, and we favor American eminence on the seas, the practical development of inland waterways, the upbuilding and co-ordination of all to make them equal to and ready for every call of developing and widening American commerce. I like that recommittal to thoughts of America first which pledges the Panama Canal, and American creation, to the free use of American shipping. It will add to the American reawakening. One cannot speak of industry and commerce, and the transportation on which they are dependent, without an earnest thought of the abnormal cost of living and the problems in its wake. It is easy to inveigh, but that avails nothing. And it is far too serious to dismiss with flaming but futile promises. Eight years ago, in times of peace, the Democratic Party made it an issue, and when clothed with power that party came near to its accomplishment by destroying the people's capacity to buy. But that was a cure worse than the ailment. It is easy to understand the real causes, after which the patient must help to effect his own cure. Gross expansion of currency and credit have depreciated the dollar just as expansion and inflation have discredited the coins of the world. We inflated in haste, we must deflate in deliberation. We debased the dollar in reckless finance, we must restore in honesty. Deflation on the one hand and restoration of the 100-cent dollar on the other ought to have begun on the day after the armistice, but plans were lacking or courage failed. The unpreparedness for peace was little less costly than unpreparedness for war. We can promise no one remedy which will cure an ill of such wide proportions, but we do pledge that earnest and consistent attack which the party platform covenants. We will attempt intelligent and courageous deflation, and strike at government borrowing which enlarges the evil, and we will attack high cost of government with every energy and facility which attend Republican capacity. We promise that relief which will attend the halting of waste and extravagance, and the renewal of the practice of public economy, not alone because it will relieve tax burdens, but because it will be an example to stimulate thrift and economy in private life. I have already alluded to the necessity for the fullness of production, and we need the fullness of service which attends the exchange of products. Let us speak the irrefutable truth—high wages and reduced cost of living are in utter contradiction unless we have the height of efficiency for wages received. In all sincerity we promise the prevention of unreasonable profits, we challenge profiteering with all the moral force and the legal powers of government and people, but it is fair, aye, it is timely, to give reminder that law is not the sole corrective of our economic ills. Let us call to all the people for thrift and economy, for denial and sacrifice, if need be, for a nation-wide drive against extravagance and luxury, to a recommittal to simplicity of living, to that prudent and normal plan of life which is the health of the Republic. There hasn't been a recovery from the waste and abnormalities of war since the story of mankind was first written, except through work and saving, through industry and denial, while needless spending and heedless extravagance have marked every decay in the history of nations. Give the assurance of that rugged simplicity of American life which marked the first century of amazing development, and this generation may underwrite a second century of surpassing accomplishment. The Republican Party was founded by farmers, with the sensitive conscience born of their freedom and their simple lives. These founders sprang from the farms of the then Middle West. Our party has never failed in its realization that agriculture is essentially the foundation of our very existence, and it has ever been our policy purpose and performance, to protect and promote that essential industry. New conditions, which attend amazing growth and extraordinary industrial development, call for a new and forward-looking program. The American farmer had a hundred and twenty millions to feed in the home market, and heard the cry of the world for food and answered it, though he faced an appalling task, amid handicaps never encountered before. In the rise of price levels there have come increased appraisal, to his acres without adding to their value in fact, but which do add to his taxes and expenses without enhancing his returns. His helpers have yielded to the lure of shop and city, until, almost alone, he has met and borne the burden of the only insistent attempts to force down prices. It challenges both the wisdom and the justice of artificial drives on prices to recall that they were effective almost solely against his products in the hands of the producer, and never effective against the same products in passing to the consumer. Contemplating the defenselessness of the individual farmer to meet the organized buyers of his products, and the distributors of the things the farmer buys I hold that farmers should not only be permitted but encouraged to join in co-operative association to reap the just measure of reward merited by their arduous toil. Let us facilitate cooperation to insure against the risks attending agriculture, which the urban world so little understands, and a like co-operation to market their products as directly as possible with the consumer, in the interests of all. Upon such association and co-operation should be laid only such restrictions as will prevent arbitrary control of our food supply and the fixing of extortionate price upon it. Our platform is an earnest pledge of renewed concern for this most essential and elemental industry, and in both appreciation and interest we pledge effective expression in law and practice. We will hail that co-operation which again will make profitable and desirable the ownership and operation of comparatively small farms intensively cultivated, and which will facilitate the caring for the products of farm and orchard without the lamentable waste under present conditions. America would look with anxiety on the discouragement of farming activity, either through the Government's neglect or its paralysis by socialistic practices. A Republican administration will be committed to renewed regard for agriculture, and seek the participation of farmers in curing the ills justly complained of, and aim to place the American farm where it ought to be—highly ranked in American activities and fully sharing the highest good fortunes of American life. Becomingly associated with this subject are the policies of irrigation and reclamation, so essential to agricultural expansion, and the continued development of the great and wonderful West. It is our purpose to continue and enlarge Federal aid, not in sectional partiality, but for the good of all America. We hold to that harmony of relationship between conservation and development which fittingly appraises our natural resources and makes them available to developing America of today, and still holds to the conserving thought for the America of tomorrow. The Federal Government's relation to reclamation and development is too important to admit of ample discussion today. Alaska, alone, is rich in resources beyond all imagination, and needs only closer linking, through the lines of transportation, and a government policy that both safeguards and encourages development, to speed it to a foremost position as a commonwealth, rugged in citizenship and rich in materialized resources. These things I can only mention. Within becoming limits one cannot say more. Indeed, for the present, many questions of vast importance must be hastily passed, reserving a fuller discussion to suitable occasion as the campaign advances. I believe the budget system will effect a necessary, helpful reformation, and reveal business methods to government business. I believe Federal department should be made more business-like and send back to productive effort thousands of Federal employees, who are either duplicating work or not essential at all. I believe in the protective tariff policy and know we will be calling for its saving Americanism again. I believe in a great merchant marine—I would have this Republic the leading maritime nation of the world. I believe in a navy ample to protect it, and able to assure us dependable defense. I believe in a small army, but best in the world, with a mindfulness for preparedness which will avoid the unutterable cost of our previous neglect. I believe in our eminence in trade abroad, which the Government should aid in expanding, both in revealing markets and speeding cargoes. I believe in established standards for immigration, which are concerned with the future citizenship of the republic, not with mere manpower in industry. I believe that every man who dons the garb of American citizenship and walks in the light of American opportunity, must become American in heart and soul. I believe in holding fast to every forward step in unshackling child-labor and elevating conditions of woman's employment. I believe the Federal Government should stamp out lynching and remove that stain from the fair name of America. I believe the Federal Government should give its effective aid in solving the problem of ample and becoming housing of its citizenship. I believe this Government should make its Liberty and Victory bonds worth all that its patriotic citizens paid in purchasing them. I believe the tax burdens imposed for the war emergency must be revised to the needs of peace, and in the interest of equity in distribution of the burden. I believe the Negro citizens of America should be guaranteed the enjoyment of all their rights, that they have earned the full measure of citizenship bestowed, that their sacrifices in blood on the battlefields of the Republic have entitled them to all of freedom and opportunity, all of sympathy and aid that the American spirit of fairness and justice demands. I believe there is an easy and open path to righteous relationship with Mexico. It has seemed to me that our undeveloped, uncertain and infirm policy has made us a culpable party to the governmental misfortunes in that land. Our relations ought to be both friendly and sympathetic; we would like to acclaim a stable government there, and offer a neighborly hand in pointing the way to greater progress. It will be simple to have a plain and neighborly understanding, merely an understanding about respecting our borders, about protecting the lives and possessions of Americans citizens lawfully within the Mexican dominions. There must be that understanding, else there can be no recognition, and then the understanding must be faithfully kept. Many of these declarations deserve a fuller expression, with some suggestions of plans to emphasize the faith. Such expression will follow in due time, I promise you. I believe in law-enforcement. If elected I mean to be a constitutional President, and it is impossible to ignore the Constitution, unthinkable to evade the law, when our every committal is to orderly government. People ever will differ about the wisdom of the enactment of a law—there is divided opinion respecting the Eighteenth Amendment and the laws enacted to make it operative—but there can be no difference of opinion about honest law-enforcement. Neither government nor party can afford to cheat the American people. The laws of Congress must harmonize with the Constitution, else they soon are adjudged to be void; Congress enacts the laws, and the executive branch of the Government is charged with enforcement. We cannot nullify because of divided opinion, we cannot jeopardize orderly government with contempt for law-enforcement. Modification or repeal is the right of a free people whenever the deliberate and intelligent public sentiment commands, but perversion and evasion mark the paths to the failure of government itself. Though not in any partisan sense, I must speak of the services of the men and women who rallied to the colors of the Republic in the World War. America realizes and appreciates the services rendered, the sacrifices made and the sufferings endured. There shall be no distinction between those who knew the perils and glories of the battle-front or the dangers of the sea, and those who were compelled to serve behind the lines, or those who constituted the great reserve of a grand army which awaited the call in camps at home. All were brave, all were sacrificing, all were sharers of those ideals which sent our boys thrice-armed to war. Worthy sons and daughters, these, fit successors to those who christened our banners in the immortal beginning, worthy sons of those who saved the Union and nationality when Civil War wiped the ambiguity from the Constitution, ready sons of those who drew the sword for humanity's sake the first time in the world, in 1898. The four million defenders on land and sea were worthy of the best traditions of a people never warlike in peace and never pacifist in war. They commanded our pride, they have our gratitude, which must have genuine expression. It is not only a duty, it is a privilege, to see that the sacrifices made shall be requited, and that those still suffering from casualties and disabilities shall be abundantly aided, and restored to the highest capabilities of citizenship and its enjoyment. The womanhood of America, always its glory, its inspiration, and the potent uplifting force in its social and spiritual development, is about to be enfranchised. Insofar as Congress can go, the fact is already accomplished. By party edict, by my recorded vote, by personal conviction, I am committed to this measure of justice. It is my earnest hope, my sincere desire that the one needed State vote be quickly recorded in the affirmation of the right of equal suffrage and that the vote of every citizen shall be cast and counted in the approaching election. Let us not share the apprehensions of many men and women as to the danger of this momentous extension of the franchise. Women have never been without influence in our political life. Enfranchisement will bring to the polls the votes of citizens who have been born upon our soil, or who have sought in faith and assurance the freedom and opportunities of our land. It will bring the women educated in our schools, trained in our customs and habits of thought, and sharers of our problems. It will bring the alert mind, the awakened conscience, the sure intuition, the abhorrence of tyranny or oppression, the wide and tender sympathy that distinguish the women of America. Surely there can be no danger there. And to the great number of noble women who have opposed in conviction this tremendous change in the ancient relation of the sexes as applied to government, I venture to plead that they will accept the full responsibility of enlarged citizenship, and give to the best in the Republic their suffrage and support. Much has been said of late about world ideals, but I prefer to think of the ideal for America. I like to think there is something more than the patriotism and practical wisdom of the founding fathers. It is good to believe that maybe destiny held this New World Republic to be the supreme example of representative democracy and orderly liberty by which humanity is inspired to higher achievement. It is idle to think we have attained perfection, but there is the satisfying knowledge that we hold orderly processes for making our government reflect the heart and mind of the Republic. Ours is not only a fortunate people but a very common-sensical people, with vision high, but their feet on the earth, with belief in themselves and faith in God. Whether enemies threaten from without or menaces arise from within, there is some indefinable voice saying, "Have confidence in the Republic! America will go on!" Here is a temple of liberty no storms may shake, here are the altars of freedom no passions shall destroy. It was American in conception, American in its building, it shall be American in the fulfillment. Sectional once, we are all American now, and we mean to be all Americans to all the world. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my countrymen all: I would not be my natural self if I did not utter my consciousness of my limited ability to meet your full expectations, or to realize the aspirations within my own breast, but I will gladly give all that is in me, all of heart, soul and mind and abiding love of country, to service in our common cause. I can only pray to the Omnipotent God that I may be as worthy in service as I know myself to be faithful in thought and purpose. One can not give more. Mindful of the vast responsibilities, I must be frankly humble, but I have that confidence in the consideration and support of all true Americans which makes me wholly unafraid. With an unalterable faith and in a hopeful spirit, with a hymn of service in my heart, I pledge fidelity to our country and to God, and accept the nominations of the Republican Party for the Presidency of the United States. Source: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-accepting-the-republican-presidential-nomination-marion-ohio

August 08, 1968   Mr. Chairman, delegates to this convention, my fellow Americans. Sixteen years ago I stood before this Convention to accept your nomination as the running mate of one of the greatest Americans of our time—or of any time—Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eight years ago, I had the highest honor of accepting your nomination for President of the United States. Tonight, I again proudly accept that nomination for President of the United States. But I have news for you. This time there is a difference. This time we are going to win. We're going to win for a number of reasons: first a personal one. General Eisenhower, as you know, lies critically ill in the Walter Reed Hospital tonight. I have talked, however, with Mrs. Eisenhower on the telephone. She tells me that his heart is with us. And she says that there is nothing that he lives more for and there is nothing that would lift him more than for us to win in November and I say let's win this one for Ike! We are going to win because this great Convention has demonstrated to the nation that the Republican Party has the leadership, the platform and the purpose that America needs. We are going to win because you have nominated as my running mate a statesman of the first rank who will be a great campaigner and one who is fully qualified to undertake the new responsibilities that I shall give to the next Vice President of the United States. And he is a man who fully shares my conviction and yours, that after a period of forty years when power has gone from the cities and the states to the government in Washington, D.C., it's time to have power go back from Washington to the states and to the cities of this country all over America. We are going to win because at a time that America cries out for the unity that this Administration has destroyed, the Republican Party—after a spirited contest for its nomination for President and for Vice President— stands united before the nation tonight. I congratulate Governor Reagan. I congratulate Governor Rockefeller. I congratulate Governor Romney. I congratulate all those who have made the hard fight that they have for this nomination. And I know that you will all fight even harder for the great victory our party is going to win in November because we're going to be together in that election campaign. And a party that can unite itself will unite America. My fellow Americans, most important—we are going to win because our cause is right. We make history tonight—not for ourselves but for the ages. The choice we make in 1968 will determine not only the future of America but the future of peace and freedom in the world for the last third of the Twentieth Century. And the question that we answer tonight: can America meet this great challenge? For a few moments, let us look at America, let us listen to America to find the answer to that question. As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame. We hear sirens in the night. We see Americans dying on distant battlefields abroad. We see Americans hating each other; fighting each other; killing each other at home. And as we see and hear these things, millions of Americans cry out in anguish. Did we come all this way for this? Did American boys die in Normandy, and Korea, and in Valley Forge for this? Listen to the answer to those questions. It is another voice. It is the quiet voice in the tumult and the shouting. It is the voice of the great majority of Americans, the forgotten Americans—the non-shouters; the non-demonstrators. They are not racists or sick; they are not guilty of the crime that plagues the land. They are black and they are white—they're native born and foreign born —they're young and they're old. They work in America's factories. They run America's businesses. They serve in government. They provide most of the soldiers who died to keep us free. They give drive to the spirit of America. They give lift to the American Dream. They give steel to the backbone of America. They are good people, they are decent people; they work, and they save, and they pay their taxes, and they care. Like Theodore Roosevelt, they know that this country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it is a good place for all of us to live in. This I say to you tonight is the real voice of America. In this year 1968, this is the message it will broadcast to America and to the world. Let's never forget that despite her faults, America is a great nation. And America is great because her people are great. With Winston Churchill, we say: "We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies because we are made of sugar candy." America is in trouble today not because her people have failed but because her leaders have failed. And what America needs are leaders to match the greatness of her people. And this great group of Americans, the forgotten Americans, and others know that the great; question Americans must answer by their votes in November is this: Whether we shall continue for four more years the policies of the last five years. And this is their answer and this is my answer to that question. When the strongest nation in the world can be tied down for four years in a war in Vietnam with no end in sight; When the richest nation in the world can't manage its own economy; When the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented lawlessness; When a nation that has been known for a century for equality of opportunity is tom by unprecedented racial violence; And when the President of the United States cannot travel abroad or to any major city at home without fear of a hostile demonstration—then it's time for new leadership for the United States of America. My fellow Americans, tonight I accept the challenge and the commitment to provide that new leadership for America. And I ask you to accept it with me. And let us accept this challenge not as a grim duty but as an exciting adventure in which we are privileged to help a great nation realize its destiny. And let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth—to see it like it is, and tell it like it is—to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth —that's what we will do. We've had enough of big promises and little action. The time has come for honest government in the United States of America. And so tonight I do not promise the millennium in the morning. I don't promise that we can eradicate poverty, and end discrimination, eliminate all danger of war in the space of four, or even eight years. But, I do promise action—a new policy for peace abroad; a new policy for peace and progress and justice at home. Look at our problems abroad. Do you realize that we face the stark truth that we are worse off in every area of the world tonight than we were when President Eisenhower left office eight years ago. That's the record. And there is only one answer to such a record of failure and that is a complete housecleaning of those responsible for the failures of that record. The answer is a complete re-appraisal of America's policies in every section of the world. We shall begin with Vietnam. We all hope in this room that there is a chance that current negotiations may bring an honorable end to that war. And we will say nothing during this campaign that might destroy that chance. But if the war is not ended when the people choose in November, the choice will be clear. Here it is. For four years this Administration has had at its disposal the greatest military and economic advantage that one nation has ever had over another in any war in history. For four years, America's fighting men have set a record for courage and sacrifice unsurpassed in our history. For four years, this Administration has had the support of the Loyal Opposition for the objective of seeking an honorable end to the struggle. Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively. And if after all of this time and all of this sacrifice and all of this support there is still no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership—not tied to the mistakes and the policies of the past. That is what we offer to America. And I pledge to you tonight that the first priority foreign policy objective of our next Administration will be to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. We shall not stop there—we need a policy to prevent more Vietnams. All of America's peace-keeping institutions and all of America's foreign commitments must be re-appraised. Over the past twenty-five years, America has provided more than one hundred and fifty billion dollars in foreign aid to nations abroad. In Korea and now again in Vietnam, the United States furnished most of the money, most of the arms; most of the men to help the people of those countries defend themselves against aggression. Now we are a rich country. We are a strong nation. We are a populous nation. But there are two hundred million Americans and there are two billion people that live in the Free World. And I say the time has come for other nations in the Free World to bear their fair share of the burden of defending peace and freedom around this world. What I call for is not a new isolationism. It is a new internationalism in which America enlists its allies and its friends around the world in those struggles in which their interest is as great as ours. And now to the leaders of the Communist world, we say: After an era of confrontation, the time has come for an era of negotiation. Where the world's super powers are concerned, there is no acceptable alternative to peaceful negotiation. Because this will be a period of negotiation, we shall restore the strength of America so that we shall always negotiate from strength and never from weakness. And as we seek peace through negotiation, let our goals be made clear: We do not seek domination over any other country. We believe deeply in our ideas, but we believe they should travel on their own power and not on the power of our arms. We shall never be belligerent but we shall be as firm in defending our system as they are in expanding theirs. We believe this should be an era of peaceful competition, not only in the productivity of our factories but in the quality of our ideas. We extend the hand of friendship to all people, to the Russian people, to the Chinese people, to all people in the world. And we shall work toward the goal of an open world—open skies, open cities, open hearts, open minds. The next eight years, my friends, this period in which we are entering, I think we will have the greatest opportunity for world peace but also face the greatest danger of world war of any time in our history. I believe we must have peace. I believe that we can have peace, but I do not underestimate the difficulty of this task. Because you see the art of preserving peace is greater than that of waging war and much more demanding. But I am proud to have served in an Administration which ended one war and kept the nation out of other wars for eight years. And it is that kind of experience and it is that kind of leadership that America needs today, and that we will give to America with your help. And as we commit to new policies for America tonight, let us make one further pledge: For five years hardly a day has gone by when we haven't read or heard a report of the American flag being spit on; an embassy being stoned; a library being burned; or an ambassador being insulted some place in the world. And each incident reduced respect for the United States until the ultimate insult inevitably occurred. And I say to you tonight that when respect for the United States of America falls so low that a fourth-rate military power, like North Korea, will seize an American naval vessel on the high seas, it is time for new leadership to restore respect for the United States of America. My friends, America is a great nation. And it is time we started to act like a great nation around the world. It is ironic to note when we were a small nation—weak militarily and poor economically—America was respected. And the reason was that America stood for something more powerful than military strength or economic wealth. The American Revolution was a shining example of freedom in action which caught the imagination of the world. Today, too often, America is an example to be avoided and not followed. A nation that can't keep the peace at home won't be trusted to keep the peace abroad. A President who isn't treated with respect at home will not be treated with respect abroad. A nation which can't manage its own economy can't tell others how to manage theirs. If we are to restore prestige and respect for America abroad, the place to begin is at home in the United States of America. My friends, we live in an age of revolution in America and in die world. And to find the answers to our problems, let us turn to a revolution, a revolution that will never grow old. The world's greatest continuing revolution, the American Revolution. The American Revolution was and is dedicated to progress, but our founders recognized that the first requisite of progress is order. Now, there is no quarrel between progress and order—because neither can exist without the other. So let us have order in America—not the order that suppresses dissent and discourages change but the order which guarantees the right to dissent and provides the basis for peaceful change. And tonight, it is time for some honest talk about the problem of order in the United States. Let us always respect, as I do, our courts and those who serve on them. But let us also recognize that some of our courts in their decisions have gone too far in weakening the peace forces as against the criminal forces in this country and we must act to restore that balance. Let those who have the responsibility to enforce our laws and our judges who have the responsibility to interpret them be dedicated to the great principles of civil rights. But let them also recognize that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence, and that right must be guaranteed in this country. And if we are to restore order and respect for law in this country there is one place we are going to begin. We are going to have a new Attorney General of the United States of America. I pledge to you that our new Attorney General will be directed by the President of the United States to launch a war against organized crime in this country. I pledge to you that the new Attorney General of the United States will be an active belligerent against the loan sharks and the numbers racketeers that rob the urban poor in our cities. I pledge to you that the new Attorney General will open a new front against the filth peddlers and the narcotics peddlers who are corrupting the lives of the children of this country. Because, my friends, let this message come through clear from what I say tonight. Time is running out for the merchants of crime and corruption in American society. The wave of crime is not going to be the wave of the future in the United States of America. We shall re-establish freedom from fear in America so that America can take the lead in re-establishing freedom from fear in the world. And to those who say that law and order is the code word for racism, there and here is a reply: Our goal is justice for every American. If we are to have respect for law in America, we must have laws that deserve respect. Just as we cannot have progress without order, we cannot have order without progress, and so, as we commit to order tonight, let us commit to progress. And this brings me to the clearest choice among the great issues of this campaign. For the past five years we have been deluged by government programs for the unemployed; programs for the cities; programs for the poor. And we have reaped from these programs an ugly harvest of frustration, violence and failure across the land. And now our opponents will be offering more of the same—more billions for government jobs, government housing, government welfare. I say it is time to quit pouring billions of dollars into programs that have failed in the United States of America. To put it bluntly, we are on the wrong road—and it's time to take a new road, to progress. Again, we turn to the American Revolution for our answer. The war on poverty didn't begin five years ago in this country. It began when this country began. It's been the most successful war on poverty in the history of nations. There is more wealth in America today, more broadly shared, than in any nation in the world. We are a great nation. And we must never forget how we became great. America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people—but because of what people did for themselves over a hundred- ninety years in this country. So it is time to apply the lessons of the American Revolution to our present problem. Let us increase the wealth of America so that we can provide more generously for the aged; and for the needy; and for all those who cannot help themselves. But for those who are able to help themselves—what we need are not more millions on welfare rolls—but more millions on payrolls in the United States of America. Instead of government jobs, and government housing, and government welfare, let government use its tax and credit policies to enlist in this battle the greatest engine of progress ever developed in the history of man—American private enterprise. Let us enlist in this great cause the millions of Americans in volunteer organizations who will bring a dedication to this task that no amount of money could ever buy. And let us build bridges, my friends, build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America. Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don't want to be a colony in a nation. They want the pride, and the self-respect, and the dignity that can only come if they have an equal chance to own their own homes, to own their own businesses, to be managers and executives as well as workers, to have a piece of the action in the exciting ventures of private enterprise. I pledge to you tonight that we shall have new programs which will provide that equal chance. We make great history tonight. We do not fire a shot heard 'round the world but we shall light the lamp of hope in millions of homes across this land in which there is no hope today. And that great light shining out from America will again become a beacon of hope for all those in the world who seek freedom and opportunity. My fellow Americans, I believe that historians will recall that 1968 marked the beginning of the American generation in world history. Just to be alive in America, just to be alive at this time is an experience unparalleled in history. Here is where the action is. Think. Thirty-two years from now most Americans living today will celebrate a new year that comes once in a thousand years. Eight years from now, in the second term of the next President, we will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the American Revolution. And by our decision in this election, we, all of us here, all of you listening on television and radio, we will determine what kind of nation America will be on its 200th birthday; we will determine what kind of a world America will live in in the year 2000. This is the kind of a day I see for America on that glorious Fourth— eight years from now. I see a day when Americans are once again proud of their flag. When once again at home and abroad, it is honored as the world's greatest symbol of liberty and justice. I see a day when the President of the United States is respected and his office is honored because it is worthy of respect and worthy of honor. I see a day when every child in this land, regardless of his background, has a chance for the best education our wisdom and schools can provide, and an equal chance to go just as high as his talents will take him. I see a day when life in rural America attracts people to the country, rather than driving them away. I see a day when we can look back on massive breakthroughs in solving the problems of slums and pollution and traffic which are choking our cities to death. I see a day when our senior citizens and millions of others can plan for the future with the assurance that their government is not going to rob them of their savings by destroying the value of their dollars. I see a day when we will again have freedom from fear in America and freedom from fear in the world. I see a day when our nation is at peace and the world is at peace and everyone on earth—those who hope, those who aspire, those who crave liberty—will look to America as the shining example of hopes realized and dreams achieved. My fellow Americans, this is the cause I ask you to vote for. This is the cause I ask you to work for. This is the cause I ask you to commit to—not just for victory in November but beyond that to a new Administration. Because the time when one man or a few leaders could save America is gone. We need tonight nothing less than the total commitment and the total mobilization of the American people if we are to succeed. Government can pass laws. But respect for law can come only from people who take the law into their hearts and their minds—and not into their hands. Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it. A President can ask for reconciliation in the racial conflict that divides Americans. But reconciliation comes only from the hearts of people. And tonight, therefore, as we make this commitment, let us look into our hearts and let us look down into the faces of our children. Is there anything in the world that should stand in their way? None of the old hatreds mean anything when we look down into the faces of our children. In their faces is our hope, our love, and our courage. Tonight, I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he's an American child. That child in that great city is more important than any politician's promise. He is America. He is a poet. He is a scientist, he is a great teacher, he is a proud craftsman. He is everything we ever hoped to be and everything we dare to dream to be. He sleeps the sleep of childhood and he dreams the dreams of a child. And yet when he awakens, he awakens to a living nightmare of poverty, neglect and despair. He fails in school. He ends up on welfare. For him the American system is one that feeds his stomach and starves his soul. It breaks his heart. And in the end it may take his life on some distant battlefield. To millions of children in this rich land, this is their prospect of the future. But this is only part of what I see in America. I see another child tonight. He hears the train go by at night and he dreams of faraway places where he'd like to go. It seems like an impossible dream. But he is helped on his journey through life. A father who had to go to work before he finished the sixth grade, sacrificed everything he had so that his sons could go to college. A gentle, Quaker mother, with a passionate concern for peace, quietly wept when he went to war but she understood why he had to go. A great teacher, a remarkable football coach, an inspirational minister encouraged him on his way. A courageous wife and loyal children stood by him in victory and also defeat. And in his chosen profession of politics, first there were scores, then hundreds, then thousands, and finally millions worked for his success. And tonight he stands before you—nominated for President of the United States of America. You can see why I believe so deeply in the American Dream. For most of us the American Revolution has been won; the American Dream has come true. And what I ask you to do tonight is to help me make that dream come true for millions to whom it's an impossible dream today. One hundred and eight years ago, the newly elected President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, left Springfield, Illinois, never to return again. He spoke to his friends gathered at the railroad station. Listen to his words: "Today I leave you. I go to assume a greater task than devolved on General Washington. The great God which helped him must help me. Without that great assistance, I will surely fail. With it, I cannot fail." Abraham Lincoln lost his life but he did not fail. The next President of the United States will face challenges which in some ways will be greater than those of Washington or Lincoln. Because for the first time in our nation's history, an American President will face not only the problem of restoring peace abroad but of restoring peace at home. Without God's help and your help, we will surely fail; but with God's help and your help, we shall surely succeed. My fellow Americans, the long dark night for America is about to end. The time has come for us to leave the valley of despair and climb the mountain so that we may see the glory of the dawn—a new day for America, and a new dawn for peace and freedom in the world. Source: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-accepting-the-presidential-nomination-the-republican-national-convention-miami

July 14, 1972   Chairman O'Brien, Chairwoman Burke, Senator Kennedy, Senator Eagleton and my fellow citizens, I'm happy to join us for this benediction of our Friday sunrise service. I assume that everyone here is impressed with my control of this Convention in that my choice for Vice President was challenged by only 39 other nominees. And I can tell you that Eleanor is very grateful that the Oregon delegation at least kept her in the race with Martha Mitchell. So I congratulate you on your patience and I pay my respects to those two superb presiding officers of this convention, Larry O'Brien and Yvonne Braithwaite Burke. So tonight I accept your nomination with a full and grateful heart. This afternoon I crossed the wide Missouri to recommend a running mate of wide vision and deep compassion, Senator Tom Eagleton. I'm proud to have him at my side, and I'm proud to have been introduced a moment ago by one of the most eloquent and courageous voices in this land Senator Ted Kennedy. My nomination is all the more precious and that it is a gift of the most open political process in all of our political history. It is the sweet harvest of the work of tens of thousands of tireless volunteers, young and old alike, funded by literally hundreds of thousands of small contributors in every part of this nation. Those who lingered on the brink of despair only a short time ago have been brought into this campaign, heart, hand, head and soul, and I have been the beneficiary of the most remarkable political organization in the history of this country. It is an organization that gives dramatic proof to the power of love and to a faith that can literally move mountains. As Yeats put it, "Count where man's glory most begins and ends, and say: My glory was I had such friends." This is the people's nomination and next January we will restore the government to the people of this country. I believe that American politics will never be quite the same again. We are entering a new period of important and hopeful change in America, a period comparable to those eras that unleashed such remarkable ferment in the period of Jefferson and Jackson and Roosevelt. Let the opposition collect their $10 million in secret money from the privileged few and let us find one million ordinary Americans who will contribute $25 each to this campaign, a Million Member Club with members who will not expect special favors for themselves but a better land for us all. In the literature and music of our children we are told, to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven. And for America, the time has come at last. This is the time for truth, not falsehood. In a Democratic nation, no one likes to say that his inspiration came from secret arrangements by closed doors, but in the sense that is how my candidacy began. I am here as your candidate tonight in large part because during four administrations of both parties, a terrible war has been chartered behind closed doors. I want those doors opened and I want that war closed. And I make these pledges above all others: the doors of government will be opened, and that war will be closed. Truth is a habit of integrity, not a strategy of politics, and if we nurture the habit of truth in this campaign, we will continue to be truthful once we are in the White House. Let us say to Americans, as Woodrow Wilson said in his first campaign of 1912, "Let me inside the government and I will tell you what is going on there." Wilson believed, and I believe, that the destiny of America is always safer in the hands of the people then in the conference rooms of any elite. So let us give our — let us give your country the chance to elect a Government that will seek and speak the truth, for this is the time for the truth in the life of this country. And this is also a time, not for death, but for life. In 1968 many Americans thought they were voting to bring our sons home from Vietnam in peace, and since then 20,000 of our sons have come home in coffins. I have no secret plan for peace. I have a public plan. And as one whose heart has ached for the past ten years over the agony of Vietnam, I will halt a senseless bombing of Indochina on Inaugural Day. There will be no more Asian children running ablaze from bombed-out schools. There will be no more talk of bombing the dikes or the cities of the North. And within 90 days of my inauguration, every American soldier and every American prisoner will be out of the jungle and out of their cells and then home in America where they belong. And then let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad. This is also the time to turn away from excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation. America must be restored to a proper role in the world. But we can do that only through the recovery of confidence in ourselves. I treasure this nomination, especially because it comes after vigorous competition with the ablest men and women our party has to offer. —my old and treasured friend and neighbor, Hubert Humphrey; —a gracious and a good man from the state of Maine, Ed Muskie; —a tough fighter for his own convictions, Scoop Jackson of Washington; —and a brave and spirited woman, Shirley Chisholm; —a wise and effective lawmaker from Arkansas, Wilbur Mills; —And the man from North Carolina who over the years has opened new vistas in education and public excellence, Terry Sanford; —the leader who in 1968 combined both the travail and the hope of the American spirit, Senator Eugene McCarthy; —And I was as moved as well by the appearance in the Convention Hall of the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace. His votes in the primaries showed clearly the depth of discontent in this country, and his courage in the face of pain and adversity is the mark of a man of boundless will, despite the senseless act that disrupted his campaign. And, Governor, we pray for your full recovery so you can stand up and speak out for all of those who see you as their champion. Now, in the months ahead I deeply covet the help of every Democrat, of every Republican, of every Independent who wants this country to be a great and good land that it can be. This is going to be a national campaign, carried to every part of the nation — North, South, East and West. We're not conceding a single state to Richard Nixon. I should like to say to my friend, Frank King, that Ohio may have passed a few times in this convention, but Tom Eagleton and I are not going to pass Ohio. I shall say to Governor Gilligan, Ohio is sometimes a little slow in counting the votes, but when those votes are counted next November, Ohio will be in the Democratic victory column. Now, to anyone in this hall or beyond who doubts the ability of Democrats to join together in common cause, I say never underestimate the power of Richard Nixon to bring harmony to Democratic ranks. He is the unwitting unifier and the fundamental issue of this national campaign and all of us are going to help him redeem a pledge made ten years ago — that next year you won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore. We have had our fury and our frustrations in these past months and at this Convention, but frankly, I welcome the contrast with the smug and dull and empty event which will doubtless take place here in Miami next month. We chose this struggle, we reformed our Party, and we let the people in. So we stand today not as a collection of backroom strategies, not as a tool of ITT or any other special interest. So let our opponents stand on the status quo while we seek to refresh the American spirit. I believe that the greatest contribution America can now make to our fellow mortals is to heal our own great but very deeply troubled land. We must respond — we must respond to that ancient command: "Physician, heal thyself." Now, it is necessary in an age of nuclear power and hostile forces that we'll be militarily strong. America must never become a second-rate nation. As one who has tasted the bitter fruits of our weakness before Pearl Harbor in 1941, I give you my pledge that if I become the President of the United States, America will keep its defenses alert and fully sufficient to meet any danger. We will do that not only for ourselves, but for those who deserve and need the shield of our strength — our old allies in Europe and elsewhere, including the people of Israel who will always have our help to hold their Promised Land. Yet I believe that every man and woman in this Convention Hall knows that for 30 years we have been so absorbed with fear and danger from abroad that we have permitted our own house to fall into disarray. We must now show that peace and prosperity can exist side by side. Indeed, each now depends on the existence of the other. National strength includes the credibility of our system in the eyes of our own people as well as the credibility of our deterrent in the eyes of others abroad. National security includes schools for our children as well as silos for our missiles. It includes the health of our families as much as the size of our bombs, the safety of our streets, and the condition of our cities, and not just the engines of war. If we some day choke on the pollution of our own air, there will be little consolation in leaving behind a dying continent ringed with steel. So while protecting ourselves abroad, let us form a more perfect union here at home. And this is the time for that task. We must also make this a time of justice and jobs for all our people. For more than three and half years we have tolerated stagnation and a rising level of joblessness, with more than five million of our best workers unemployed at this very moment. Surely, this is the most false and wasteful economics of all. Our deep need is not for idleness but for new housing and hospitals, for facilities to combat pollution and take us home from work, for better products able to compete on vigorous world markets. The highest single domestic priority of the next administration will be to ensure that every American able to work has a job to. That job guarantee will and must depend on a reinvigorated private economy, freed at last from the uncertainties and burdens of war, but it is our firm commitment that whatever employment the private sector does not provide, the Federal government will either stimulate or provide itself. Whatever it takes, this country is going back to work. America cannot exist with most of our people working and paying taxes to support too many others mired in a demeaning and hopeless welfare mess. Therefore, we intend to begin by putting millions back to work and after that is done, we will assure to those unable to work an income fully adequate to a decent life. Now beyond this, a program to put America back to work demands that work be properly rewarded. That means the end of a system of economic controls in which labor is depressed, but prices and corporate profit run sky-high. It means a system of national health insurance so that a worker can afford decent health care for himself and his family. It means real enforcement of the laws so that the drug racketeers are put behind bars and our streets are once again safe for our families. And above all, above all, honest work must be rewarded by a fair and just tax system. The tax system today does not reward hard work: it's penalizes it. Inherited or invested wealth frequently multiplies itself while paying no taxes at all. But wages on the assembly line or in farming the land, these hard-earned dollars are taxed to the very last penny. There is a depletion allowance for oil wells, but no depletion for the farmer who feeds us, or the worker who serves as all. The administration tells us that we should not discuss tax reform and the election year. They would prefer to keep all discussion of the tax laws in closed rooms where the administration, its powerful friends, and their paid lobbyists, can turn every effort at reform into a new loophole for the rich and powerful. But an election year is the people's year to speak, and this year, the people are going to ensure that the tax system is changed so that work is rewarded and so that those who derive the highest benefits will pay their fair share rather than slipping through the loopholes at the expense of the rest of us. So let us stand for justice and jobs and against special privilege. And this is the time to stand for those things that are close to the American spirit. We are not content with things as they are. We reject the view of those who say, "America — love it or leave it. " We reply, "Let us change it so we may love it the more." And this is the time. It is the time for this land to become again a witness to the world for what is just and noble in human affairs. It is time to live more with faith and less with fear, with an abiding confidence that can sweep away the strongest barriers between us and teach us that we are truly brothers and sisters. So join with me in this campaign. Lend Senator Eagleton and me your strength and your support, and together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning. From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America. From the entrenchment of special privileges in tax favoritism; from the waste of idle lands to the joy of useful labor; from the prejudice based on race and sex; from the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of the neglected sick — come home, America. Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward. Come home to the belief that we can seek a newer world, and let us be joyful in that homecoming, for this "is your land, this land is my land — from California to New York island, from the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters — this land was made for you and me." So let us close on this note: May God grant each one of us the wisdom to cherish this good land and to meet the great challenge that beckons us home. And now is the time to meet that challenge. Good night, and Godspeed to you all. Source: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-accepting-the-presidential-nomination-the-democratic-national-convention-miami