Speech · 1950

“Declaration of Conscience”

In a 15-minute Senate floor speech delivered as Senator Joseph McCarthy looked on, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, a first-term Republican, condemned without naming him the tactics that had debased the Senate into “a forum of hate and character assassination.” She defended the rights to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest and to think independently, warned her party against riding to victory on the “Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear,” and presented a declaration endorsed by six other Republican senators.

“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism — The right to criticize. The right to hold unpopular beliefs. The right to protest. The right of independent thought.”

Senator Margaret Chase Smith, June 1, 1950

Why it matters

One of the earliest challenges to McCarthyism from within his own party, the speech made Smith, the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress, a national figure; she later voted for McCarthy’s censure in 1954.

Read the full text at teachingamericanhistory.org

Primary Source

The original record, reproduced or linked from the institution that holds it. Primary sources show what people said and did in their own words.

Subjects

civil liberties free speech anti-communism senate

From the library

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