ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the transcript of Richard Nixon’s thirty-two-minute “silent majority” speech, which was broadcast nationally on both television and radio. The speech was his most significant public statement about the war in Vietnam since becoming president over nine months earlier. The speech spelled out Nixon’s plan for what he called “Vietnamization” while justifying continued US involvement in Vietnam on both strategic and moral grounds. The line that made the address famous, Nixon’s invocation of the “great silent majority of my fellow Americans”, came near the end, as the president was situating his actions in a longer historical arc and asking for unity and support.
