Remarks on the River Front in Memphis

Mr. Chairman, Governor Clement:

It is good to see so many old and true friends here in Memphis today. I am deeply touched by that most eloquent introduction by that man who has been such a faithful Democrat, your great Governor, and my old-time friend, Frank Clement.

I always want to come to Tennessee because I get to see one of my most reliable allies and your able former Governor, my beloved friend, Buford Ellington.

My good friend with whom I served in the Congress and who was once your distinguished mayor gave me a good welcome today, my old friend Walter Chandler. And throughout the years your Congressman and his beloved and most capable wife have been some of the best friends Lady Bird and I have, Cliff and Carrie Davis.

It is good, too, to be here on the platform with a man who takes such good care of the Eighth District up there, Congressman Robert Everett. I am sorry that Bill Ingrain is ill today, and I join all of you in wishing him a speedy recovery, but I will tell you, he had the best representative he could select to come out and welcome me, that beautiful wife of his.

I am happy that my old friend and a great Tennessee patriot came here to be with me and give me comfort, your great Senator, Herb Waiters. It is good to see my other friends, Paul Rand Dilon, Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission; Congressman E. C. (Tuck) Gathings from Arkansas; and my friend Douglas Wynn from Mississippi.

You know, it is not every election that the people of a State have a chance to send two good men to the United States Senate at the same time. Tennessee has an enviable reputation of electing truly outstanding men to the United States Senate, men who represent not only their own State, but who represent the interests of all America. Such a man is your most able and distinguished public servant, my longtime friend and coworker in the House and Senate, Albert Gore, and I want to say this to you: Tennessee needs him in the Senate and the Nation needs him in the Senate.

I know that you will want to keep Tennessee with a good working team in the Senate and I don't think there is any doubt but what you are going to elect that great progressive, that Member of Congress, the new member of the team, the Democratic nominee, Ross Bass.

You here in Memphis are going to have a highly effective team in Washington when you send that great Democrat, George Grider, to the Congress. That effective Tennessee team is dependent upon the reelection in the House of Representatives of Robert A. Everett from Union City; Dick Fulton from Nashville; Tom Murray, my old colleague in the House, from Jackson; my great friend Joe Evins from Smithville, who has been doing such a splendid job in managing this unified campaign. And today I would like to say: "Happy birthday, Joe Evins. We hope that you enjoy today as much as we are going to enjoy November 3d."

I know that you are going to keep that Sixth District in sound Democratic hands when you elect Capt. Bill Anderson. I think in these days when a steady hand and a cool head are so important, it is highly appropriate that you people here in Tennessee will be sending two former submarine commanders to Washington, Captain Anderson and George Grider.

The people all over Tennessee are concerned this year about keeping their National Government in responsible hands. I would not be surprised to see the folks in east Tennessee send three men to Congress this year--Bob Summitt from Chattanooga, Willard Yarbrough from the Second District, and Arthur Bright up in the First District. This will be a team that will reflect credit on Tennessee. This will be a team that your President can work with, and I can assure you this will be a team that will work with and for you.

One week from Tuesday the American people will go to the polls. For the 45th
time in our history, the people will choose their national leadership and decide their national directions. There will be two names at the top of the ballot, but there will be only one choice and only one decision that matters to the future.

History will not count Democratic votes or Republican votes. History will not count Southern votes or Northern votes. History will not count white votes or Negro votes. All that really counts is whether or not Americans are willing to stand up and be counted for responsibility.

Responsibility was the issue when this campaign began. Irresponsible campaigning cannot change that issue. Whatever your party, whatever your philosophy, when you go to cast your vote, the decision of this decade and the outcome of this century is going to be resting in your hands.

For 155 years or more, men and women in Memphis and the great Midsouth have been building this mighty city, and have been developing this great, growing region. There have been many trials and tests that we have gone through together.

One hundred years ago this region was the richest in the Nation. Nine out of the Nation's 13 wealthiest States were in those days in the South. But when war came, and when death and devastation came, this region, our own beloved region of the South, was left as the Nation's poorest region.

But today the Nation sees a new day dawning in this Midsouth and in all of our beloved Dixie.

These are the stakes in this election, for you and for all Americans. Now, let me be more specific.

We live no more in the age of the cavalry charge. If nuclear war should ever come, the casualties of the first exchange would leave dead in the United States and Russia 400 times more men, women, and children than the entire population of Memphis today. So if peace is to be preserved, American voters, like American leaders, must be right the first time, for there will be no second time.

We must be responsible to the peace of all mankind. We must also be responsible to the progress of all Americans.

Before another 35 years have passed, the population of America will have grown the equal of about 300 new cities the size of Memphis.

So all through this land we just must be preparing for that new tomorrow, and, my friends, this is no time to be thinking or talking of selling the TVA.

You must realize that you have a great obligation and a great duty to do, and this is just no time to be thinking or talking of turning out the lights of the REA. This is just no time to be thinking and talking of making social security voluntary and getting rid of it as we know it.

Those of you that have worked so faithfully and dreamed so dramatically through the years, and whose fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers pioneered ahead of you, don't be coming back and talking and saying, "If I had just known what would happen after November 3d!" Now is the time to think and talk and work and do something about it.

If you want to maintain your social security system and strengthen it, and make it sound to serve each of you the day you need it, you can't do it by making it voluntary.

If you want to improve your REA and electrify every farm home in the land, and reduce your rates, you can't do it by a philosophy that doesn't believe in it.

If you want to preserve the TVA as an example for all the Nation and all the foreign nations to look at with pride, you can't do it by even starting off to selling its fertilizer plants.

If you in Memphis, the hub city, the center, the capital of the Midsouth, and Arkansas, and Mississippi, if you want agriculture to blossom and bloom, if you want to keep the boys on the farm, if you want to encourage the tiller of the soil, you can't go back to the days of 1932 when cotton was selling for 5 cents a pound, when we were burning our corn, when our cattle would bring us nothing, when the produce from our agriculture lands was rotting in the fields.

We just must not abandon the programs of agriculture and we are not going to under a Democratic administration.

The settled issues of the 1930's are not the issues of the 1960's, and that is really the choice you have to make. Do you want to go back to the thirties or do you want to go forward with the sixties? The American people are not sick in their soul or in their spirit.

Most of the Americans that I have seen-and there are very few crowds that I have ever seen that go down in this direction for more than 100 yards, that dot the hills, that go back as far as they can go to that building over there, that dot the hills, that go all the way here and in back of us--those people are proud, those people are confident, those people are unafraid, and if you will just look out there, with a rare exception now and then that come here to advertise themselves--I don't see any of them here today, but just nearly everybody, even people that are not happy, they like to be in a good crowd, with good people, once in a while.

I am so indebted to you for coming to this meeting, confident, unafraid, with hope, with faith, and with love, and happy and ready to go out and meet the challenges that face us all tomorrow.

If I take my compass or my ruler and take a direct line down the center of this crowd and divide you, we can do little; but united, as we are, there is little that we cannot do. And you know one of the things that I think we ought to do, and I say this as a man that has spent all of his life and cast his every vote in Texas, and as the grandson of two Confederate veterans, I think one of the things that we are going to have to do is wipe away the Mason-Dixon line across our politics.

And because we are good people and because we are fair people, and because we are just people, and because we believe in the Good Book, we are going to have to follow the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and when we do that, we are going to wipe away the color line across our opportunity.

The mandate of this election is going to be a mandate to unite this Nation. It is going to be a mandate to bind up our wounds and to heal our history, and to make this Nation whole as one nation, as one people, indivisible, under God.

Let me remind you that you are the mightiest, most advanced nation in the world. Here in Tennessee, you developed the awesome and mighty power that makes us the undisputed strongest nation in all the world.

Let me remind you that by two men exercising their bad judgment and putting their thumb on the button, that you can, in a matter of moments, wipe out the lives of 300 millions of people as a result of your mighty discoveries at Oak Ridge.

Let me remind you that on this election day of November 3, less than 2 weeks from now, all the world of 120 nations and 3 billion people, of which we are just one-fifteenth, are going to be watching you as Americans and watching your vote. The election returns will be read in the capitals of the world--the free world and the Communist world.

I want the mandate of this election to be written loud and strong, and clear, so that none, anywhere, will mistake the meaning. We have Chancellor Erhard in Germany. We have a new British labor government just selected this week. We have General de Gaulle in France. We have Mr. Shastri in India, who succeeded Mr. Nehru. We have the new rulers in the Kremlin.

I want them and all the world to know what campaigns of hate, campaigns of fear, and campaigns of smear--I want them to know that we Americans are proud that we have faith and hope, we have love in our hearts, and a campaign of smear cannot succeed among the American people.

I want them to know that when they deal with Americans, they deal on the basis of reason and judgment and not on the basis of hate or emotion.

I want those who wish us well to know that America stands strong and stands steady, and stands firm, using its great power with great restraint; always ready to meet any aggressor, but always ready to search for an honorable peace.

I want them to know that the mightiest nation in the world, supported by the strongest, most patriotic loving people, always have their guard up to protect themselves, but always have their hand out to find a workable peace.

I want the mothers who must supply the boys, and I want the boys who must die in the wars, to know that no impulsive act of mine, no heat of emotion, is ever going to cause me to do a rash, dangerous, adventurous thing that might wipe out 300 million Americans.

I want any who may wish us ill to take notice this morning to understand that our beloved America cannot be divided by region, by religion, or by race.

And I want the country to know and the world to know that we are going to preserve law and order in the streets of America, and we are going to preserve reason and responsibility in the policies of the Government of America.

In our land and around the world, America is going to stand proudly and confidently for the pursuit of peace and progress, freedom and justice for all mankind.

That is your duty, that is your obligation, that is the price you must pay for the privilege of being Americans. Don't wait until the bell rings, don't wait until the bulletins flash over your television sets, don't wait until you hear the newsboys screaming the emergency headlines. Act now. Work now. Exercise your citizenship now, because it is your boys, it is your lives, it is your families that you must have led, and you must select the leader for them November the 3d. That will be the mandate, and that will be the meaning of this election.

Now I am going along. I am going to Chattanooga, and I am going to Baltimore, and I am going back into Washington tonight, and to Florida and Georgia tomorrow, and all across this land all next week.

I am not going to talk hate. I am not going to preach doubt. I am going to try to appeal to the best that is in us all, because I think men, regardless of their religion, their politics, their race, or their region or their party--I believe they want to do what is best for America. And that is all I am going to ask any American to do.

Eleven months ago, on a tragic day, a moment that I will never forget, without notice or warning, my constitutional responsibilities required me to assume the awesome responsibility of being your leader, and to try to effect a transition between a dear, beloved leader who had fallen, and to demonstrate to the world that was watching that it was our system that would function, that we were a nation of laws and not just a nation Of men,

So that night when I walked into the White House, as Governor Clement said to you, I said to the American people, "With God's help, with your prayers, I will do the best I can."

Under our democratic system, in less than 1 year from that day, you must decide whether I should step aside and whether I should move over, and whether you should have another leader.

That is your right and that is your privilege and that is your duty, to decide. All I can say to you is this: Whatever your decision is, I want it to be based on no emotion, no flattery, no religion, no race, no region of the country. I want it to be based on qualifications and experience and merit.

But really, what it all adds up to is I want it to be based on your conscience, whatever your heart tells you is right. You don't develop character, integrity, and leadership by bragging about it and pointing to it. You don't develop and do what is right by saying so on a billboard. A great man said one time in a great public speech that men don't talk about their integrity and women don't talk about their virtue, if they have it.

So in this hour of trial, ask yourselves what is best for free men, what is best for Americans, what is best for Memphis, and Tennessee, and Mississippi, and Arkansas. And then ask yourself, "What is really best for me on the only two things that are really important, survival and prosperity, peace in the world and peace at home?" Ask yourself that question. Free men, Americans, Tennesseans, and then yourselves, in that order.

And whether you are Democrats or Republicans, you go in that polling booth and do what you know is right in your heart.