Margaret Chase Smith’s 1950 Declaration of Conscience Senate Speech: A Stance Against the Exploitation of Fear

The article focuses on Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s speech she gave on the Senate floor on June 1, 1950. Her speech took place during the Cold War when tensions were high between the democratic United States and the communist Soviet Union. President Truman’s policy of containment and the anticommunist crusade taking place in the United States created an atmosphere of fear among Americans that politicians used to advance their careers. “Declaration of Conscience” was Senator Smith’s stance against the exploitation of fear for political gain and the first time someone spoke out against the corrupt Joseph McCarthy, whose slanderous witch hunt cost many innocent American’s their reputations and livelihoods. She also used her time on the Senate floor in order to convey a message of unity and to appeal to her fellow senators to reevaluate the way they were dishonoring the privileges given to them by the American people.