Angus King: “almost 75 years ago, the junior Senator from Maine rose in this Chamber to deliver a speech from her heart about a…”

“almost 75 years ago, the junior Senator from Maine rose in this Chamber to deliver a speech from her heart about a crisis then facing our country, a crisis not arising from a foreign adversary but from within, a crisis that threatened the values and ideals at the base of the American experiment. Senator Margaret Chase Smith's ``Declaration of Conscience'' turned out to be one of the most important speeches of the 20th century and defined her for the ages as a person of extraordinary courage and principle. And here she is with her famous red rose that she always wore on her lapel. Now, I should admit upfront that I worked for Candidate Bill Hathaway, who defeated her in the election of 1972. But she and I made it up years later when I was producing a documentary on her life for Maine PBS. In fact, as we began the project, I was so worried that she might resent my having worked for her opponent, so I sent her a letter confessing my role in her last campaign. Her response was pure Margaret Smith: Dear Angus King, it is perfectly alright with me that you once worked for Mr. Hathaway. Yours sincerely, Margaret Chase Smith. Simple as that. In working together on the documentary, she shared some fascinating background on this famous speech, including that she drafted it by hand at her kitchen table in her hometown of Skowhegan, ME, on Memorial Day weekend of 1950.…”