Richard Nixon Foundation@nixonfoundation
President Nixon dictated a long diary-like memorandum describing the visit to the Lincoln Memorial because he wanted to make a record of what was for him a memorable event:
"Manolo and I got out of the car at approximately 4:40 and walked up the steps to the Lincoln statue. . . .
By this time a few small groups of students had begun to congregate in the rotunda of the Memorial. I walked over to a group of them . . . and shook hands. They were not unfriendly. As a matter of fact, they seemed somewhat overawed, and, of course, quite surprised.
When I first started to speak to the group there were approximately eight in it. I asked each of them where they were from and found that over half were from upper New York State. At this point, all of them were men. There were no women. To get the conversation going I asked them how old they were, what they were studying, the usual questions. . . .
Two or three of them volunteered that they had not been able to hear the press conference because they had been driving all night in order to get here. I said I was sorry they had missed it because I had tried to explain in the press conference that my goals in Vietnam were the same as theirs—to stop the killing and end the war—to bring peace. Our goal was not to get into Cambodia by what we were doing, but to get out of Vietnam.
They did not respond, so I took it from there by saying that I realized that most of them would not agree with my position, but I hoped that they would not allow their disagreement on this issue to lead them to fail to give us a hearing on some other issues where we might agree. And also particularly I hoped that their hatred of the war, which I could well understand, would not turn into a bitter hatred of our whole system, our country, and everything that it stood for.
I said, I know that probably most of you think I’m an SOB, but I want you to know that I understand just how you feel. I recall that when I was just a little older than you, right out of law school and ready to get married, how excited I was when Chamberlain came home from Munich and made his famous statement about peace in our time. I had heard it on the radio. I had so little in those days that the prospect of going into the service was almost unbearable and I felt that the United States staying out of any kind of conflict was worth paying any price whatever. I pointed out, too, the fact that I came from a Quaker background. I was as close to being a pacifist as anybody could be in those times. As a result I thought at that time, that Chamberlain was the greatest man alive, and when I read Churchill’s all-out criticism of Chamberlain I thought Churchill was a madman." (Continued)