Declaration of Conscience
The Declaration of Conscience was a speech delivered by United States Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican from Maine, on June 1, 1950, in which she criticized the tactics of unsubstantiated accusations and vilification used in congressional investigations into alleged communist influence, while affirming the need to combat actual subversion through principled means.[1] Smith, the first woman elected to both houses of Congress, articulated a rejection of "reckless talk and reckless accusations" that sacrificed individual reputations for political gain, proposing instead adherence to American ideals of decency, tolerance, and due process.[1] The address, given four months after Senator Joseph McCarthy's Wheeling speech alleging widespread communist infiltration in government, marked the initial senatorial challenge to McCarthy's methods from within the Republican Party, emphasizing that true patriotism required unity against external threats rather than internal division.[2] In the speech, Smith outlined a formal "Declaration of Conscience" enumerating four essential tests for evaluating policy—whether it strengthens liberty, equality, justice, and national security—and four practices to avoid: fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smears.[3] This declaration was co-endorsed by six fellow Republican senators, including Wayne Morse and George Aiken, underscoring intra-party dissent against the exploitation of anti-communist sentiment for partisan advantage.[3] Though Smith supported vigorous action against genuine communist threats, as evidenced by her prior service on the Truman Loyalty Board, her critique focused on the causal harm of methods that eroded public trust and hindered effective governance.[1] The Declaration's significance lies in its role as an early counterpoint to the Red Scare's excesses, influencing subsequent debates and contributing to the Senate's 1954 censure of McCarthy for conduct unbecoming a member.[2] It exemplified Smith's commitment to bipartisan integrity, a stance that defined her 24-year Senate tenure and positioned her as a defender of constitutional protections amid ideological conflicts.[4]Historical Context
The Red Scare and Soviet Espionage Threats
The Second Red Scare, spanning roughly from 1947 to 1957, arose from heightened U.S. concerns over Soviet expansionism after World War II, including the 1944 Yalta Conference concessions, the 1948 Czech coup, and the 1949 Soviet atomic bomb test, which fueled fears of internal communist subversion.[5] This period saw executive actions like President Truman's 1947 loyalty program screening over 5 million federal employees for subversive affiliations, alongside congressional probes by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).[6] While critics later portrayed these efforts as exaggerated paranoia, declassified evidence confirmed substantial Soviet espionage networks targeting U.S. institutions, validating core security apprehensions despite investigative overreach.[7] Soviet intelligence operations in the U.S. peaked during the 1930s and 1940s, exploiting ideological sympathizers and wartime alliances to penetrate government agencies. The Venona Project, a U.S. Army cryptanalytic effort from 1943 to 1980, decrypted over 3,000 intercepted Soviet messages, identifying more than 300 Americans as witting or unwitting collaborators with KGB predecessors like the NKVD and GRU.[8] These decrypts exposed infiltration in the State Department, Treasury, and Office of Strategic Services (OSS), including agents passing diplomatic cables, military secrets, and policy insights to Moscow, often under cover names like "19" for Harry Dexter White, a key Treasury official influencing lend-lease aid to the USSR.[9] Prominent cases underscored the espionage scale. Alger Hiss, a senior State Department aide involved in Yalta planning and UN founding, was accused by ex-communist Whittaker Chambers of supplying classified documents in the 1930s; Hiss's 1950 perjury conviction followed his denial, later corroborated by Venona references to a spy codenamed "Ales" matching Hiss's travels and role.[10] Similarly, Julius Rosenberg, an engineer, orchestrated a spy ring relaying Manhattan Project atomic secrets via couriers like the Greenglass siblings, hastening Soviet nuclear capabilities by up to two years per intelligence estimates; Rosenberg was convicted and executed in 1953. Such penetrations, affecting policy on Eastern Europe and nuclear strategy, eroded trust in federal loyalty and prompted aggressive countermeasures, though they also amplified public hysteria.[11]Joseph McCarthy's Investigations and Accusations
Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, first gained national prominence on February 9, 1950, during a speech to the Republican Women's Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he alleged that 205 individuals known to be members of the Communist Party had been allowed to remain in the State Department despite their disloyalty.[12] In the address, McCarthy claimed the State Department harbored a "nest of Communists and Communist sympathizers" who were actively working to undermine American interests, citing the loss of China to communism and other foreign policy failures as evidence of internal betrayal.[13] He waved a purported list of names but provided no specifics or documentation at the time, later varying the figure to 57 in subsequent statements without substantiating the claims with verifiable evidence.[14] These accusations prompted the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to form a subcommittee under Democratic Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland in February 1950 to investigate McCarthy's charges.[15] McCarthy testified before the Tydings Committee in March 1950, naming nine individuals, including diplomat John S. Service and scholar Owen Lattimore, whom he labeled a "top Russian espionage agent" and the "architect of our far eastern policy" responsible for pro-communist influences.[12] The subcommittee's hearings, spanning from March to July 1950, featured McCarthy's aggressive questioning tactics, reliance on anonymous sources, and refusal to share full evidence, which the committee criticized as unsubstantiated and potentially defamatory.[16] The Tydings Committee ultimately issued a report in July 1950 exonerating the State Department and the accused individuals, describing McCarthy's allegations as a "fraud and a hoax."[15] McCarthy countered by accusing the committee of a whitewash, intensifying his public campaigns through Senate speeches and media appearances that smeared critics and amplified fears of communist infiltration.[17] His methods often involved guilt by association, invoking the Fifth Amendment refusals by witnesses as admissions of guilt, and targeting not only alleged spies but also those perceived as soft on communism, which eroded careers without formal trials.[16] While McCarthy's specific lists yielded no proven spies and his tactics drew widespread condemnation for lacking due process, contemporaneous intelligence efforts like the Venona project—kept secret until the 1990s—had decoded Soviet cables revealing genuine espionage networks in the U.S. government during the 1940s, including confirmed agents such as Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs who passed atomic secrets.[18][19] McCarthy's investigations, however, operated independently of such classified validations, prioritizing sensationalism over precision and contributing to a climate where over 2,000 government employees faced loyalty probes by mid-1950 amid broader anti-communist fervor.[12]Margaret Chase Smith's Political Background
Margaret Chase Smith entered politics through her involvement in her husband Clyde H. Smith's career, whom she married in 1930; Clyde was elected as a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine's Second District in 1936.[20] After Clyde's death on June 28, 1940, Smith won the special election held on June 10, 1940, to fill his vacancy, securing 69.7% of the vote against Democrat Frank Glazier.[21][22] She then won full terms in the House for the 77th through 80th Congresses, serving continuously from June 10, 1940, to January 3, 1949, and focusing her legislative efforts on national defense issues, particularly naval affairs, given Maine's Bath Iron Works and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.[22] During her House tenure, Smith served on the Committee on Naval Affairs, where she pushed for increased military funding and preparedness in response to escalating threats from Japan and Germany prior to U.S. entry into World War II; she supported the Lend-Lease Act of 1941 and subsequent war production efforts.[22] Postwar, as Cold War tensions mounted, she advocated for a strong stance against Soviet expansionism, backing the Marshall Plan in 1948 and expressing early concerns over communist infiltration in government, though without endorsing unsubstantiated accusations.[21] In 1948, Smith sought elevation to the Senate, defeating incumbent Republican Wallace H. White in the primary with 57% of the vote and then Democrat Adrian H. Schulte in the general election by a margin of 60.3% to 39.7% on September 13, 1948.[21] Taking office on January 3, 1949, she became the first woman elected to both houses of Congress and promptly secured assignment to the Senate Armed Services Committee, reinforcing her reputation as a defense hawk committed to anti-communist policies while maintaining independence from partisan extremes within the Republican Party.[22][20]Delivery and Content
Circumstances of the Speech
Senator Margaret Chase Smith delivered her Declaration of Conscience speech on the Senate floor on June 1, 1950, during a period of intensifying anti-communist scrutiny in the United States.[2] This followed Senator Joseph McCarthy's February 9, 1950, address in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he alleged that 205 individuals known to the Secretary of State were members of the Communist Party, igniting widespread investigations into alleged subversion within the federal government.[23] Smith's address, lasting approximately 15 minutes, represented the first direct senatorial rebuke of McCarthy's investigative tactics, which relied on unsubstantiated accusations and character assassinations rather than verifiable evidence.[24] [2] The immediate prelude to the speech involved Smith's growing disillusionment with the Republican Party's acquiescence to McCarthy's methods, despite her own commitment to combating Soviet espionage threats.[3] Having entered the Senate in January 1949 after succeeding her late husband, Smith initially aligned with anti-communist vigilance but objected to the erosion of due process and the exploitation of fear for partisan gain.[25] On the morning of delivery, as Smith boarded the Senate subway car, she encountered McCarthy, who complimented her appearance but warned that any opposition to him would politically destroy her; she proceeded undeterred to deliver her critique.[2] Smith's decision to speak alone stemmed from consultations with fellow Republicans, who declined to join her, highlighting the political risks amid the Red Scare's fervor.[26] The speech unfolded as McCarthy observed from his desk, underscoring the tense chamber dynamics where loyalty to party orthodoxy clashed with principled dissent.[2] This act positioned Smith as a rare voice prioritizing American values of fair play over expediency in the fight against communism.[3]Core Arguments Against Fear-Mongering Tactics
Smith condemned the prevalent tactics of unsubstantiated accusations and character assassination, which she described as transforming the U.S. Senate into "a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity."[1] These methods, she argued, relied on the "Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear" to advance political goals, warning that adopting such approaches for electoral victory would represent "a more lasting defeat for the American people" than any partisan loss.[1] By invoking fear to silence dissent, these tactics made Americans "afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as 'Communists' or 'Fascists,'" thereby abusing free speech and discouraging its exercise altogether.[1][3] Central to her critique was the violation of core civil liberties, including "the right to criticize," "the right to hold unpopular beliefs," "the right to protest," and "the right of independent thought," asserting that exercising these should not forfeit one's "reputation or his right to a livelihood."[1] Smith highlighted the shift from constitutional protections like "trial by jury instead of trial by accusation," decrying arbitrary blacklisting and the smearing of innocents while guilty parties were whitewashed, which eroded due process in a free society.[1][3] She reasoned that self-proclaimed defenders of Americanism who engaged in these practices ignored foundational principles, as "those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism."[1] Ultimately, Smith contended that fear-mongering tactics played into adversarial strategies by promoting division, as Republicans and Democrats alike were "playing directly into the Communist design of ‘confuse, divide, and conquer.’"[3] Such methods, she warned, ceased being mere political tools and became "totalitarian techniques" that threatened "what we have come to cherish as the American way of life," prioritizing short-term gains over sustained national security and unity.[3] By fostering hysteria rather than reasoned vigilance, these approaches weakened democratic institutions and public trust, rendering anti-communist efforts counterproductive.[1]Key Declarations and Principles
In her Declaration of Conscience speech on June 1, 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith explicitly rejected the tactic of exploiting fear for political gain, declaring that the Republican Party should not "ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear."[1] This metaphor underscored her opposition to character assassination and guilt by association, which she argued mirrored totalitarian methods and undermined national unity against communism.[3] Smith emphasized that such approaches played into Soviet strategies of "confuse, divide, and conquer," urging a shift from partisan smears to constructive criticism of policy failures.[27] Smith articulated the "basic principles of Americanism" as essential safeguards against the erosion of civil liberties, stating that these rights must not be forfeited under the guise of anti-communist vigilance.[3] These principles, presented as foundational to free society, included:- The right to criticize;
- The right to hold unpopular beliefs;
- The right to protest;
- The right of independent thought.[27][3]