The Sixties in America Primary Sources | Barry Goldwater

Excerpt from Goldwater's 1964 acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination
Originally given at the Republican presidential nominating convention, San Francisco, California, July 16, 1964.
Reprinted from Our Nation's Archive: The History of the United States in Documents, 1999; also available online at www.nationalcenter.org/Goldwater.html.

"My fellow Republicans, our cause is too great for any man to feel worthy of it. Our task would be too great for any man, did he not have with him the heart and the hands of this great Republican party."

By the early 1960s, American conservatives had been unhappy with the direction of American government for many years. Beginning with the New Deal programs of Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945), who served as president from 1933 to 1945, the...