Churchill and Eisenhower Address the General Assembly

On 8 March 1946 Winston Churchill and General Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed a joint session of the General Assembly.

The General Assembly had invited Churchill to speak, and an estimated 30,000 people stood in the rain to greet the former British prime minister and General Eisenhower when they arrived in Richmond. A motorcade took the two leaders and Governor William M. Tuck to Capitol Square. In his opening remarks, Churchill stated that he had declined similar invitations to address the legislatures of other states, and he asked those states "to accept the primacy of the Virginia Assembly as the most ancient, law-abiding body on the mainland of the Western Hemisphere." He spoke warmly about Eisenhower and called for closer cooperation between the two countries. Although he developed the idea of closer British-American ties, this speech was bland compared to the one he had delivered just five days earlier at Westminister College in Fulton, Missouri. In that historic speech, Churchill coined the phrase "iron curtain" and warned the West about Russia and the spread of communism. His remarks were controversial at the time, but world events later supported the former prime minister's predictions.

Eisenhower was not scheduled to speak, but the delegates clamored to hear the general, and he graciously made a brief extemporaneous talk. He reminded the audience that his mother had been born in Virginia, and he spoke of how pleased he was to return, especially in the company of Britain's great wartime leader. "The Prime Minister," he said, "is one of the great men of this world," and "I know of no other single thing that was of greater moral benefit than the unwavering, staunch, indomitable, courageous support of the Prime Minister."

The headlines in the Richmond Times-Dispatch the next day ran "Churchill's Unity Plea is Renewed in Talk Here" and "Truman Says that Russia Will Go Along; He Avoids Comment on Churchill Plan."