Video: 'President Richard Nixon Address to the Nation on the War in Vietnam, November 3, 1969'

(Monday, November 3, 1969, 9:30 p.m. EST; during the Vietnam War, part of the Indochina Wars and the Cold War) — U.S. President Richard Nixon pleaded tonight for domestic support as he persisted in his effort to find peace in Vietnam and as he unfolded what he said was a plan to bring home all United States ground combat forces on an orderly but secret timetable.

Nixon gave his reasons for rejecting immediately removing all troops, framing that option as the “first defeat in our Nation’s history” that “would result in a collapse of confidence in American leadership, not only in Asia but throughout the world.”

Video: 'Vietnam: A Television History - Homefront USA [10/11]' (Nov. 3, 1969, at 37:18)

Nixon instead reiterated his plan for Vietnamization, “the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces, and their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable” but added that he did not intend to announce details of the timetable.

In closing, he described the people who would support his plan for a draw-down as “the great silent majority of my fellow Americans”, in contrast to a “vocal minority” of protesters which, if their will prevailed “over reason and the will of the majority”, would mean that the United States would have “no future as a free society.”