ralph waldo emerson wrote a celebrated letter, open letter, to van buren, when -- about the issue. but even in the letter he described the cherokees as a racist, savage men and in fact, his concerns seemed more about the stain that the removal was placing on the united states honor than it did upon the misery of -- that the cherokees were being subjected to. the letter though has great literary force. he says, if van buren went ahead and implemented the jackson policies, you, sir, will bring down the renowned share in which you sit into infamy. if your you are sealless sets to this instrument of profanity and the name of this nation hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty will stink to the world. before the georgian garden estate politicians, i could hardly be surprised that they would refer to the cherokees as barbarians, because they had taken them as their enemy and when we do that, we have to deny those people in a common humanity. peace marchers in that same vietnam protest were shocked by the crude and racist names that our soldiers and marines had for the viet cong.

and in closing i would like to quote ralph waldo emerson. about a nation's strength. because an nation's strength is its people. it's leadership. this is what emerson said on a day like today. what makes a nation and its foundation strong? what makes it mighty to defy, not gold, but only men and women, only men and women, that keep people great and strong. men and women who, for truth and honor state, stand fast and suffer long. brave men who work while others sleep. brave men who dare while others like. they are the ones who built a nation and a lift into the sky. let's all stand up and lift our voices to welcome martin o'malley. [cheers and applause]r >> thank you very much. thank you very, very much. thank you all. thank you all so very, very much for being here. to my wife and to our children, grace and tara, and william and jack, to my mother, barbara o'malley, and my dad who i know is here in spirit, and my brothers and sisters, and to joe and barbara, monsignor burke, reverend hill, rabbi, lieutenant governor anthony brown, and his beautiful family, anthony, th

so us spend a long time with ralph waldo emerson who was the kind of genius of nineteenth century white race theory. ralph waldo emerson did not have a lot to say about black people but he had a lot to say about white people. in the nineteenth century the idea purvey old -- prevailed then there were many white races so there were people considered white, no one could question their white as. very clearly the irish were white. very clearly people descended from english people were scottish people were white or german people. but they belong to different races. they were white but belonged to different races. so for instance the irish catholics were thought to belong to the cal tech raise. people descended from english people were thought to belong to the sex and race and the saxons were better. it was not until the middle of the twentieth century which many of us remember vividly that the idea of one big white race came into being in which everybody was the same as everybody else. it is not an accident that that happened for politics. it happened through the national mobilization of the