The silent majority is an unspecified large group of people in a country or group who do not express their opinions publicly. The term was popularized by U.S. President Richard Nixon in a televised address on November 3, 1969, in which he said, "And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support." In this usage it referred to those Americans who did not join in the large demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the time, who did not join in the counterculture, and who did not participate in public discourse. Nixon, along with many others, saw this group of Middle Americans as being overshadowed in the media by the more vocal minority.
Preceding Nixon by half a century, it was employed in 1919 by Calvin Coolidge's campaign for the 1920 presidential nomination. Before that, the phrase was used in the 19th century as a euphemism referring to all the people who have died, and others have used it before and after Nixon to refer to groups of voters in various nations of the world.
Early meanings
Euphemism for the dead
'The majority' or 'the silent majority' can be traced back to the Roman writer Petronius, who wrote abiit ad plures (he is gone to the majority) to describe deceased people, since the dead outnumber the living. (In 2023 there were approximately 14.6 dead for every living person.). The phrase was used for much of the 19th century to refer to the dead. Phrases such as "gone to a better world", "gone before", and "joined the silent majority" served as euphemisms for "died". In 1902, Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan employed this sense of the phrase, saying in a speech that "great captains on both sides of our Civil War have long ago passed over to the silent majority, leaving the memory of their splendid courage."
Groups of voters
In May 1831, the expression "silent majority" was spoken by Churchill C. Cambreleng, representative of New York state, before 400 members of the Tammany Society. Cambreleng complained to his audience about a U.S federal bill that had been rejected without full examination by the United States House of Representatives. Cambreleng's "silent majority" referred to other representatives who voted as a bloc:
In 1883, an anonymous author calling himself "A German" wrote a memorial to Léon Gambetta, published in The Contemporary Review, a British quarterly. Describing French Conservatives of the 1870s, the writer opined that "their mistake was, not in appealing to the country, but in appealing to it in behalf of a Monarchy which had yet to be defined, instead of a Republic which existed; for in the latter case they would have had the whole of that silent majority with them."
In 1919, Madison Avenue advertising executive and Republican Party supporter Bruce Barton employed the term to bolster Calvin Coolidge's campaign for the 1920 Republican Presidential nomination. In Collier's magazine, Barton portrayed Coolidge as the everyman candidate: "It sometimes seems as if this great silent majority had no spokesman. But Coolidge belongs with that crowd: he lives like them, he works like them, and understands."
Referring to Charles I of England, historian Veronica Wedgwood wrote this sentence in her 1955 book The King's Peace, 1637–1641: "The King in his natural optimism still believed that a silent majority in Scotland were in his favour."
Richard Nixon
While Nixon was serving in 1955 as vice-president to Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and his research assistants wrote in Kennedy's book Profiles in Courage, "Some of them may have been representing the actual sentiments of the silent majority of their constituents in opposition to the screams of a vocal minority..." In January 1956, Kennedy gave Nixon an autographed copy of the book. Nixon wrote back the next day to thank him: "My time for reading has been rather limited recently, but your book is first on my list and I am looking forward to reading it with great pleasure and interest." Nixon wrote Six Crises, some say his response to Kennedy's book, after visiting Kennedy at the White House in April 1961.
In 1967, labor leader George Meany asserted that those labor unionists (such as himself) who supported the Vietnam War were "the vast, silent majority in the nation." Meany's statement may have provided Nixon's speechwriters with the specific turn of phrase.