Ronald Reagan

On May 9, 1982, President Reagan delivered a major foreign policy address on the Eureka College campus on the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation. Known as the Eureka Speech, it challenged the Soviet Union to a new era of negotiations to reduce nuclear arms and was heralded as the beginning of the end of the Cold War. He expressed hope for a new era and a new start toward a more peaceful and secure world, argued that reducing the risks of war required removing existing instabilities and dismantling the nuclear menace, and said his duty as President was to ensure that nuclear conflict never occurred so that prairies, cities, and the people who inhabited them would remain free and untouched.

Eureka, Illinois · United States