FAREWELL ADDRESS TO GENERAL ASSEMBLY 995

Q. In answer to my question at little more fully [addressing legisla-
tive leaders] — You will meet and organize on the 6th and the Gov-
ernor would resign and sometime after noon on the 7th the election
would be held: [Answer garbled in taping. ]

Governor. No — I wouldn't resign until noon on the 7th.

Q. So — sometime after noon on the 7th the election will be held?

A. Yes, that's right.

Q. You have to leave a vacancy before they can vote, in other words?

A. Yes, that's right.

FAREWELL ADDRESS TO MARYLAND
GENERAL ASSEMBLY, ANNAPOLIS

January 7, 1969

I do not put much stock in goodbyes. Old Governors, unlike old
soldiers, cannot be relied upon to conveniently fade away.

Although this is my farewell as Governor of Maryland, I suspect
we will meet again, many times I hope, to work together for a State
and nation calling urgently for every doer to do his job.

Still, there is a sadness in leaving old friends — and old political
adversaries too — for we have been mostly of one spirit, if not always
of one mind; and the judgment of our days together will not easily
distinguish between those who said "Aye" and those who said "Nay. "
In the record we are one.

These past two years have not been easy for any of us, and we have
made it all the more difficult by foregoing the path of least resistance
to build a trail for the future to follow. In pressing our case for
change, we have defied the taboos and anachronisms of generations,
dared the unpopular view for what we held to be the popular good,
stood fast in the name of justice and stood firm for the sake of law.
If we were not at all times wise, who can say we were at any time
timid? If we did not win for every cause, neither did the two-year
administration of Thomas Johnson nor the fifteen-year administration
of Albert C. Ritchie.