The third week in March 1966 Fulbright traveled to Storrs, Connecticut, to deliver the Brien McMahon lecture. He was glad for the opportunity to honor his late friend and colleague. It was an appropriate occasion, Fulbright decided, to attempt to start a searching national self-examination. He told his audience:

After thirty years as a superpower, America stood at a crossroads, he told the students and faculty. The United States would have to decide which of the two sides of its character would prevail – “the humanism of Lincoln or the aggressive moralism of Theodore Roosevelt.” He was, he said, afraid that America's better half was in eclipse. The nation's aggressive, militaristic spirit had in part been responsible for the Vietnam War, and that conflict was in turn reinforcing the dark side of the American character. The war would destroy Lyndon Johnson's vision of a better America just as surely as it would destroy Vietnam. “The President simply cannot think about implementing the Great Society at home while he is supervising bombing missions over North Vietnam,” Fulbright insisted. Not only was the war consuming the nation's generous, humanitarian instincts; it was eating up the resources necessary to give substance to those instincts.