Memorial Addresses and Tributes in the Congress of the United States

This tribute to Churchill is inscribed to Anthony Eden, Churchill’s wartime Foreign Secretary and, following Churchill, British Prime Minister in 1951. It was presented by Georgia Representative John J. Flynt Jr., a Democrat who sat in the United States House of Representatives from 1954 to 1979.

Winston Churchill died on 24 January 1965, at the age of ninety: it was the first state funeral for a non-royal figure since that of Edward Carson, and it remained the most recent state funeral in the United Kingdom until that of Queen Elizabeth II on 19 September 2023.

President Johnson being unwell, the United States sent Chief Justice Earl Warren, former President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dean Rusk to the funeral, held on 30 January.

Three days later, on 3 February 1965, a young Democratic representative from Georgia, John Flynt, submitted a resolution to the House of Representatives calling for the production of an internal document, for publication, as a tribute from the country and its elected representatives to Winston Churchill: “these remarks would be printed and bound as directed by the Joint Committee on Printing of 10 copies of such document for use by each Member of the House of Representatives and 15 copies for use by each Member of the Senate. This House document would become a tangible symbol of the gratitude of the American people for the life of Winston Churchill and the contributions which he made during his life of four score years and ten.”

The resolution was adopted by the Senate a month later, on 29 March 1965, and Flynt was appointed to oversee the publication. He wrote its preface, working on it for nearly a year. The volume gathers, first, the Senate documents relating to the vote of 9 March 1963 proclaiming Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States, the culmination of five years of effort by American legislators to grant the great statesman this supreme honor, which Churchill had initially declined in 1958: “Being already half American by blood, he wrote, it seems to me preferable to leave things as they are rather than receive an official seal on the affection and great respect I feel for your country.” The volume then presents the full record of the speeches and tributes delivered on the floor of Congress by representatives from 25 January 1965 onward, together with those published in the press by representatives too far from Washington that day.

In accordance with Flynt’s wishes, a special printing was reserved for members of Congress, amounting to 5,860 copies (10 to 15 copies per representative). Among these, a handful were made nominative, with an added dedication leaf inscribed by John Flynt for prominent American and foreign figures.

This is the copy addressed to Anthony Eden, the former British Prime Minister and Churchill’s most faithful companion since 1940.

A signed letter from Flynt to Anthony Eden accompanies the copy, dated 24 January 1966. Appointed Foreign Secretary in 1951, upon Churchill’s return to power, Eden succeeded him as Prime Minister on 12 April 1955. On 9 January 1957 he withdrew from political life, officially for health reasons, and was replaced by Harold Macmillan. Twenty years later, in the winter of 1977, while visiting Averell Harriman, Roosevelt’s former wartime adviser, he had to be urgently repatriated to England; he died on 14 January 1977 at his manor in Alvediston, Wiltshire.