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A Black Patriot: Wentworth Cheswell

BLACK REVOLUTIONARY ERA PATRIOT
Wentworth Cheswell
(1746-1817)At WallBuilders we strive to “present America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on our moral, religious, and constitutional heritage,” so Wentworth Cheswell (sometimes Chiswell or Cheswill) is a perfect subject for our attention.

He was the grandson of black slave Richard Cheswell (who early gained his freedom and in 1717 and became the first black to own property in the colony of New Hampshire); and he was the son of Hopestill Cheswell, a notable homebuilder who built the homes of several patriot leaders, including John Paul Jones and the Rev. Samuel Langdon. Wentworth was named after the famous Wentworth family, from whom came several state governors, including Benning Wentworth – the governor at the time of Wentworth’s birth.

In 1763, Wentworth began attending an academy in Byfield, Massachusetts (30 miles from his home), where for four years he received an extensive education, studying Latin, Greek, swimming, horsemanship, reading, writing, and arithmetic.

In 1767, he returned home and became a schoolteacher, also marrying Mary Davis (they eventually had 13 children – 4 sons and 9 daughters). At the age of 21, he had already become an established and educated property owner and a stalwart in his local church, even holding a church pew.

The following year, Wentworth was elected town constable – the first of many offices he held throughout his life. Two years later in 1770, he was elected town selectman (the selectmen were considered the “town fathers” of a community). Other town offices in which he served included seven years as Auditor, six years as Assessor, two years as Coroner, seven years as town Moderator (presiding over town meetings), and twelve years as Justice of the Peace, overseeing trials, settling disputes, and executing deeds, wills, and legal documents. (View an 1813 document signed by Cheswell as justice of the peace.) For half a century – including every year from 1768 until 1817 – Wentworth held some position in local government.

In addition to his civic service, Wentworth was also a patriot leader. In fact, the town selected him as the messenger for the Committee of Safety – the central nervous system of the American Revolution that carried intelligence and messages back and forth between strategic operational centers. Serving in that position, Wentworth undertook the same task as Paul Revere, making an all-night ride to warn citizens of imminent British invasion.

In April 1776, he signed a document in which he pledged, “at the risk of . . . live and fortune,” to take up arms to resist the British, and in September 1777, he enlisted in a company of Light Horse Volunteers commanded by Colonel John Langdon (Langdon later became one of the 55 Founding Fathers who drafted the U. S. Constitution, then a framer of the Bill of Rights, and later the New Hampshire governor). Langdon’s company made a 250-mile march to Saratoga, New York, to join with the Continental Army under General Horatio Gates to defeat British General Burgoyne at the Battle of Saratoga – the first major American victory in the Revolution.

After returning from Saratoga, in the spring of 1778, Wentworth was elected to the convention to draft the state’s first constitution, but some unknown event prevented his attendance.

Wentworth also served as Newmarket’s unofficial historian, copying town records from 1727 (including the records of various church meetings) and chronicling old stories of the town as well as its current events. Additionally, having investigated and made extensive notes on numerous artifacts and relics he discovered in the region around Newmarket, he is considered the state’s first archeologist. Therefore, when the Rev. Jeremy Belknap published his famous three-volume History of New Hampshire (1784-1792), he relied on (and openly acknowledged) much information he gleaned from Wentworth.

In 1801, Wentworth helped start the town library to preserve and disseminate useful knowledge and virtue. His commitment to providing helpful information is not surprising, for not only had he become a school teacher in 1767 but in 1776 he was elected as one of five men to regulate and oversee the schools of Newmarket.

In 1817, in his 71st year of age, Wentworth succumbed to typhus fever and was buried on the family farm, where other members of his family were later buried. In fact, when his daughter Martha died (his last surviving heir), her will provided that any members or descendants of the family could forever forward be buried on the farm. Unfortunately, that family graveyard long lay in disrepair, but in recent years friends and family have managed to restore it.

The legacy of Wentworth Cheswell is a lasting one: a patriot, teacher, and church leader; an historian, archeologist, and educator; a judge and official elected to numerous offices (he is considered the first black American elected to office in America). He is truly one of our forgotten patriots but he is a laudable example for all Americans – a hero worth remembering and honoring.

Sources:
William C. Nell, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, With Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons: To Which is Added a Brief Survey of the Conditions and Prospects of Colored Americans (Boston: Robert F. Wallcut, 1855), pp. 120-121.

Sidney and Emma Nogrady Kaplan, The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution, Revised Edition (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), pp. 200-202.

Thomas Truxtun Moebs, Black Soldiers-Black Sailors-Black Ink: Research Guide on African-Americans in U.S. Military History, 1526-1900 (Chesapeake Bay: Moebs Publishing Company, 1994), pp. 226, 259, 280.

Thomas Jefferson and Religion at the University of Virginia

Thomas Jefferson and Religion at the University of Virginia
by Dr. Mark Beliles ¹ and Dr. David Barton ²It is a common assertion among many academic writers today that Thomas Jefferson, in what those writers wrongly allege to be Jefferson’s disdain for religion in general and Christianity in particular, founded the University of Virginia as America’s first explicitly secular school. For example, according to Dr. Daryl Cornett of Mid-America Theological Seminary:

Jefferson also founded the first intentionally secularized university in America. His vision for the University of Virginia was for education finally free from traditional Christian dogma. He had a disdain for the influence that institutional Christianity had on education. At the University of Virginia there was no Christian curriculum and the school had no chaplain. Its faculty were religiously Deists and Unitarians.

Many other professors make similar claims:

After Jefferson left the presidency in 1809, he embarked on what has unequivocally been determined as his finest architectural design achievement: the University of Virginia….A Deist and a Secular Humanist, Jefferson rejected the religious tradition that had provided the foundation for the colonial universities. ³ PROFESSOR ANITA VICKERS, PENN STATE UNIVERSITY
The university which Thomas Jefferson established at Charlottesville in Virginia was America’s first real state university….[I]ts early orientation was distinctly and purposely secular. ⁴ PROFESSOR JOHN BRUBACHER, YALE UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN; PROFESSOR WILLIS RUDDY, FAIRLEIGH DICKINSON UNIVERSITY
The University of Virginia affords the first historical instance in any country in which the university was deliberately and purposefully conceived as an agency of the realm of the secular state. ⁵ PROFESSOR LEWIS P. SIMPSON, LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY
Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia, founded in 1819…became the first purely secular institution. ⁶ PROFESSOR CATHERINE COOKSON, VIRGINIA WESLEYAN COLLEGE
No part of the regular school day was set aside for religious worship….Jefferson did not permit the room belonging to the university to be used for religious purposes. ⁷ PROFESSOR LEONARD LEVY, SOUTHERN OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY, CLAREMONT GRADUATE SCHOOL

Sadly, the current academic over-emphasis on peer-review among professors has caused many to develop the regrettable tendency of heavily reading, quoting, and citing each other rather than actual historical documents related to the object of their inquiry. That is, rather than saying “Thomas Jefferson says that the University of Virginia was founded in order to . . .”, they instead say, “Professor _____ says that Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia in order to . . .” Consequently, when one academic writer makes a particular claim, many others repeat that claim as though it were indisputable fact – even if that claim can be factually disproved. As a result of this modern academic malpractice, four oft-repeated claims have emerged about Jefferson’s founding of the University of Virginia:

1. Jefferson founded a deliberately secular university
2. Jefferson sought out Unitarians to be its faculty
3. Jefferson barred religious activities and instruction from the program of the school
4. Affirming its commitment to secularism, the University of Virginia had no chaplain

It will be seen below that numerous original documents incontestably disprove these four assertions, including Jefferson’s own writings, the records of the University of Virginia, the writings of those involved in the formation of the University, and other public records of that day.

Was the University of Virginia Founded as a Secular University?Three distinctive features characterized most universities founded in America prior to the University of Virginia. Those universities commonly: (1) were founded and controlled by one particular denomination, (2) housed a theological seminary for that denomination, and (3) had a minister from that denomination serving as president of the university.

Illustrative of this pattern, in 1636, Harvard was founded by and for CONGREGATIONALISTS to train Congregationalist ministers (as was Yale in 1701 and Dartmouth in 1769); in 1692, the College of William and Mary was founded by and for the ANGLICANS to train Anglican ministers (as was the University of Pennsylvania in 1740, Kings College in 1754, and the College of Charleston in 1770); in 1746, Princeton was founded by and for PRESBYTERIANS (as was Dickinson in 1773 and Hampden-Sydney in 1775); in 1764, the College of Rhode Island (now Brown University) was founded by the BAPTISTS; in 1766, Queens College (now Rutgers) was founded by and for the DUTCH REFORMED; in 1780, Transylvania University was founded by and for the DISCIPLES OF CHRIST; etc.

Jefferson and his Board of Visitors (i.e., Regents) founded the University of Virginia as a school not affiliated with only one denomination; it was specifically founded as a trans-denominational school. Consequently, it did not incorporate the three features so commonly associated with other universities at that time, thus causing modern critics wrongly to claim that it was founded as a secular university.

In implementing a trans-denominational approach, Jefferson was embracing the position that had been nationally set forth by an evangelical Presbyterian clergyman, Samuel Knox of Baltimore, whom Jefferson later asked to be his first faculty member at the University of Virginia. ⁸ In 1799, Knox penned an educational policy piece proposing the formation of a state university that would not have just one specific theological school but rather would invite many denominations to establish schools at the university; the various denominations would therefore all work together in mutual cooperation rather than in competition. ⁹ Jefferson agreed with this philosophy, and it was this model that he employed at the University of Virginia.

Significantly, thirty years earlier, Jefferson had begun actively promoting Christian non-preferentialism in his famous 1786 Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which disestablished the Anglican Church as the only legally recognized and established denomination in Virginia and instead placed all Christian denominations on an even footing. Because the charter for the new University had been issued by the state legislature, the school was required to conform to the denominational non-preferentialism set forth in the Virginia Statute and the Virginia Constitution.

Since the University would have no single denominational seminary but rather the seminaries of many denominations, Jefferson and the Visitors (i.e., Regents) decided that there should be no clergyman as university president and no specified Professor of Divinity, either of which might wrongly cause the public to think that the University favored the particular denomination with which the university president or Professor of Divinity was affiliated. ¹⁰ As Jefferson explained:

In conformity with the principles of our constitution which places all sects [denominations] of religion on an equal footing – with the jealousies of the different sects in guarding that equality from encroachment and surprise, and with the sentiments of the legislature in favor of freedom of religion manifested on former occasions [as in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom] – we have proposed no Professor of Divinity. ¹¹

But the fact that the school would have no Professor of Divinity did not mean that religious instruction would not take place. To the contrary, Jefferson personally ensured that religious instruction would occur, directing that the teaching of . . .

the proofs of the being of a God – the Creator, Preserver, and Supreme Ruler of the Universe – the Author of all the relations of morality and of the laws and obligations these infer – will be within the province of the Professor of Ethics. ¹²

Jefferson made sure that the teaching of religion to students definitely would occur, but he merely placed it under a professor different than was traditionally used; Jefferson absolutely did not eliminate religious instruction. In fact, he wanted it clearly understood that not having a Professor of Divinity definitely did not mean that the University would be secular:

It was not, however, to be understood that instruction in religious opinions and duties was meant to be precluded by the public authorities as indifferent to the interests of society. On the contrary, the relations which exist between man and his Maker – and the duties resulting from those relations – are the most interesting and important to every human being and the most incumbent on his study and investigation. ¹³

(Incidentally, in 1896 after the trans-denominational reputation of the school was fully established, a Bible lectureship was established by the University; by 1909, it had become a full Professorship of Divinity.)

Jefferson also made clear that the religious instruction which would occur at the University would incorporate the numerous religious beliefs on which Christian denominations agreed rather than just the specific theological doctrines of any one particular denomination. As he explained, “provision…was made for giving instruction in…the earliest and most respected authorities of the faith of every sect [denomination] and for courses of ethical lectures developing those moral obligations in which all sects agree.” ¹⁴

(This trans-denominational approach to teaching Christian beliefs and morals was so common in America that famous writer Alexis de Tocqueville reported:

The sects [denominations] which exist in the United States are innumerable. They all differ in respect to the worship which is due from man to his Creator, but they all agree in respect to the duties which are due from man to man. Each sect adores the Deity in its own peculiar manner, but all the sects preach the same moral law in the name of God….[A]lmost all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same. ¹⁵

Jefferson made clear to the public on multiple occasions and in several different writings that religious and moral instruction definitely would be part of regular academic instruction at the University of Virginia. He also expounded on his design to invite many denominations to participate in student instruction:

We suggest the expediency of encouraging the different religious sects to establish, each for itself, a professorship of their own tenets on the confines of the university so near as that their students may attend the lectures there and have the free use of our library and every other accommodation we can give them….[B]y bringing the sects [denominations] together and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their asperities [harshness], liberalize and neutralize their prejudices [prejudgment without an examination of the facts], and make the general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality. ¹⁶

Jefferson observed that a positive benefit of this approach was that it “would give to the sectarian Schools of Divinity the full benefit of the public [university] provisions made for instruction” ¹⁷ and “leave every sect to provide as they think fittest the means of further instruction in their own peculiar tenets.” ¹⁸ Jefferson also pointed out that an additional benefit of this arrangement would be that “such establishments would offer the further and great advantage of enabling the students of the University to attend religious exercises with the Professor of their particular sect.” ¹⁹ The students would be offered many denominational choices, and Jefferson made clear that students would be expected to participate in the various denominational schools. ²⁰

Jefferson’s nondenominational approach caused Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and others to give the University the friendship and support necessary to make the new school succeed. Consider Presbyterian minister John Holt Rice as an example.

Holt was a nationally-known religious leader. In 1813, he helped found the Virginia Bible Society ²¹ (of which Jefferson was a significant financial contributor ²² ); in 1818 he started the Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine to emphasize Christianizing the culture and report on various revivals across the country; in 1819, he was elected national moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church; and in 1822, he was offered the presidency of Princeton but instead accepted the Chair of Theology at Hampden-Sydney College. Rice – an evangelical Presbyterian – fully supported the University of Virginia ²³ and worked diligently “in creating a popular sentiment favorable to the passage of the University bill [in the General Assembly].” ²⁴

Rice’s support of Jefferson’s school was no small endorsement and was representative of the support that the school received from other denominations. They understood that the University of Virginia was not secular but rather trans-denominational. As the official Centennial of the University of Virginia affirmed in 1921, “Thomas Jefferson…aimed no blow at any religious influence that might be fostered by it. The blow was at sectarianism only.” ²⁵ (emphasis added)

Clearly, Jefferson’s own writings and the records of the University absolutely refute the notion that he founded a secular university; and clergyman, historian, and author Anson Phelps Stokes (second-in-command at Yale and then resident canon at the National Cathedral in Washington, D. C.) correctly concluded about Jefferson that “even in establishing a quasi-state university on broad lines, the greatest liberal who took part in founding our government felt that instruction in the fundamentals of Christian theism and Christian worship were both important and proper.” ²⁶

(Incidentally, another indicator of the non-secular nature of the University what that when construction began in 1817, a special prayer was offered at the laying of the cornerstone, in the presence of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, beseeching “Almighty God, without invocation to Whom no work of importance should be begun, bless this undertaking and enable us to carry it on with success – protect this college, the object of which institution is to instill into the minds of youth principles of sound knowledge, to inspire them with the love of religion and virtue, and prepare them for filling the various situations in society with credit to themselves and benefit to their country.” ²⁷ Significantly, it was Jefferson and his Board of Visitors who made the arrangements and approved both the prayer and the Scriptures for that ceremony.)

Was Jefferson’s Faculty Composed of Unitarians?Jefferson had agreed with the Rev. Samuel Knox’s plan of excluding a clergyman from being either the university president or the Professor of Divinity but he certainly had no such concerns about clergymen on the teaching faculty at the University. In fact, as previously noted, in 1817, Jefferson specifically made the Rev. Knox his very first faculty selection, asking him to be the Professor of Languages, Belles Lettres, Rhetoric, History and Geography. ²⁸ It is a noteworthy commentary that this Presbyterian minister – known for publishing a tract against the religious beliefs of famous Unitarian Joseph Priestley ²⁹ – was offered the very first teaching position at Jefferson’s University. (Interestingly, through a miscommunication, Knox did not respond to the offer in a timely fashion so his teaching slot was finally offered to someone else. ³⁰ )

Jefferson eventually settled on ten teaching positions at the University; ³¹ and significantly, when those positions were filled, notwithstanding the errant claims of modern critics, none of the professors was Unitarian. In fact, two of the original professors hired by Jefferson (George Tucker, Professor of Moral Philosophy, and Robley Dunglison, Professor of Anatomy and Medicine) were later asked about Jefferson’s views on the religious beliefs of the professors he had selected – specifically, had Jefferson sought to fill the faculty with Deists or Unitarians? To that question, Professor Dunglison replied:

I have not the slightest reason for believing that Mr. Jefferson was in any respect guided in his selection of professors of the University of Virginia by religious considerations…. In all my conversations with Mr. Jefferson, no reference was made to the subject. I was an Episcopalian, so was Mr. Tucker, Mr. Long, Mr. Key, Mr. Bonnycastle, and Dr. Emmet. Dr. Blaettermap, I think, was a Lutheran, but I do not know so much about his religion as I do about that of the rest. There certainly was not a Unitarian among us. ³² (emphasis added)

Professor Tucker agreed, declaring:

I believe that all the first professors belonged to the Episcopal Church, except Dr. Blaetterman, who, I believe, was a German Lutheran….I don’t remember that I ever heard the religious creeds of either professors or Visitors [Regents] discussed or inquired into by Mr. Jefferson – or anyone else. ³³

Jefferson simply did not delve into the denominational affiliations or specific religious beliefs of his faculty; what he sought was professors who had proper knowledge and deportment. As he once told his close friend and fellow-patriot and co-signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush:

For thus I estimate the qualities of the mind: 1. good humor; 2. integrity; 3. industry; 4. science. The preference of the first to the second quality may not at first be acquiesced in, but certainly we had all rather associate with a good-humored, light-principled man than with an ill-tempered rigorist in morality. ³⁴

It was by applying such standards that Jefferson once invited Thomas Cooper to be Professor of Chemistry and Law, ³⁵ but when it became known that Cooper was a Unitarian, a public outcry arose against him and Jefferson and the University withdrew its offer to him. ³⁶

Obviously, this type of original documentary evidence concerning Jefferson and the religious views of his faculty is ignored by many of today’s writers and educators. However, Professor Roy Honeywell of Eastern Michigan University did review the original historical evidence rather than just the claims of other professors, and he correctly concluded:

In general, Jefferson seems to have ignored the religious affiliations of the professors. His objection to ministers was because of their active association with sectarian groups – in his day a fruitful source of social friction. The charge that he intended the University to be a center of Unitarian influence is totally groundless. ³⁷

There simply is no historical merit to the claim that Jefferson sought out Unitarians or Deists in order to make the school a seedbed of Unitarianism.

Did Jefferson Bar Religious Instruction from the Academic Program?It was in 1818 that Jefferson and the Visitors first released to the public their plan for the new University. As already noted, Jefferson announced that the school would be trans-denominational and that religious instruction would be provided to students by the Professor of Ethics. But Jefferson also took additional steps to ensure that religious instruction would occur.

For example, he directed the Professor of Ancient Languages to teach Biblical Greek, Hebrew, and Latin to students so that they would be equipped to read and study the “earliest and most respected authorities of the Christian Faith.” ³⁸ Wanting the writings of those Christian authorities and “the writings of the most respected authorities of every sect [denomination]” ³⁹ to be placed in the university library, Jefferson asked James Madison to prepare such a list for the library. ⁴⁰

In September 1824, Madison returned his list to Jefferson in which he included the works of the Alexandrian Fathers (the early Alexandrian church fathers included Clement, Origen, Pantaenus, Cyril, Athanasius, and Didymus the Blind); Latin authors such as St. Augustine; the writings of St. Aquinas and other Christian leaders from the Middle Ages; and the works of Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Socinius, and Bellarmine from the Reformation era. Madison’s list also included more modern theologians and religious writers such as Grotius, Tillotson, Hooker, Pascal, Locke, Newton, Butler, Clarke, Wollaston, Edwards, Mather, Penn, Wesley, Priestley, Price, Leibnitz, and Paley. ⁴¹

In addition to the religious instruction by the Professor of Ancient Language, Jefferson succinctly stated that he had personally arranged the curriculum so that religious study would also be an inseparable part of the study of law and political science. ⁴² It is clear that Jefferson took numerous steps to secure religious instruction as part of academic studies.

But Jefferson not only sought to ensure that students would study about God, he also made provision for them to worship God. In the early planning stages of the University, he had stipulated “that a building…in the middle of the grounds may be called for in time in which may be rooms for religious worship”; ⁴³ later, he specifically ordered that in the University Rotunda, “one of its large elliptical rooms on its middle floor shall be used for…religious worship” and that “the students of the University will be free and expected to attend.” ⁴⁴ (emphasis added).

Clearly, the modern claim that there was no Christian curriculum at the University of Virginia is demonstrably false not only by Jefferson’s own writings but also by those of University Visitors such as James Madison.

Did the University of Virginia Have Chaplains?A fourth modern claim made about the University of Virginia is that it had no chaplains. This charge is easily disproved by numbers of original documents, including newspaper ads run by the University to recruit its students. For example, in ads run in the Washington newspaper, The Globe, the Rev. Mr. Tuston – identified in the ad as the chaplain of the University – discussed religious life at the school, noting:

[F]or several years after its operations commenced [founded in 1819, it opened to students in 1825]….It was by many supposed that infidelity was interwoven with the very elements of its existence, and consequently its early history was overhung with the clouds of discouragement. How far these prejudices were just may be ascertained from the fact (not generally known) that in the original organization of this establishment, the privilege of erecting Theological Seminaries on the territory [grounds] belonging to the university was cheerfully extended to every Christian denomination within the limits of the State.
In the present arrangement for religious services at the University, you have all the evidence that can with propriety be asked respecting the favorable estimate which is placed upon the subject of Christianity.
The chaplains, appointed annually and successively from the four prominent denominations in Virginia [Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist], are supported by the voluntary contributions of professors and students….
Beside the regular services of the Sabbath, we have….also a Sabbath School in which several of the pious students are engaged.
The monthly concert for prayer is regularly observed in the pavilion which I occupy.
In all these different services we have enjoyed the presence and the smiles of an approving Redeemer….[and i]t has been my pleasure on each returning Sabbath to hold up before my enlightened audience the cross of Jesus – all stained with the blood of Him that hung upon it – as the only hope of the perishing. ⁴⁵ (emphasis added)

Another ad run by the University similarly noted:

Religious services are regularly performed at the University by a chaplain, who is appointed in turn from the four principal denominations of the State. And by a resolution of the Faculty, ministers of the Gospel and young men preparing for the ministry may attend any of the schools without the payment of fees to the professors. ⁴⁶ (emphasis added)

It was the custom of that day that all faculty members receive their salaries from fees paid by the students directly to the professors, but the University waived those fees for students studying for the Gospel ministry. If the University of Virginia truly held the secular orientation claimed by so many of today’s writers, then why did it extend preferential treatment to students pursuing religious careers? Surely a truly secular university would give preference to secular-oriented students rather than religiously-oriented ones – something the University of Virginia did not do.

The University of Virginia did indeed have chaplains – albeit not in its first three years. At the beginning when the University was establishing its reputation as a non-denominational university, there was no appointed chaplain for the same reasons there had been no clergyman as president and no Professor of Divinity: an ordained clergyman in any of those three positions might send an incorrect signal that the University was aligned with the denomination of that specific clergyman. Furthermore, clergymen representing each seminary were on campus and available to minister to students. But by 1829, the non-denominational direction of the University had been established, so President Madison (who became Rector of the University after Jefferson’s death in 1826) announced “that [permanent] provision for religious instruction and observance among the students would be made by…services of clergymen.” ⁴⁷

The University therefore extended official recognition to one primary chaplain for the students, with the chaplain position to rotate annually among the major denominations. (According to Jefferson, “about 1/3 of our state is Baptist, 1/3 Methodist, and of the remaining 1/3, two parts may be Presbyterian and one part Anglican.” ⁴⁸ ) In 1829, Presbyterian clergyman Rev. Edward Smith became the first chaplain – an official university position, but unpaid. In 1833 after three-fourths of the students pledged their own money for the chaplain’s support, Methodist William Hammett became the first paid chaplain, leading Sunday worship and daily morning prayer meetings in the Rotunda. In 1855, the University built a parsonage to provide a residence on the grounds for the university chaplain. Significantly, many of the University of Virginia’s chaplains went on to famous religious careers, including Episcopalian Joseph Wilmer, Presbyterians William White, William H. Ruffner, and Robert Dabney, Baptists Robert Ryland and John Broaddus, and many others.

Clearly, the University of Virginia did have chaplains, and it placed a strong emphasis on the spiritual preparedness of its students through the important ministry of those chaplains.

— — — ◊ ◊ ◊ — — —

The charge that Jefferson founded the University of Virginia as a secular institution that excluded traditional religious instruction from students and instead inculcated them in the principles of Deism and Unitarianism is completely false. In fact, if anyone examines the original primary source documents and then claims otherwise, they are (to use the words of military chaplain William Biederwolf, 1867-1939) just as likely to “look all over the sky at high noon on a cloudless day and not see the sun.” ⁴⁹

Endnotes

1. Mark Beliles is founder of the Providence Foundation and vice-President of its Biblical Worldview University. Mark is chairman of the City of Charlottesville’s Historic Resources Committee and the annual “Governor Jefferson Thanksgiving Festival,” has convened a number of academic symposiums at the University of Virginia, and lectures throughout the United States, Asia, Africa, and Europe. He earned his PhD from Whitefield Theological Seminary (dissertation: Churches and Politics in Jefferson’s Virginia). Beliles’ extensive primary source documentary research on Jefferson highlights Jefferson’s founding of the Calvinistical Reformed Church of Charlottesville during the Revolution and then demonstrates that Jefferson’s subsequent rejection of Trinitarian language and creeds later in life was mainly from the influence of the evangelical “primitive” and “restoration” church movement that arose in the Central Virginia Piedmont rather than being the result of secular European Enlightenment, New England Unitarianism, or Deism. For more information contact Mark Beliles at [email protected] or call 434-249-4032.

2. David Barton is the author of numerous books and the president of WallBuilders, a national pro-family organization dedicated to “presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on our moral, religious, and constitutional heritage.” a consultant to state and federal legislators and has been involved in several federal court cases, including at the U.S. Supreme Court. He personally owns thousands of original documents from the Founding Era, including handwritten documents of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Barton has been appointed by State Educational Boards in California, Texas, and other states to help write the history and government standards for students in those states. He has served as an editor for national publishers of school history textbooks. Barton is the recipient of several national and international awards, including the Daughters of the American Revolution Medal of Honor (1998), the George Washington Honor Medal (2006, 1995), Who’s Who in America (2009, 2008, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997), Who’s Who in the World (2009, 2008, 2004, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996), Who’s Who in American Education (2007, 2004, 1997, 1996), International Who’s Who of Professionals (1996), Two Thousand Notable American Men Hall of Fame (1995), Who’s Who Among Outstanding Americans (1994), Who’s Who in the South and Southwest (2001, 1999, 1997, 1995), Outstanding Young Men in America (1990), and numerous other awards. He is the author of numerous books and holds a B.A. from Oral Roberts University and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Pensacola Christian College. Time Magazine has listed him as one of the 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America.

3. Anita Vickers, The New Nation (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 2002), p. 74.

4. John S. Brubacher & Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transition: A History of American Colleges and Universities (Transaction Books, 1997), pp. 147-149.

5. Lewis P. Simpson, Imagining Our Time: Recollections and Reflections on American Writing (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), p. 47. See also Lewis P. Simpson, “Jefferson and the Crisis of the American University,” The Virginia Quarterly Review, 2000, pp. 388-402 (at: https://www.vgronline.org/articles/2000/summer/simpson-jefferson ).

6. Encyclopedia of Religious Freedom, Catherine Cookson, editor (Taylor & Francis, 2003), p. 140.

7. Leonard Levy, “Jefferson, Religion and the Public Schools,” Separation of Church and State (at: https://candst.tripod.com/tnppage/jeffschl.htm ), from Levy’s book Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side (1989).

8. Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew A. Lipscomb, editor (Washington, D.C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. XIX, pp. 365-366, “Minutes of the Visitors of Central College,” July 28, 1817. Jefferson also wrote a letter to Knox on February 12, 1810, discussing the proper training of youth – America’s next generation of national leaders. As Jefferson correctly observed to Knox, “The boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them.” (See Jefferson, Writings, (1904), Vol. XII, pp. 359-361, letter to Rev. Samuel Knox, February 12, 1810.)

9. Samuel Knox, Essay on the Best System of Liberal Education (Baltimore: Warner and Hanna, 1799), pp. 78-79.

10. Henry Randall’s early biography of Jefferson (published in 1858) explains that, “The omission in the plan of the University to make provision for religious instruction [by establishing a specific Professor of Divinity] has been misconstrued by many candid persons because they have not understood the true nature of that institution. They look round on the American colleges and see such a provision generally made in them. But these schools have mostly been founded by particular sects… [If Virginia’s state university] was placed under the religious supervision or influence of any particular sect, the public money of all sects would be used for the benefit of one.” See Henry S. Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1858), Vol. III, pp. 469-470.

11.Thomas Jefferson, “Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia,” August 4, 1818 [The Rockfish Gap Report], from The University of Virginia (at: https://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefRock.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1). See also Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, pp. 413-414, Board of Visitors, Minutes, October 7, 1822.

12. Thomas Jefferson, “Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia,” August 4, 1818 [The Rockfish Gap Report], from The University of Virginia (at: https://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefRock.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1).

13. Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, p. 414, Board of Visitors, Minutes, October 7, 1822.

14. Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, p. 414, Board of Visitors, Minutes, October 7, 1822.

15. Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (New York: A.S. Barnes & Co., 1851), Vol. I, p. 331.

16. Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, pp. 405-406, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, November 2, 1822.

17. Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, p. 415, Board of Visitors, Minutes, October 7, 1822.

18. Thomas Jefferson, “Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia,” August 4, 1818 [The Rockfish Gap Report], from The University of Virginia (at: https://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefRock.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1).

19. Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, pp. 415-416, Board of Visitors, Minutes, October 7, 1822.

20. Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, pp. 449-450, A Meeting of the Visitors of the University of Virginia on Monday the 4th of October, 1824.

21. William Henry Foote, Sketches of Virginia, Historical and Biographical (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1856), p. 325. See also Address of the Managers of the Bible Society of Virginia to the Public (Richmond: Samuel Pleasants, 1814), p. 8.

22. Thomas Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIV, p. 81, letter to Samuel Greenhow, January 31, 1814.

23. See, for example, his articles expressing his strong support in his Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine, such as that in Vol. I, 1818, p. 548 (printed in A.J. Morrison, The Beginnings of Public Education in Virginia, 1776-1860 (Richmond: Davis Bottom, 1917), p. 38), wherein after announcing his support, he promised to return to the subject as often as necessary, declaring: “The writer of this will return to it again and again, and however feeble his abilities, will give them, in their best exercise, to an affair so deeply involving the best interests of his country.”

24. Philip Alexander Bruce, History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919 (New York: The MacMillian Company, 1920), Vol. I, p. 204.

25. The Centennial of the University of Virginia 1819-1921, John Calvin Metcalf, editor (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922), p. 6.

26. Anson Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States (New York: Harper & Bothers Publishers, 1950), Vol. I, p. 338.

27. Alexander Garrett, “Outline of Cornerstone Ceremonies,” October 6, 1817, from The University of Virginia (at: https://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Jef1Gri.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=47&division=div1 ). See also Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time: The Sage of Monticello (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1981), Vol. VI, p. 265.

28. Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, pp. 365-366, “Minutes of the Visitors of Central College,” July 28, 1817. Jefferson also wrote a letter to Knox on February 12, 1810, discussing the proper training of youth – America’s next generation of national leaders. As Jefferson correctly observed to Knox, “The boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them.” (See Jefferson, Writings, (1904), Vol. XII, pp. 359-361, letter to Rev. Samuel Knox, February 12, 1810.)

29. Samuel Knox, The Scriptural doctrine of future punishment vindicated : in a discourse from these words, “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.” Math. XXV, & 46th. : To which are prefixed some prefatory strictures on the lately avowed religious principles of Joseph Priestley, L.L.D. F.R.S. &c. &c. Particularly in a discourse delivered by him in the church of the Universalists, in Philadelphia, and published in1796. –Entitled: “Unitarianism explained and defended” &c (Georgetown: Green, English & Co., 1796).

30. See Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, p. 367, Board of Visitors, Minutes, Charlottesville, October 7, 1817, and Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, p. 390, Board of Visitors, Minutes, October 2-3, 1820.

31. In the 1818 report by Jefferson and the Board of Visitors, Jefferson announced: “We are further of opinion, that after declaring by law that certain sciences shall be taught in the University, fixing the number of professors they require, which we think should, at present, be ten.” See Thomas Jefferson, “Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia,” August 4, 1818 [The Rockfish Gap Report], from The University of Virginia (athttps://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefRock.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1).

32. Henry S. Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1858), Vol. III, pp. 467-468, letter from Robley Dunglison to Henry S. Randall, June 1, 1856.

33. Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson (1858), Vol. III, p. 467, letter from George Tucker to Henry S. Randall, May 28, 1856.

34. Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XI, p. 413, letter to Benjamin Rush, January 3, 1808.

35. See Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, p. 367, Board of Visitors, Minutes, Charlottesville, October 7, 1817.

36. Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, p. 389, Board of Visitors, Minutes, October 2-3, 1820. See also “Thomas Cooper (US Politician),” Wikipedia, October 8, 2008 (at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cooper_(US_politician); “Thomas Cooper Society,” University of South Carolina, February 20, 2008 (at: https://www.sc.edu/library/develop/tcsinfo.html ).

37. Roy Honeywell, The Educational Work of Thomas Jefferson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931), p. 92.

38. Thomas Jefferson, “Report to the President and Directors of the Literary Fund,” The Avalon Project, October 7, 1822 (at: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jeffrep3.asp ). Thomas Jefferson, “Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia,” August 4, 1818 [The Rockfish Gap Report], from The University of Virginia (at: https://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefRock.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1).

39. Thomas Jefferson, “Report to the President and Directors of the Literary Fund,” The Avalon Project, October 7, 1822 (at: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jeffrep3.asp ).

40. In a letter on August 8, 1824, Jefferson said “I have undertaken to make out a catalogue of books for our library, being encouraged to it by the possession of a collection of yellowed catalogues; and, knowing no one capable to whom we could refer the task, it has been laborious far beyond my expectation, having already devoted 4 hours a day to it for upwards of two months and the whole day for some time past and not yet in sight of the end. It will enable us to judge what the object will cost. The chapter in which I am most at a loss is that of divinity, and knowing that in your early days you bestowed attention on this subject, I wish you could suggest to me any works really worthy of place in the catalogue.” Thomas Jefferson, “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson,” Library of Congress, letter to James Madison, August 8, 1824 (at: https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mtj1&fileName=mtj1page054.db&recNum=725&itemLink=/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjser1.html&linkText=7&tempFile=./temp/~ammem_kF9i&filecode=mtj&itemnum=1&ndocs=1 ).

41. James Madison, The Writings of James Madison, Gaillard Hunt, editor (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), Vol. IX, pp. 203- 207, letter to Thomas Jefferson, September 10, 1824.

42. Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XVI, p. 19, letter to Judge Augustus B. Woodward, March 24, 1824.

43. Thomas Jefferson, “Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia,” August 4, 1818 [The Rockfish Gap Report], from The University of Virginia (at: https://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefRock.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1) called for this building and the stated purpose of religious worship in it; the subsequent reports Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, p. 394, Board of Visitors, Minutes, October 2-3, 1820; Jefferson, Writings, Vol. XIX, pp. 411-412, Board of Visitors, Minutes, October 7, 1822; and Jefferson, Writings, Vol. XIX, pp. 449-450, Board of Visitors, Minutes, October 4, 1824 reaffirmed that purpose.

44. Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XIX, pp. 449-450, “A Meeting of the Visitors of the University of Virginia on Monday the 4th of October, 1824.”

45. The Globe (Washington, D. C.), September 8, 1837, Vol. VII, No. 75, p. 2, Advertisement for the University of Virginia, printing a copy of a letter from the Rev. Mr. Tuston, the Chaplain of the University of Virginia to Richard Duffield, Esq. (originally printed in the Charlestown Free Press).

46. The Globe (Washington, D. C.), August 2, 1843, Vol. VIII, No. 42, p. 2, University of Virginia advertisement.

47. James Madison, “The Papers of James Madison,” Library of Congress, letter to Chapman Johnson, May 1, 1828 (at: https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mjm&fileName=22/mjm22.db&recNum=379&itemLink=D?mjm:13:./temp/~ammem_LjNU::).

48. Thomas Jefferson, The Life and Selected Writing of Thomas Jefferson, Adrienne Koch and Williams Peden, editors (New York: Random House, Inc., 1944), p. 697, letter to Thomas Cooper, March 13, 1820.

49. Encyclopedia of Religious Quotations, Frank Mead, editor (New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1965), p. 50, quoting William Biederwolf.

America’s Religious Heritage As Demonstrated in Presidential Inaugurations

Religious activities at presidential inaugurations have become the target of criticism in recent years, ¹ with legal challenges being filed to halt activities as simple as inaugural prayers and the use of “so help me God” in the presidential oath.² These critics – evidently based on a deficient education – wrongly believe that the official governmental arena is to be aggressively secular and religion-free. The history of inaugurations provides some of the most authoritative proof of the fallacy of these modern arguments.

In fact, since America’s first inauguration in 1789 included seven distinct religious activities, that original inauguration is worthy of review. Every inauguration since 1789 has included numerous of those activities.

The First Inauguration

Constitutional experts abounded at America’s first inauguration. Not only was the first inauguree (George Washington) a signer of the Constitution but numerous drafters of the Constitution were serving in the Congress that organized and directed that first inauguration. In fact, just under one fourth of the members of the first Congress had been delegates to the Convention that wrote the Constitution.³ Furthermore, the identical Congress that directed and oversaw these inaugural activities also penned the First Amendment. Having therefore produced both the Constitution and all of its clauses on religion, they clearly knew what types of religious activities were and were not constitutional. Clearly, then, the religious activities that occurred at the first inauguration may well be said to have the approval and imprimatur of the greatest collection of constitutional experts America has ever known. Therefore, a review of the religious activities acceptable in that first inauguration will provide guidance for citizens in general and critics in particular.

The first inauguration occurred in New York City. (New York City served as the nation’s capital for the first year of the new federal government; for the next ten, Philadelphia was the capital city; in 1800, the federal government moved to Washington, D. C. for its permanent home). George Washington had been at home at Mt. Vernon when Charles Thomson, Secretary of the Continental Congress, notified him that he had been unanimously elected as the nation’s first president.

On receiving this news, Washington departed from Mt. Vernon and began his trek toward New York City, stopping first at Fredericksburg, Virginia, to visit his mother, Mary¬ – the last time the two would see each other. Mary was eighty-two and suffering from incurable breast cancer. Mary parted with her son, giving him her blessings and offering him her prayers, telling him: “You will see me no more; my great age and the disease which is rapidly approaching my vitals, warn me that I shall not be long in this world. Go, George; fulfill the high destinies which Heaven appears to assign to you; go, my son, and may that Heaven’s and your mother’s blessing be with you always.” ⁴ Washington did go, and he did indeed fulfill the high destinies assigned him by Heaven. A moving painting was made of her giving him her final charge; his mother passed away a few months after that final meeting.

Leaving his mother, Washington continued northward toward New York City. In town after town along the way, special dinners and celebrations were held – including in Alexandria, Georgetown, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Trenton, and other locations. Finally reaching Elizabethtown, New Jersey, Washington boarded a barge that carried him the rest of the way, where another celebration awaited him upon entering New York Harbor.

On April 30th, 1789, George Washington was to be inaugurated on the balcony outside Federal Hall. (Federal Hall was originally named Old Hall, but New York City – in an effort to convince the new federal government that the City was serious about becoming the national capital – remodeled the structure, renaming it Federal Hall. The House and Senate met in two chambers inside that Hall, and the inauguration took place on the remodeled building’s balcony.) Incidentally, religious activities had been planned to precede the inauguration, with the people of New York City being called to a time of prayer. The papers in the Capital City reported on that scheduled activity:

[O]n the morning of the day on which our illustrious President will be invested with his office, the bells will ring at nine o’clock, when the people may go up to the house of God and in a solemn manner commit the new government, with its important train of consequences, to the holy protection and blessing of the Most high. An early hour is prudently fixed for this peculiar act of devotion and . . . is designed wholly for prayer. ⁵

The preparations for the inauguration had been extensive; everything had been well planned; the event seemed to be proceeding smoothly. The parade carrying Washington by horse-drawn carriage to the swearing-in was nearing Federal Hall when it was realized that no Bible had been obtained for administering the oath. Parade Marshal Jacob Morton hurried to the nearby Masonic Lodge and grabbed its large 1767 King James Bible.

The Bible was laid upon a crimson velvet cushion (held by Samuel Otis, Secretary of the Senate) and, with a huge crowd gathered below watching the ceremony on the balcony, New York Chancellor Robert Livingston was to administer the oath of office. (Robert Livingston had been one of the five Founders who had drafted the Declaration of Independence; however, he was called back to New York to help his State through the Revolution before he could affix his signature to the very document he had helped write. As Chancellor, Livingston was the highest ranking judicial official in New York.) Beside Livingston and Washington stood several distinguished officials, including Vice President John Adams, original Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, Generals Henry Knox and Philip Schuyler, and a number of others. The Bible was opened at random to the latter part of Genesis; Washington placed his left hand upon the open Bible, raised his right, and then took the oath of office prescribed by the Constitution. Washington then bent over and kissed the Bible, reverently closed his eyes, and said, “So help me God!” Chancellor Livingston then proclaimed, “It is done!” Turning to the crowd assembled below, he shouted, “Long live George Washington – the first President of the United States!” That shout was echoed and re-echoed by the crowd below.

Critics today claim that George Washington never added “So help me God!” to his oath ⁶ – that associating religious intent with the oath is of recent origins. After all, the presidential oath of office as prescribed in Article II of the Constitution simply states:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

But overlooked by many today is the fact that the Framers of our government considered an oath to be inherently religious – something George Washington affirmed when he appended the phrase “So help me God” to the end of the oath. In fact, it was universally acknowledged by every American legal scholar of that day that any legally-binding oath was overtly religious in nature. As signer of the Declaration John Witherspoon succinctly explained:

An oath is an appeal to God, the Searcher of Hearts, for the truth of what we say and always expresses or supposes an imprecation [a calling down] of His judgment upon us if we prevaricate [lie]. An oath, therefore, implies a belief in God and His Providence and indeed is an act of worship. . . . Persons entering on public offices are also often obliged to make oath that they will faithfully execute their trust. . . . In vows, there is no party but God and the person himself who makes the vow.⁷

Signer of the Constitution Rufus King similarly affirmed:

[B]y the oath which they [the laws] prescribe, we appeal to the Supreme Being so to deal with us hereafter as we observe the obligation of our oaths. The Pagan world were and are without the mighty influence of this principle which is proclaimed in the Christian system – their morals were destitute of its powerful sanction while their oaths neither awakened the hopes nor fears which a belief in Christianity inspires. ⁸

James Iredell, a ratifier of the Constitution and a U. S. Supreme Court justice appointed by George Washington, also confirmed:

According to the modern definition [1788] of an oath, it is considered a “solemn appeal to the Supreme Being for the truth of what is said by a person who believes in the existence of a Supreme Being and in a future state of rewards and punishments according to that form which would bind his conscience most.” ⁹

The great Daniel Webster – considered the foremost lawyer of his time ¹⁰ – also declared:

“What is an oath?” . . . [I]t is founded on a degree of consciousness that there is a Power above us that will reward our virtues or punish our vices. . . . [O]ur system of oaths in all our courts, by which we hold liberty and property and all our rights, are founded on or rest on Christianity and a religious belief. ¹¹

Clearly, at the time the Constitution was written, an oath was a religious obligation. George Washington understood this, and at the beginning of his presidency had prayed “So help me God” with his oath; at the end of his presidency eight years later in 1796 in his “Farewell Address,” he reaffirmed that an oath was religious when he pointedly queried:

[W]here is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths . . . ? ¹²

Numerous other authoritative sources affirm that oaths were inherently religious. ¹³

The evidence is clear: from a constitutional viewpoint, the administering of a presidential oath was the administering of a religious obligation – something that was often acknowledged during presidential inaugurations following Washington’s. For example, during his 1825 inauguration, John Quincy Adams declared:

I appear, my fellow-citizens, in your presence and in that of Heaven to bind myself by the solemnities of religious obligation to the faithful performance of the duties allotted to me in the station to which I have been called. ¹⁴

Subsequent presidents made similar acknowledgments:

HERBERT HOOVER: This occasion is not alone the administration of the most sacred oath which can be assumed by an American citizen. It is a dedication and consecration under God to the highest office in service of our people. ¹⁵
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT: As I stand here today, having taken the solemn oath of office in the presence of my fellow countrymen – in the presence of our God . . . ¹⁶
JOHN F. KENNEDY: For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago. ¹⁷
RICHARD NIXON: I have taken an oath today in the presence of God and my countrymen to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. ¹⁸

There were others as well. ¹⁹ The taking of the presidential oath is a religious action – or what Founding Father John Witherspoon had called “an act of worship.” ²⁰

Returning to Washington’s inauguration, following the taking of the oath on the Bible, Washington and the officials then departed the balcony and went inside Federal Hall to the Senate Chamber where Washington delivered his Inaugural Address. From the outset of that first-ever presidential address, Washington – as his first very official act – set a religious tone by expressing his own heartfelt prayer to God:

Such being the impressions under which I have – in obedience to the public summons – repaired to [arrived at] the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being Who rules over the universe, Who presides in the councils of nations, and Whose providential aids can supply every human defect – that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes. ²¹

The remainder of Washington’s address was no less strongly religious; he even called on his listeners to remember and acknowledge God:

In tendering this homage [act of worship] to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of Providential Agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government [i.e., the creation and adoption of the Constitution] . . . cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude. . . .
These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. . . . [T]he foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality . . . since there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness – between duty and advantage – between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious [favorable] smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained. . . .
Having thus imparted to you my sentiments as they have been awakened by the occasion which brings us together, I shall take my present leave; but not without resorting once more to the benign Parent of the Human Race in humble supplication that . . . His divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the wise measures on which the success of this government must depend. ²²

Washington and the Members of Congress then marched in a procession to St. Paul’s Church for Divine Service. That Congress should have gone to church en masse as part of the inauguration was no surprise, for Congress had itself scheduled these inaugural services.

That is, while the new Constitution had established the presidency, it stipulated nothing specific about the inaugural activities. It was therefore within the authority of Congress to help direct those activities. The Senate therefore acted:

Resolved, That after the oath shall have been administered to the President, he – attended by the Vice-President and members of the Senate and House of Representatives – proceed to St. Paul’s Chapel to hear Divine service. ²³

The House quickly approved the same resolution. ²⁴ Once the presidential oath had been administered and the inaugural address delivered, according to official congressional records:

The President, the Vice-President, the Senate, and House of Representatives, &c., then proceeded to St. Paul’s Chapel, where Divine Service was performed by the chaplain of Congress. ²⁵

The service at St. Paul’s was conducted by The Right Reverend Samuel Provoost – the Episcopal Bishop of New York, who had been chosen chaplain of the Senate the week preceding the inauguration. The service was performed according to The Book of Common Prayer, and included a number of prayers taken from Psalms 144-150 as well as Scripture readings and lessons from the book of Acts, I Kings, and the Third Epistle of John. ²⁶

– – – ◊ ◊ ◊ – – –The very first inauguration – conducted under the watchful eye of those who had framed our government and written its Constitution – incorporated numerous religious activities and expressions. That first inauguration set the constitutional precedent for all other inaugurations; and the activities from that original inauguration that have been repeated in whole or part in every subsequent inauguration include: (1) the use of the Bible to administer the oath; (2) the religious nature of the oath and including “So help me God”; (3) inaugural prayers by the president; (4) religious content in the inaugural addresses; (5) the president calling the people to pray or acknowledge God; (6) inaugural worship services; and (7) clergy-led inaugural prayers.

Endnotes

¹ A number of legal authorities, university professors, and news writers have criticized inaugural religious activities. See, for example, Alan M. Dershowitz, “Bush Starts Off by Defying the Constitution,” Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, January 24, 2001 Metro section, Part B, 9; Larry Judkins, Religion Page Editor, Sacramento Valley Mirror, “Dershowitz Piece Misleading: All Presidents Flaunt Constitution,” in Positive Atheism Magazine, Thursday, January 25, 2001; “President Bush Announces Religious Agenda on Inauguration Day,” Americans United for Separation of Church and State, January 20, 2001; et. Al.

² Noted atheist Michael Newdow filed suit in federal court to have prayers barred from the Presidential Inauguration of 2001, 2005, and in 2009 to have inaugural prayers halted and to prevent the Chief-Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court from saying “So help me God” when administering the oath of office to the president.

³ Significantly, many of the U. S. Senators at the first Inauguration had been delegates to the Constitutional Convention that framed the Constitution including William Samuel Johnson, Oliver Ellsworth, George Read, Richard Bassett, William Few, Caleb Strong, John Langdon, William Paterson, Robert Morris, and Pierce Butler; and many members of the House had been delegates to the Constitutional Convention, including Roger Sherman, Abraham Baldwin, Daniel Carroll, Elbridge Gerry, Nicholas Gilman, Hugh Williamson, George Clymer, Thomas Fitzsimmons, and James Madison.

⁴ Benson J. Lossing, Our Country: A Household History for All Readers (New York: Henry J. Johnson, 1877), IV:1121.

⁵ The Daily Advertiser, (New York: April 23, 1789), 2.

⁶ See, for example, Newdow v. Roberts, complaint filed by Newdow on December 29, 2008, 20-21, par. 103-104 of the complaint. See also Cathy Lynn Grossman, “No proof Washington said ‘so help me God’ – will Obama,” USA Today, January 9, 2009.

⁷ John Witherspoon, “Lectures on Moral Philosophy,” The Works of John Witherspoon (Edinburgh: J. Ogle, 1815), VII:139-140, 142.

⁸ Rufus King, October 30, 1821, Reports of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of 1821, Assembled for the Purpose of Amending The Constitution of the State of New York (Albany: E. and E. Hosford, 1821), 575.

⁹ Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (Washington: 1836), IV:196, James Iredell, July 30, 1788.

¹⁰ Dictionary of American Biography, s. v. “Webster, Daniel.”

¹¹ Daniel Webster, Mr. Webster’s Speech in Defense of the Christian Ministry and in Favor of the Religious Instruction of the Young, Delivered in the Supreme Court of the United States, February 10, 1844, in the Case of Stephen Girard’s Will (Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1844), 43, 51.

¹² George Washington, Address of George Washington, President of the United States . . . Preparatory to His Declination (Baltimore: George and Henry S. Keatinge, 1796), 23.

¹³ See, for example, James Coffield Mitchell, The Tennessee Justice’s Manual and Civil Officer’s Guide (Nashville: Mitchell and C. C. Norvell, 1834), 457-458; City Council of Charleston v. S.A. Benjamin, 2 Strob. 508, 522-524 (Sup. Ct. S.C. 1846); and many other legal sources.

¹⁴ John Quincy Adams, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, ed. James D. Richardson (Washington, D.C.: 1900), 2:860, March 4th 1825.

¹⁵ Herbert Hoover, “Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1929, The American Presidency Project.

¹⁶ Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1945, The American Presidency Project.

¹⁷ John F. Kennedy, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1961, The American Presidency Project.

¹⁸ Richard Nixon, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1969, The American Presidency Project.

¹⁹ Warren G. Harding, “Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1921, The American Presidency Project; Jimmy Carter, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1977, The American Presidency Project.

²⁰ John Witherspoon, The Works of John Witherspoon (Edinburgh: J. Ogle, 1815), VII:139, from his “Lectures on Moral Philosophy,” Lecture 16 on Oaths and Vows.

²¹ The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, ed. Joseph Gales (Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1834), I:27. See also George Washington, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, James D. Richardson, editor (Washington, D.C.: 1899), 1:44-45, April 30, 1789.

²² Debates and Proceedings (1834) I:27-29, April 30, 1789.

²³ Debates and Proceedings (1834), I:25, April 27, 1789.

²⁴ Debates and Proceedings (1834), I:241, April 29, 1789.

²⁵ Debates and Proceedings (1834) I:29, April 30, 1789.

²⁶ Book of Common Prayer (Oxford: W. Jackson & A. Hamilton, 1784), s.v., April 30th.

Christmas With the Presidents

The White House observance of Christmas before the twentieth century was not an official event. First families decorated the house modestly with greens and privately celebrated the Yuletide with family and friends.

Christmas in Early America: the Pilgrims and Puritans of New England found no Biblical precedent for a public celebration of Christmas (recall that the goal of these groups was to simplify religious worship and to cut away all religious rituals and celebrations not specifically cited in the Bible); nothing in the Bible established any date for the birth of Christ; the holiday was instead established by Roman tradition, thus making it – in their view – one of the many “pagan” holidays that had been inculcated into the corrupt church that had persecuted them, and which they and other religious leaders wished to reform. Consequently, Christmas in New England remained a regular working day. In fact, Massachusetts passed an anti-Christmas law in 1659 declaring: “Whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas . . . shall pay for each offense five shillings as a fine to the country.” The law was repealed in 1681, but the holiday still was not celebrated by religious non-conformists or dissenters (i.e., the Puritans and Pilgrims); it usually was celebrated only by a few Anglicans (later Episcopalians), Catholics, and other more formal or high-church-tradition New England families. It was not until the 1830s and 1840s that Christmas celebrations were just beginning to be accepted in New England (primarily due to the influence of large-scale Christmas celebrations in cities such as New York) – although as late as 1870 in Boston public schools, a student missing school on Christmas Day could be punished or expelled. By the 1880s, however, Christmas celebrations had finally become as accepted in New England as they were in other parts of the country. ²

White House Tree History Christmas Tree Trivia

In 1889, the tradition of a placing an indoor decorated tree in the White House began on Christmas morning during the Presidency of Benjamin Harrison.
In 1895, First Lady Frances Cleveland created a “technology savvy” tree when she hung electric lights on the White House tree (electricity was introduced into the White House in 1891).
1901-1909, Teddy Roosevelt banned the Christmas tree from the White House for environmental reasons.
In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge started the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony now held every year on the White House lawn.
In 1929, First Lady Lou Henry Hoover established the custom of decorating an official (and not just a personal) tree in the White House – a tradition that has remained with the First Ladies.
In 1953, the Eisenhowers sought out Hallmark Cards to assist them in creating a presidential Christmas card – the beginning of the official White House Christmas card.
In 1954, the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony is named the Pageant of Peace. It is held each year in early December to light the National Christmas Tree and includes performances by popular entertainers before the lighting of the National Christmas Tree by the President. The National Christmas Tree remains lit through January 1.
In 1961, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy began the tradition of Christmas Tree themes when she decorated the Christmas tree in toy trimmings from the Nutcracker Suite ballet by Tchaikovsky.
In 1963, the first Christmas card to include an explicitly religious element was the Kennedy card featuring a photo of a Nativity Scene set up in the East Room of the White House. Jack and Jacqueline had signed 30 cards before their final trip to Dallas. None was ever mailed. The National Christmas Tree that year was not lit until December 22nd because of a national 30-day period of mourning following President Kennedy’s assassination.
In 1969, the Pageant of Peace was embroiled in legal controversy over the use of religious symbols, and in 1973, the nativity scene that had always been part of the pageant was no longer allowed.
In 1979, the National Christmas Tree was not lighted except for the top ornament. This was done in honor of the American hostages in Iran….
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan authorized the first official White House ornament, copies of which were made available for purchase.
In 1981, Barbara Bush took the first of twelve rides in a cherry-picker to hang the star at the top of the National Christmas Tree.
In 1984, the Nativity Scene was allowed to return to the Pageant of Peace, and when the National Christmas Tree was lit on December 13th, temperatures were in the 70s, making it one of the warmest tree lightings in history.
In 2001, the first White House Christmas card to contain a Scripture was chosen by Laura Bush. Quoting from Psalm 27, it said “Thy face, Lord, do I seek. I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living,” which is what Laura Bush believed would happen after the tragedy of September 11. She chose that Scripture on September 16 (only 5 days after 9/11) based on a sermon the chaplain had preached at Camp David. The Bushes regularly used Scriptures on their Christmas cards.

George & Martha Washington (1789-1797)

At a time when Christmas was still quite controversial in a new nation, Martha Washington’s holiday receptions were stiff and regal affairs, quite befitting the dignity of the office of President of the United States and invitations were much desired by the local gentry. A Christmas party was given by the Washington’s for members of Congress on Christmas Day, 1795, at which a bountiful feast was served to the guests – all men with the exception of the First Lady!

The festivities at the Mount Vernon plantation in Virginia would start at daybreak with a Christmas fox hunt. It was followed by a hearty mid-day feast that included “Christmas pie,” dancing, music, and visiting that sometimes did not end for a solid week.

Andrew & Rachel Jackson (1829-1837)

From the earliest times memorable parties have been held for the president’s children or grand-children. One of the most elaborate was President Andrew Jackson’s “frolic” for the children of his household in 1834. This party included games, dancing, a grand dinner, and ended with an indoor “snowball fight” with specially made cotton balls.

Abraham & Mary Todd Lincoln (1861-1865)

During the first Christmas of the war (1861), Mrs. Lincoln arranged flowers, read books, helped serve meals, talked with the staff, and cared for the wounded at Campbell’s and Douglas hospitals. She personally raised a thousand dollars for Christmas dinners and donated a similar amount for oranges and lemons when she heard that there was a threat of scurvy.

During the Christmas season of 1863, the Lincolns’ son, Tad, had accompanied his father on hospital visits and noticed the loneliness of the wounded soldiers. Deeply moved, the boy asked his father if he could send books and clothing to these men. The President agreed and packages signed “From Tad Lincoln” were sent to area hospitals that Christmas.

One Christmas Tad Lincoln befriended the turkey that was to become Christmas dinner. He interrupted a cabinet meeting to plead with his father to spare the bird. The President obliged by writing a formal pardon for the turkey named Jack.

Benjamin & Caroline Harrison (1889-1893)

In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison, his grandchildren, and extended family gathered around the first indoor White House Christmas tree.

Grover & Francis Cleveland (1885-1889; 1893-1897)

When Grover Cleveland first became President in 1885, there was no Christmas tree during the first Cleveland administration, but when daughters Ruth, Esther, and Marion were born, this changed in the second administration. In 1894, three years after electricity was introduced in the White House, the first electric lights on a family tree delighted the young daughters of President Grover Cleveland.

Mrs. Cleveland’s main Christmas activity, rather than entertaining and decorating, was her work with the Christmas Club of Washington to provide food, clothing, and toys to poor children in the D.C. area. She took the time to wrap and distribute gifts to the children and sat with them for a Punch and Judy show. Although Christmas Club charities in Washington date back to the 1820’s, no previous first lady had taken as prominent a role in these activities as Frances Cleveland, who helped set a tradition of good works carried on by many other First Ladies.

Theodore & Edith Roosevelt (1901-1909)

President Theodore Roosevelt, an avowed conservationist, did not approve of cutting trees for Christmas decorations. However, his son Archie smuggled in a small tree that was decorated and hidden in a closet in the upstairs sewing room.

The Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt family Christmas traditions were quite simple. On Christmas Eve, they would pile into the family sleigh (later the motor car) and travel to Christ Church in Oyster Bay, New York. Following the pastor’s sermon, TR would deliver one of his famous “sermonettes” on the meaning of the holiday. The service would close with one of his favorite hymns “Christmas By the Sea.” On Christmas morning, gifts would be opened and then the family would spend the day hiking, playing games, and going for sleigh rides.

For many years TR played Santa Claus at a school in Oyster Bay, New York, listening to the children and then giving them Christmas presents that he had selected himself.

Calvin & Grace Coolidge (1923-1929)

In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge touches a button and lights up the first national Christmas tree to grace the White House grounds. (Until 1923, holiday celebrations were local in nature.) It was the first to be decorated with electric lights – a strand of 2,500 red, white and green bulbs. While radio station WCAP broadcast the event to possibly a million Americans, the President gave no speech. The evening centered, instead, on Christmas carols and other festive music performed at the tree-lighting ceremony, including by the Epiphany Church choir and the U.S. Marine Band. Later that evening, President Coolidge and first lady Grace were treated to carols sung by members of Washington D.C.’s First Congregational Church.

That year, the erection of a National Christmas Tree was the first of several holiday practices instituted during the Coolidge Presidency that are still with us today. It was 1927 when President Coolidge issued a holiday message to the nation – and then only a brief one written by his own hand on White House stationery. Its text was carried in newspapers across the land on Christmas Day. Finally, in 1928, on his last Christmas Eve in office, the President delivered to the nation via radio the first tree-lighting speech. It was 49 words in length.

Herbert & Lou Hoover (1929-1933)

First Lady Lou Henry Hoover established the custom of decorating an official (and not just a personal) tree in the White House in 1929. Since that time, the honor of trimming a principal White House Christmas tree on the state floor has belonged to our first ladies.

Christmas 1929 was memorable for the Hoovers because an electrical fire broke out in the West Wing of the White House during a children’s party. The Oval Office was gutted, but Mrs. Hoover kept the party going. The Marine Band, meanwhile, played Christmas carols at a volume calculated to drown out the sound of the arriving fire engines.

The following year the same children were invited back for another party at which time each child was given a toy fire engine as a memento. The invitations to the 1930 party read as follows: “This is not like the Christmas parties you usually go to…for Santa Claus has sent word that he is not going to be able, by himself, to take care of all the little girls and boys he wants to this year, and he has asked other people to help him as much as possible. So if you bring some presents with you, we will send them all to him to distribute.” The party was an enormous success.

Hoover, December 25th, 1931

Your annual Christmas service . . . is a dramatic and inspiring event of national interest. It symbolizes and vivifies our greatest Christian festival with its eternal message of unselfishness, joy, and peace. ³

Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt (1933-1945)

Eleanor initiated Christmas planning each year. Her gift giving list included over 200 names. She began buying gifts in January and regularly put things away in her special “Christmas Closet.” Throughout the year she added new items – gifts for family, friends, and almost everyone on the White House Staff. Each October, she would take over a storage room on the third floor of the White House to wrap the gifts. On Christmas, Franklin would be so interested in the gifts for others that it might be three or four days after Christmas before he was persuaded to open his own.

For the President, Christmas was a time for family and close friends. The tree was set up on Christmas Eve and the President directed his grandchildren in the placement of every ornament. After the tree was decorated, FDR had the grandchildren gather around while he read Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” or recited it from memory. Following the reading, the children would race upstairs to the President’s bedroom where they would hang their stockings on his mantel.

FDR, December 24th, 1935

Around the Manger of the Babe of Bethlehem “all Nations and kindreds and tongues” [Revelation 7:9] find unity. . . . The spirit of Christmas breathes an eternal message of peace and good-will to all men. We pause, therefore, on this Holy Night and . . . rejoice that nineteen hundred years ago, heralded by angels, there came into the world One whose message was of peace, who gave to all mankind a new commandment of love. In that message of love and of peace we find the true meaning of Christmas. And so I greet you with the greeting of the Angels on that first Christmas at Bethlehem which, resounding through centuries, still rings out with its eternal message: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will to men.” ⁴

FDR, December 24th, 1939

In the happiness of this Eve of the most blessed day in the year, I give to all of my countrymen the old, old greeting – “Merry Christmas – Happy Christmas.” . . . Let us rather pray that we may be given strength to live for others – to live more closely to the words of the Sermon on the Mount and to pray that peoples in the nations which are at war may also read, learn and inwardly digest these deathless words. May their import reach into the hearts of all men and of all nations. I offer them as my Christmas message:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
“Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
“Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” ⁵

FDR, December 24th, 1941 (Following Pearl Harbor)

There are many men and women in America – sincere and faithful men and women – who are asking themselves this Christmas. . . . How can we meet and worship with love and with uplifted spirit and heart in a world at war, a world of fighting and suffering and death? . . . How can we put the world aside . . . to rejoice in the birth of Christ? . . . And even as we ask these questions, we know the answer. There is another preparation demanded of this Nation beyond and beside the preparation of weapons and materials of war. There is demanded also of us the preparation of our hearts – the arming of our hearts. And when we make ready our hearts for the labor and the suffering and the ultimate victory which lie ahead, then we observe Christmas Day – with all of its memories and all of its meanings – as we should. Looking into the days to come, I have set aside a day of prayer. ⁶

FDR, December 24th, 1944 (Following D-Day)

Here, at home, we will celebrate this Christmas Day in our traditional American way – because of its deep spiritual meaning to us; because the teachings of Christ are fundamental in our lives; and because we want our youngest generation to grow up knowing the significance of this tradition and the story of the coming of the immortal Prince of Peace and Good Will. [He then led in a prayer for the troops] We pray that with victory will come a new day of peace on earth in which all the Nations of the earth will join together for all time. That is the spirit of Christmas, the holy day. May that spirit live and grow throughout the world in all the years to come. ⁷

Harry & Bess Truman (1945-1953)

It became a tradition for the First Family to go home to Independence, Missouri, for Christmas. The Chief Executive, however, always remained in Washington until after the staff party on Christmas Eve.

Truman, December 24th, 1945

This is the Christmas that a war-weary world has prayed for through long and awful years. . . . We meet in the spirit of the first Christmas, when the midnight choir sang the hymn of joy: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” Let us not forget that the coming of the Savior brought a time of long peace to the Roman World. . . . From the manger of Bethlehem came a new appeal to the minds and hearts of men: “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.” . . . Would that the world would accept that message in this time of its greatest need! . . . We must strive without ceasing to make real the prophecy of Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” In this day, whether it be far or near, the Kingdoms of this world shall become indeed the Kingdom of God and He will reign forever and ever, Lord of Lords and King of Kings. ⁸

Truman, December 24th, 1949

Since returning home, I have been reading again in our family Bible some of the passages which foretold this night. . . . We miss the spirit of Christmas if we consider the Incarnation as an indistinct and doubtful, far-off event unrelated to our present problems. We miss the purport of Christ’s birth if we do not accept it as a living link which joins us together in spirit as children of the ever-living and true God. In love alone – the love of God and the love of man – will be found the solution of all the ills which afflict the world today. ⁹

Truman, December 24th, 1950 (During the Korean War)

At this Christmastime we should renew our faith in God. We celebrate the hour in which God came to man. It is fitting that we should turn to Him. . . . But all of us – at home, at war, wherever we may be – are within reach of God’s love and power. We all can pray. We all should pray. . . . We should pray for a peace which is the fruit of righteousness. The Nation already is in the midst of a Crusade of Prayer. On the last Sunday of the old year, there will be special services devoted to a revival of faith. I call upon all of you to enlist in this common cause. . . . We are all joined in the fight against the tyranny of communism. Communism is godless. Democracy is the harvest of faith – faith in one’s self, faith in one’s neighbors, faith in God. Democracy’s most powerful weapon is not a gun, tank, or bomb. It is faith. . . . Let us pray at this Christmastime for the wisdom, the humility, and the courage to carry on in this faith. ¹⁰

Truman, December 24th, 1952

Through Jesus Christ the world will yet be a better and a fairer place. This faith sustains us today as it has sustained mankind for centuries past. This is why the Christmas story, with the bright stars shining and the angels singing, moves us to wonder and stirs our hearts to praise. Now, my fellow countrymen, I wish for all of you a Christmas filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, and many years of future happiness with the peace of God reigning upon this earth. ¹¹

Dwight & Mamie Eisenhower (1953-1961)

Unlike other Presidents who distinguished political from household staff, the Eisenhowers brought both together (more than 500 in all) for a Christmas party each year. For the White House staff, Mamie purchased gifts in area department stores, personally wrapping each one to save money.

President Eisenhower took a personal interest in the gifts and cards that were sent from the White House. Ike was an artist in his own right and allowed six of his own paintings to be used as Christmas gifts and cards during his administration. In eight years, Hallmark produced a prodigious 38 different Christmas cards and gift prints for the President and First Lady. No previous administration, nor any since Eisenhower’s, has sent such a variety of holiday greetings from the White House.

For the Christmas of 1958, Mamie pulled out all the stops in decorating the White House. She had 27 decorated trees, carols were piped into every room and greenery was wrapped around every column.

John & Jacqueline Kennedy (1961-1963)

In 1961, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy began the tradition of selecting a theme for the official White House Christmas tree. She decorated a tree placed in the oval Blue Room with ornamental toys, birds and angels modeled after Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite.

The first card to contain an explicitly religious element was in 1963, which featured a photo of a crèche set up in the East Room of the White House. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, had signed 30 cards before their final trip to Dallas where he was assassinated. None of these cards were ever mailed.

Lyndon & Ladybird Johnson (1963-1969)

Lyndon and Ladybird Johnson spent four of their six presidential Christmases in Texas rather than Washington. The Christmas of 1967 (the 7th) was special for the Johnsons because their daughter, Lynda, was married to Charles Robb in the White House on December 9th with 650 guests in attendance. The celebrating continued during Christmas and they spent that Christmas in Washington, the first in seven years.

The Johnsons final Christmas in the White House in 1968 was a time of reflection for them and the opportunity to say goodbye to their friends. On December 23rd, President Johnson sent Christmas greetings to the American troops in Southeast Asia, which included his two sons-in-law.

The First Lady committed herself to the beautification of America and the planting of trees. Except for their unplanned first Christmas in the Executive Mansion, all the cards and gift prints of later years were to feature trees.

LBJ, December 22nd, 1963

We were taught by Him whose birth we commemorate that after death there is life. . . . In these last 200 years we have guided the building of our Nation and our society by those principles and precepts brought to earth nearly 2,000 years ago on that first Christmas. ¹²

LBJ, December 15th, 1967

In a few days we shall all celebrate the birth of His Holiness on earth. . . . We shall acknowledge the Kingdom of a Child in a world of men. That Child – we should remember – grew into manhood Himself, preached and moved men in many walks of life, and died in agony. But His death – so the Christian faith tells us – was not the end. For Him, and for millions of men and women ever since, it marked a time of triumph – when the spirit of life triumphed over death. ¹³

Richard & Pat Nixon (1969-1974)

The Vietnam War was going strong when the Nixons entered the White House in 1969. Pat Nixon personally supervised an elaborate plan for decorating the White House. For the first time in a quarter century, wreaths were hung in every window. In the Great Hall stood a 19-foot fir tree with ornaments that featured the flowers of the fifty states. In response to the National Christmas Tree, war protestors set up their own tree and decorated it with soda pop cans and tin foil peace symbols.

Christmas celebrations during the following years were often filled with controversy and difficulty. In 1969, the Pageant of Peace was embroiled in legal controversy over the use of religious symbols, and in 1973, the nativity scene that had always been part of the pageant was no longer allowed.

Gerald & Betty Ford (1974-1977)

In 1975, to honor America’s upcoming bicentennial celebration, the National Christmas Tree was decorated with 4,600 red, white, and blue ornaments and 12,000 lights. On the top of the 45-foot blue spruce sat a 4-foot gold and green replica of the Liberty Bell. There were also 13 smaller trees representing the 13 colonies and 44 other trees placed in a row representing states and territories.

Ford, December 18th, 1975

As we gather here before our Nation’s Christmas tree, symbolic of the communion of Americans at Christmastime, we remind ourselves of the eternal truths by which we live. . . . In our 200 years, we Americans have always honored the spiritual testament of 2,000 years ago. We embrace the spirit of the Prince of Peace so that we might find peace in our own hearts and in our own land, and hopefully in the world as well. ¹⁴

Jimmy & Rosayln Carter (1977-1981)

One of the most interesting and controversial aspects of the Carters Presidential Christmases concerned greeting cards. In 1977, the Carters ordered and sent 60,000 Christmas cards, substantially more than any previous administration. In 1978, the number jumped to 100,000 and in 1979 when there were 105,000, President Carter finally established a White House committee to look into the problem of too many Christmas cards!

The hostage crisis in Iran dominated the holiday celebrations of 1979 and 1980. In 1979, the National Christmas Tree and fifty surrounding trees each showed a single light, one for each of the hostages. The President promised to turn on the other lights when the hostages were freed. Because the hostages were still in captivity, the following year the lights on the tree were turned on for 417 seconds on Christmas Eve – one second for each day they had been held.

Carter, December 15th, 1977

Christmas has a special meaning for those of us who are Christians, those of us who believe in Christ, those of us who know that almost 2,000 years ago, the Son of Peace was born to give us a vision of perfection, a vision of humility, a vision of unselfishness, a vision of compassion, a vision of love. ¹⁵

Carter, December 18th, 1980

In the first Christmas, the people who lived in the land of the Jews were hoping for a Messiah. They prayed God to send them that savior, and when the shepherds arrived at the place to see their prayers answered they didn’t find a king, they found a little baby. And I’m sure they were very disappointed to see that God had not answered their prayers properly, but we Christians know that the prayers had been answered in a very wonderful way. God knew how to answer prayer. ¹⁶

Ronald & Nancy Reagan (1981-1989)

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan began another custom by authorizing the first official White House ornament, copies of which were made available for purchase.

In 1984, the Nativity Scene was allowed to return to the Pageant of Peace.

Christmas in Illinois, where both Ronald and Nancy Reagan grew up, was a sharp contrast to their Christmases in Washington. The President has recalled that his family never had a really fancy Christmas. During the Depression, when they couldn’t afford a Christmas tree, his mother would decorate a table or make a cardboard fireplace out of a packing box.

Reagan, December 23rd, 1981 (click here to listen to this)

At this special time of year, we all renew our sense of wonder in recalling the story of the first Christmas in Bethlehem, nearly 2,000 year ago. Some celebrate Christmas as the birthday of a great and good philosopher and teacher. Others of us believe in the Divinity of the child born in Bethlehem, that He was and is the promised Prince of Peace. . . . Tonight, in millions of American homes, the glow of the Christmas tree is a reflection of the love Jesus taught us. . . . Christmas means so much because of one special child. ¹⁷

Reagan, December 16th, 1982

In this holiday season, we celebrate the birthday of One Who, for almost 2,000 years, has been a greater influence on humankind than all the rulers, all the scholars, all the armies and all the navies that ever marched or sailed, all put together. He brought to the world the simple message of peace on Earth, good will to all mankind. Some celebrate the day as marking the birth of a great and good man, a wise teacher and prophet, and they do so sincerely. But for many of us it’s also a holy day, the birthday of the Prince of Peace, a day when “God so loved the world” that He sent us His only begotten Son to assure forgiveness of our sins. ¹⁸

Reagan, December 15th, 1983

Many stories have been written about Christmas. Charles Dickens’ “Carol” is probably the most famous. Well, I’d like to read some lines from a favorite of mine called, “One Solitary Life,” which describes for me the meaning of Christmas. [He then read the full story.] . . . I have always believed that the message of Jesus is one of hope and joy. I know there are those who recognize Christmas Day as the birthday of a great and good man, a wise teacher who gave us principles to live by. And then there are others of us who believe that He was the Son of God, that He was Divine. If we live our lives for truth, for love, and for God, we never need be afraid. ¹⁹

Reagan, December 12th, 1985

We do not know the exact moment the Christ Child was born, only what we would have seen if we’d been standing there as we stand here now: Suddenly, a star from heaven shining in our eyes, shining with brilliant beauty across the skies, a star pointing toward eternity in the night, like a great ring of pure and endless light, and then all was calm, and all was bright. Such was the beginning of one solitary life that would shake the world as never before or since. When we speak of Jesus and of His life, we speak of a man revered as a prophet and teacher by people of all religions, and Christians speak of someone greater – a man Who was and is Divine. He brought forth a power that is infinite and a promise that is eternal, a power greater than all mankind’s military might, for His power is Godly love, love that can lift our hearts and soothe our sorrows and heal our wounds and drive away our fears. . . . If each of us could give but a fraction to one another of what He gave to the whole human family, how many hearts could heal, how much sorrow and pain could be driven away. ²⁰

George & Barbara Bush (1989-1993)

Mrs. Bush took particular pleasure in hosting a special party for homeless children from the Central Union Mission in Washington, DC. She distributed special Christmas bags filled with gifts and then read them Christmas stories. She sometimes would tell the stories in her own words, giving it her own personal touch.

The First Lady added her own special touches to the holiday with her annual cherry picker ride to hang the star at the top of the National Christmas Tree, a trip she took 12 times beginning in the Reagan Administration as the wife of the Vice President.

Bush, December 18th, 1989

During the beautiful and holy season of Christmas, our hearts are filled with the same wonder, gratitude, and joy that led the psalmist of old to ask, “When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained, What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that Thou visitest him?” At Christmas, we, too, rejoice in the mystery of God’s love for us – love revealed through the gift of Christ’s birth. Born into a family of a young carpenter and his wife, in a stable shared by beasts of the field, our Savior came to live among ordinary men. Yet, in time, the miraculous nature of this simple event became clear. Christ’s birth changed the course of history, bringing the light of hope to a world dwelling in the darkness of sin and death. Today, nearly 2,000 years later, the shining promise of that first Christmas continues to give our lives a sense of peace and purpose. Our words and deeds, when guided by the example of Christ’s life, can help others share in the joy of man’s Redemption. ²¹

Bill & Hillary Clinton (1993-2001)

Clinton, December 22nd, 1997

The beloved Christmas story itself is a story of light, for, as the Gospel of John tells us, Jesus came into the world as “the true Light” [John 1:9] that illumines all humankind. Almost 2,000 years later, that Light still shines amid the dark places of our world. ²²

Clinton, December 21st, 1999

Saint Matthew’s Gospel tells us that on the first Christmas 2000 years ago, a bright star shone vividly in the eastern sky, heralding the birth of Jesus and the beginning of His hallowed mission as teacher, healer, servant, and savior. . . . His luminous teachings have brought hope and joy to generations of believers. . . . His timeless message of God’s enduring and unconditional love for each and every person continues to strengthen and inspire us. . . . Love, peace, joy, hope – so many beautiful words are woven through our Christmas songs and prayers and traditions. ²³

George & Laura Bush (2001-2009)

George W. Bush is the first president to choose a Yule card with a Scripture. First lady Laura Bush supervises the card selection. She picked cards with Bible verses when her husband was governor and has continued to do so in the White House.

In 2001 George and Laura incorporated a scripture depicting their faith in post 9/11 times. It said “Thy face, Lord do I seek. I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living.” Psalm 27. Laura Bush believed that this is what really happened after the tragedy of September 11.

In 2004 George and Laura sent holiday cards with a Bible verse from Psalms (95:2): “Let us come before him with Thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.”

Bush, December 6th, 2001

Now once again, we celebrate Christmas in a time of testing, with American troops far from home. . . . It is worth recalling the words from a beautiful Christmas hymn. In the third verse of “Oh Holy Night” we sing, “His law is love, and His gospel is peace. Chains ye shall break, for the slave is our brother. And in His name all oppression shall cease. . . . We fight so that oppression may cease, and even in the midst of war, we pray for peace on Earth and good will to men. ²⁴

Bush, December 4th, 2003

Throughout the Christmas season our thoughts turn to a star in the east, seen 20 centuries ago, and to a light that can guide us still. . . . The story of Christmas is familiar to us all, and it still holds a sense of wonder and surprise. When the good news came first to a young woman from Nazareth, her response was understandable. She asked, “How can this be?” The news would bring difficulty to her family and suspicion upon herself. Yet, Mary gave her reply, “Be it unto me according to Thy word.” The wait for a new king had been long, and the manner of his arrival was not as many had expected. The king’s first cries were heard by shepherds and cattle. He was raised by a carpenter’s son. Yet this one humble life lifted the sights of humanity forever. And in His words we hear a voice like no other. . . . We don’t know all of God’s ways, yet the Christmas story promises that God’s purpose is justice and His plan is peace. At times this belief is tested. During the Civil War, Longfellow wrote a poem that later became a part of a Christmas carol, “Hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on Earth, good will to men.” That poem also reminds us that hate is not the final word: “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep, `God is not dead, nor doth He sleep, the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on Earth, good will to men.”‘ ²⁵

Endnotes

¹. Much of the general information in this piece concerning the Christmas practices of the presidents is directly excerpted from the primary sources: “Background Info: Christmas at the White House,” White House Historical Association; “Christmas at the White House,” Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum (at: https://hoover.archives.gov/exhibits/WHChristmas/index.html); and from the White House (at: https://www.whitehousechristmas.com/WHC/default.ASPX). The direct presidential quotes related to Christmas are each individually footnoted.

². The information on historic Christmas in early America is taken from Celebrate Liberty (2003), David Barton, editor, pp. 192-193, n, available at https://wallbuilders.com/store/product170.html.

³.Herbert Hoover, “Message to the Nation’s Christmas Trees Association,” The American Presidency Project, December 25, 1931, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=22957).

⁴. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Christmas Greeting to the Nation,” The American Presidency Project, December 24, 1935, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15005).

⁵. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Radio Christmas Greeting to the Nation,” The American Presidency Project, December 24, 1939, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15854).

⁶. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Christmas Eve Message to the Nation,” The American Presidency Project, December 24, 1941, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16073).

⁷. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address to the Nation,” The American Presidency Project, December 24, 1944, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16485).

⁸. Harry S. Truman, “Address at the Lighting of the National Community Christmas Tree on the White House Grounds,” The American Presidency Project, December 24, 1945, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12250).

⁹. Harry S. Truman, “Address in Connection With Lighting of the National Community Christmas Tree on the White House Grounds,” The American Presidency Project, December 24, 1949, Harry S. Truman’s Christmas Eve Broadcast, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13373).

¹⁰. Harry S. Truman, “Address Recorded for Broadcast on the Occasion of the Lighting of the National Community Christmas Tree on the White House Grounds,” The American Presidency Project, December 24, 1950, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13698).

¹¹. Harry S. Truman, “Remarks Upon Lighting the National Community Christmas Tree,” The American Presidency Project, December 24, 1952, Harry S. Truman’s Christmas Eve Broadcast, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14368).

¹². Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks at the Lighting of the Nation’s Christmas Tree,” The American Presidency Project, December 22, 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Christmas Eve Radio and T.V. Broadcast, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26587).

¹³. Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks at the Lighting of the Nation’s Christmas Tree,” The American Presidency Project, December 15, 1967, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=28610).

¹⁴. Gerald R. Ford, “Remarks at the Lighting of the National Community Christmas Tree,” The American Presidency Project, December 18, 1975, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=5445).

¹⁵. Jimmy Carter, “Christmas Pageant of Peace Remarks on Lighting the National Community Christmas Tree,” The American Presidency Project, December 15, 1977, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=7019).

¹⁶.Jimmy Carter, “Christmas Pageant of Peace Remarks on Lighting the National Community Christmas Tree,” The American Presidency Project, December 18, 1980, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=44421).

¹⁷. Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation About Christmas and the Situation in Poland,” The American Presidency Project, December 23, 1981, Reagan’s Christmas Address from the Oval Office, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=43384).

¹⁸. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks on Lighting the National Community Christmas Tree,” The American Presidency Project, December 16, 1982, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=42123).

¹⁹. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks on Lighting the National Community Christmas Tree,” The American Presidency Project, December 15, 1983, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=40873).

²⁰. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks on Lighting the National Christmas Tree,” The American Presidency Project, December 12, 1985, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=38161).

²¹ George H. Bush, “Message on the Observance of Christmas,” The American Presidency Project, December 18. 1989, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=17953).

²². William J. Clinton, “Message on the Observance of Christmas,” The American Presidency Project, December 22, 1997, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=53733).

²³. William J. Clinton, “Message on the Observance of Christmas,” The American Presidency Project, December 21, 1999, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=57106).

²⁴. George W. Bush, “Remarks on Lighting the National Christmas Tree,” The American Presidency Project, December 6, 2001, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=73502).

²⁵. George W. Bush, “Remarks on Lighting the National Christmas Tree,” The American Presidency Project, December 4, 2003, (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=63610).

Confronting Civil War Revisionism: Why The South Went To War

The rewriting of history in any area is possible only if: (1) the public does not know enough about specific events to object when a wrong view is introduced; or (2) the discovery of previously unknown historical material brings to light new facts that require a correction of the previous view. However, historical revisionism – the rewriting “of an accepted, usually long-standing view especially a revision of historical events and movements” ¹ – is successful only through the first means.

Over the past sixty years, many groups, exploiting a general lack of public knowledge about particular movements or events, have urged upon the public various revisionist views in order to justify their particular agenda. For example, those who use activist courts to advance policies they are unable to pass through the normal legislative process defend judicial abuse by asserting three historically unfounded doctrines: (1) the judiciary is to protect the minority from the majority; (2) the judiciary exists to review and correct the acts of elective bodies; and (3) the judiciary is best equipped to “evolve” the culture to the needs of an ever-changing society. These claims are directly refuted by original constitutional writings, especially The Federalist Papers. (See also the WallBuilders’ book, Restraining Judicial Activism.)

Likewise, those who pursue a secular public square seek to justify their agenda by asserting that the Founding Fathers: (1) were atheists, agnostics, and deists, and (2) wrote into the Constitution a strict separation of church and state requiring the exclusion of religious expressions from the public arena. These claims are also easily rebuttable through the Founders’ own writings and public acts. (See also the WallBuilders’ book, Original Intent.)

A third example of historical revisionism involves the claim that the 1860-1861 secession of the Southern States which caused the Civil War was not a result of the slavery issue but rather of oppressive federal economic policies. For example, a plaque in the Texas State Capitol declares:

Because we desire to perpetuate, in love and honor, the heroic deeds of those who enlisted in the Confederate Army and upheld its flag through four years of war, we, the children of the South, have united together in an organization called “Children of the Confederacy,” in which our strength, enthusiasm, and love of justice can exert its influence. We therefore pledge ourselves to preserve pure ideals; to honor our veterans; to study and teach the truths of history (one of the most important of which is that the war between the states was not a rebellion nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery), and to always act in a manner that will reflect honor upon our noble and patriotic ancestors. (emphasis added)

Other sources make the same false claim, ² but four notable categories of Confederate records disprove these claims and indisputably show that the South’s desire to preserve slavery was indisputably the driving reason for the formation of the Confederacy.

1. Southern Secession Documents

From December 1860 through August 1861, the southern states met individually in their respective state conventions to decide whether to secede from the Union. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to decide in the affirmative, and its secession document repeatedly declared that it was leaving the Union to preserve slavery:

[A]n increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding [i.e., northern] states to the institution of slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations. . . . [T]hey have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery. . . . They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes [through the Underground Railroad]. . . . A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the states north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States [Abraham Lincoln] whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common government because he has declared that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. . . . The slaveholding states will no longer have the power of self-government or self-protection [over the issue of slavery] . . . ³

Following its secession, South Carolina requested the other southern states to join them in forming a southern Confederacy, explaining:

We . . . [are] dissolving a union with non-slaveholding confederates and seeking a confederation with slaveholding states. Experience has proved that slaveholding states cannot be safe in subjection to non-slaveholding states. . . . The people of the North have not left us in doubt as to their designs and policy. United as a section in the late presidential election, they have elected as the exponent of their policy one [Abraham Lincoln] who has openly declared that all the states of the United States must be made Free States or Slave States. . . . In spite of all disclaimers and professions [i.e., measures such as the Corwin Amendment, written to assure the southern states that Congress would not abolish slavery], there can be but one end by the submission by the South to the rule of a sectional anti-slavery government at Washington; and that end, directly or indirectly, must be the emancipation of the slaves of the South. . . . The people of the non-slaveholding North are not, and cannot be safe associates of the slaveholding South under a common government. . . . Citizens of the slaveholding states of the United States! . . . South Carolina desires no destiny separate from yours. . . . We ask you to join us in forming a Confederacy of Slaveholding States. ⁴

On January 9, 1861, Mississippi became the second state to secede, announcing:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world. . . . [A] blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution [slavery], a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove. The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787. [On July 13, 1787, when the nation still governed itself under the Articles of Confederation, the Continental Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance (which Mississippi here calls the “well-known Ordinance of 1787”). That Ordinance set forth provisions whereby the Northwest Territory could become states in the United States, and eventually the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota were formed from that Territory. As a requirement for statehood and entry into the United States, Article 6 of that Ordinance stipulated: “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory.”
When the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation, the Founding Fathers re-passed the “Northwest Ordinance” to ensure its continued effectiveness under the new Constitution. Signed into law by President George Washington on August 7, 1789, it retained the prohibition against slavery.
As more territory was gradually ceded to the United States (the Southern Territory – Mississippi and Alabama; the Missouri Territory – Missouri and Arkansas; etc.), Congress applied the requirements of the Ordinance to those new territories. Mississippi had originally entered the United States under the requirement that it not allow slavery, and it is here objecting not only to that requirement of its own admission to the United States but also to that requirement for the admission of other states.]. . . It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves and refuses protection to that right on the high seas [Congress banned the importation of slaves into America in 1808], in the territories [in the Northwest Ordinance of 1789, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854], and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction. . . . It advocates Negro equality, socially and politically. . . . We must either submit to degradation and to the loss of property [i.e., slaves] worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers to secure this as well as every other species of property. ⁵

(Notice that the Union’s claim that blacks and whites were equal both “socially and politically” was a claim too offensive for southern Democrat states to tolerate.)

Following its secession, Mississippi sent Fulton Anderson to the Virginia secession convention, where he told its delegates that Mississippi had seceded because they had unanimously approved a document “setting forth the grievances of the Southern people on the slavery question.” ⁶

On January 10, 1861, Florida became the third state to secede. In its preliminary resolutions setting forth reasons for secession, it acknowledged:

All hope of preserving the Union upon terms consistent with the safety and honor of the Slaveholding States has been finally dissipated by the recent indications of the strength of the anti-slavery sentiment in the Free States. ⁷

On January 11, 1861, Alabama became the fourth state to secede. Like the three states before her, Alabama’s document cited slavery; and it also cited the 1860 election victory of the Republicans as a further reason for secession, specifically condemning . . .

. . . the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States of America by a sectional party [the Republicans], avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions [slavery] and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama . . . ⁸

Georgia similarly invoked the 1860 Republican victory as a cause for secession, explaining:

A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the federal government has been committed [i.e., the Republican Party] will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia [in favor of secession]. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican Party under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. . . . The prohibition of slavery in the territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its [Republican] leaders and applauded by its followers. . . . [T]he abolitionists and their allies in the northern states have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions [i.e., slavery]. ⁹

Why was the Republican election victory a cause for secession? Because the Republican Party had been formed in May of 1854 on the almost singular issue of opposition to slavery (see WallBuilders’ work, American History in Black and White). Only six years later (in the election of 1860), voters gave Republicans control of the federal government, awarding them the presidency, the House, and the Senate.

The Republican agenda was clear, for every platform since its inception had boldly denounced slavery. In fact, when the U. S. Supreme Court delivered the 1857 Dred Scott ruling protecting slavery and declaring that Congress could not prohibit it even in federal territories, ¹⁰ the Republican platform strongly condemned that ruling and reaffirmed the right of Congress to ban slavery in the territories. ¹¹ But setting forth an opposite view, the Democrat platform praised the Dred Scott ruling ¹² and the continuation of slavery ¹³ and also loudly denounced all anti-slavery and abolition efforts. ¹⁴

The antagonistic position between the two parties over the slavery issue was clear; so when voters gave Republicans control of the federal government in 1860, southern slave-holding Democrat states saw the proverbial “handwriting on the wall” and promptly left the United States before Republicans could make good on their anti-slavery promises. It was for this reason that so many of the seceded states referenced the Republican victory in their secession documents.

It was not just southern Democrats who viewed the election of Lincoln and the Republicans as the death knell for slavery; many northern Democrats held the same view. In fact, New York City Democrat Mayor Fernando Wood not only attacked the Republican position on slavery but he also urged New York City to join with the South and secede, explaining:

With our aggrieved brethren of the Slave States, we have friendly relations and a common sympathy. We have not participated in the warfare upon their constitutional rights [of slaveholding] or their domestic institutions [slavery]. . . . It is certain that a dissolution [secession of the State of New York from the Union] cannot be peacefully accomplished except by the consent of the [Republican New York] Legislature itself. . . . [and] it is not probable that a partisan [Republican] majority will consent to a separation. . . . [So] why should not New York City, instead of supporting by her contributions in revenue two-thirds of the expenses of the United States, become also equally independent [i.e., secede]? . . . In this she would have the whole and united support of the southern states. ¹⁵

Other northern Democrats also assailed the anti-slavery positions of the Republicans – including Samuel Tilden (a New York state assemblyman and later the chair of the state Democrat Party, state governor, and then presidential candidate). Tilden affirmed that southern secession be could halted only if Republicans publicly abandoned their anti-slavery positions:

[T]he southern states will not by any possibility accept the avowed creed of the Republican Party as the permanent policy of the federative government as to slavery. . . . Nothing short of the recession [drawing back] of the Republican Party to the point of total and absolute non-action on the subject of slavery in the states and territories could enable it to reconcile to itself the people of the South. ¹⁶

Even the editorial page of the New York World endorsed the Democrats’ pro-slavery positions and condemned Republicans:

We cannot ask the South – we will not ask anybody – to live contentedly under a government . . . which burdens white men with oppressive debt and grinding taxation to try an unconstitutional experiment of giving freedom to Negroes. . . . A proposal for an abolition peace can never gain a hearing in the South. If the Abolition Party [Republicans] continues in power, the separation is final, [both] in feeling and in fact. ¹⁷

However, returning to an examination of southern secession documents, on January 19, 1861, Georgia became the fifth state to secede. Georgia then dispatched Henry Benning to Virginia to encourage its secession. At the Virginia convention, Benning explained to the delegates:

What was the reason that induced George to take the step of secession? That reason may be summed up in one single proposition: it was a conviction – a deep conviction on the part of Georgia – that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. This conviction was the main cause. ¹⁸

On January 26, 1861, Louisiana became the sixth state to secede. Days later, Texas was scheduled to hold its secession convention, and Louisiana sent Commissioner George Williamson to urge Texas to secede. Williamson told the Texas delegates:

Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern Confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery. . . . Louisiana and Texas have the same language, laws, and institutions. . . . and they are both so deeply interested in African slavery that it may be said to be absolutely necessary to their existence and is the keystone to the arch of their prosperity. . . . The people of Louisiana would consider it a most fatal blow to African slavery if Texas either did not secede or, having seceded, should not join her destinies to theirs in a Southern Confederacy. . . . As a separate republic, Louisiana remembers too well the whisperings of European diplomacy for the abolition of slavery in the times of annexation [Great Britain abolished slavery in 1833; by 1843, southern statesmen were alleging – without evidence – that Great Britain was involved in a plot to abolish slavery in America. Southern voices therefore called for the immediate annexation of pro-slavery Texas into the United States in order to increase pro-slavery territory, but anti-slavery leaders in Congress – including John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster – opposed that annexation. Their opposition was initially successful; and in his diary entry for June 10 & 17, 1844, John Quincy Adams enthused: “The vote in the United States Senate on the question of [admitting Texas] was, yeas, 16; nays, 35. I record this vote as a deliverance, I trust, by the special interposition of Almighty God. . . . The first shock of slave democracy is over. Moloch [a pagan god requiring human sacrifices] and Mammon [the god of riches] have sunk into momentary slumber. The Texas treason is blasted for the hour.” That victory, however, was only temporary; in 1845, Texas was eventually admitted as a slaveholding state.] not to be apprehensive of bolder demonstrations from the same quarter and the North in this country. The people of the slaveholding states are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery. The isolation of any one of them from the others would make her a theatre for abolition emissaries from the North and from Europe. Her existence would be one of constant peril to herself and of imminent danger to other neighboring slave-holding communities. . . . and taking it as the basis of our new government, we hope to form a slave-holding confederacy . . . ¹⁹

Williamson’s encouragement to the Texans turned out to be unnecessary, for on February 1, 1861, even before he arrived from Louisiana, Texas had already become the seventh state to secede. In its secession document, Texas announced:

[Texas] was received as a commonwealth, holding, maintaining, and protecting the institution known as Negro slavery – the servitude of the African to the white race within [Texas] – a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slaveholding states of the Confederacy. . . . In all the non-slave-holding states . . . the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party [i.e., the Republican Party] . . . based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these southern states and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men irrespective of race or color – a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of divine law. They demand the abolition of Negro slavery throughout the Confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and Negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us so long as a Negro slave remains in these states. . . . By the secession of six of the slave-holding states, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North or unite her destinies with the South. ²⁰

On April 17, 1861, Virginia became the eighth state to secede. It, too, acknowledged that the “oppression of the southern slave-holding states” (among which it numbered itself) had motivated its decision. ²¹

On May 8, 1861, Arkansas became the ninth state to join the Confederacy. Albert Pike (a prominent Arkansas newspaper owner and author of numerous legal works who became a Confederate general) explained why secession was unavoidable:

No concessions would now satisfy (and none ought now to satisfy) the South but such as would amount to a surrender of the distinctive principles by which the Republican Party coheres [exists], because none other or less would give the South peace and security. That Party would have to agree that in the view of the Constitution, slaves are property – that slavery might exist and should be legalized and protected in territory hereafter to be acquired to the southwest [e.g., New Mexico, Arizona, etc.], and that Negroes and mulattoes cannot be citizens of the United States nor vote at general elections in the states. . . . For that Party to make these concessions would simply be to commit suicide and therefore it is idle to expect from the North – so long as it [the Republican Party] rules there – a single concession of any value. ²²

As Pike knew, the federal government under the Republicans was unwilling to abandon its anti-slavery positions; therefore the only recourse for the guarantee of continued slavery in Arkansas was secession – which Arkansas did.

Eventually, North Carolina and Tennessee became the tenth and eleventh states to secede, thus finishing the formation of the new nation that titled itself the Slave-Holding Confederate States of America. Southern secession documents indisputably affirm that the South’s desire to preserve slavery was the driving force in its secession and thus a primary cause of the Civil War.

2. The Declarations of Congressmen who left Congress to Join the Confederacy

Beginning on January 21, 1861, southern Democrats serving in Congress began resigning en masse to join the Confederacy. During this time, many stood in their respective federal legislative chambers and delivered their farewell statements unequivocally affirming what the secession documents clearly declared.

For example, Democrat U. S. Senator Alfred Iverson of Georgia bluntly told his peers:

I may safely say, however, that nothing will satisfy them [the seceded states] or bring them back short of a full and explicit recognition and guarantee of the safety of their institution of domestic slavery. ²³

Democrat U. S. Senator Robert Toombs of Georgia (soon to become the Secretary of State for the Confederacy, and then a general in the Confederate Army) declared that the seceded South would return to the Union only if their pro-slavery demands were agreed to:

What do these Rebels demand? First, that the people of the United States shall have an equal right to emigrate and settle in the present or an future acquired territories with whatever property they may possess (including slaves). . . . The second proposition is that property in slaves shall be entitled to the same protection from the government of the United States, in all of its departments, everywhere, which the Constitution confers the power upon it to extend to any other property. . . . We demand in the next place . . . that a fugitive slave shall be surrendered under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 without being entitled either to a writ of habeas corpus or trial by jury or other similar obstructions of legislation. . . . Slaves – black “people,” you say – are entitled to trial by jury. . . . You seek to outlaw $4,000,000,000 of property [slaves] of our people in the territories of the United States. Is not that a cause of war? . . . My distinguished friend from Mississippi [Mr. Jefferson Davis], another moderate gentleman like myself, proposed simply to get a recognition that we had the right to our own – that man could have property in man – and it met with the unanimous refusal even of the most moderate, Union-saving, compromising portion of the Republican party. . . . Mr. Lincoln thus accepts every cardinal principle of the Abolitionists; yet he ignorantly puts his authority for abolition upon the Declaration of Independence, which was never made any part of the public law of the United States. . . . Very well; you not only want to break down our constitutional rights – you not only want to upturn our social system – your people not only steal our slaves and make them freemen to vote against us – but you seek to bring an inferior race into a condition of equality, socially and politically, with our own people. ²⁴ (emphasis added)

Democrat U. S. Senator Clement Clay of Alabama (soon to become a foreign diplomat for the Confederacy) also expounded the same points:

Not a decade, nor scarce a lustrum [five year period], has elapsed since [America’s] birth that has not been strongly marked by proofs of the growth and power of that anti-slavery spirit of the northern people which seeks the overthrow of that domestic institution [slavery] of the South, which is not only the chief source of her prosperity but the very basis of her social order and state polity. . . . No sentiment is more insulting or more hostile to our domestic tranquility, to our social order, and our social existence, than is contained in the declaration that our Negroes are entitled to liberty and equality with the white man. . . . To crown the climax of insult to our feelings and menace of our rights, this party nominated to the presidency a man who not only endorses the platform but promises in his zealous support of its principles to disregard the judgment of your courts [i.e., Lincoln had indicated that he would ignore the Supreme Court’s egregious Dred Scott decision], the obligations of your Constitution, and the requirements of his official oath, by approving any bill prohibiting slavery in the territories of the United States. ²⁵

Democrat U. S. Senator John Slidell of Louisiana (soon to be a Confederate diplomat to France and Great Britain), echoed the same grievances:

We all consider the election of Mr. Lincoln, with his well-known antecedents and avowed [anti-slavery] principles and purposes . . . as conclusive evidence of the determined hostility of the Northern masses to our institutions. We believe that he conscientiously entertains the opinions which he has so often and so explicitly declared, and that having been elected on the [anti-slavery] issues thus presented, he will honestly endeavor to carry them into execution. While now [as a result of secession] we have no fears of servile insurrection [i.e. a slave revolt], even of a partial character, we know that his inauguration as President of the United States, with our assent, would have been considered by many of our slaves as the day of their emancipation. ²⁶

Democrat U. S. House Representative William Yancey (who became a Confederate diplomat to Europe and then a Confederate Senator) similarly complained:

[The North is] united in pronouncing slavery a political and social evil. . . . There exists but one party that, either in spirit or sentiment, manifests any disposition to stand by the South and the Constitution, and that is the Democratic Party. . . . The institution of slavery. . . . exists for the benefit of the South and is its chief source of wealth and power; and now in the hour of its peril – assailed by the great Northern antagonistic force [the Republicans and abolitionists] – it must look to the South alone for protection. . . . The question then, naturally arises, what protection have we against the arbitrary course of the Northern majority? . . . The answer is . . . withdraw from it [i.e., secede]! ²⁷

Perhaps the no-holds-barred pro-slavery position of Democrats and southern states was best summarized by Democrat U. S. Senator Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana (who became the first Attorney General of the Confederacy, then its Secretary of War, and finally its Secretary of State), who declared:

I never have admitted any power in Congress to prohibit slavery in the territories anywhere, upon any occasion, or at any time.²⁸ (emphasis added)

Once the South seceded and organized its Confederate government, it immediately sought official diplomatic recognition from Great Britain and France, wrongly believing that by halting the export of Southern cotton into those nations they could strong-arm them into an official recognition of the Confederacy. But Great Britain and Europe already held large stores of cotton in reserve and also had access to textile imports from other nations, so the poorly conceived Confederate plan was unsuccessful.

France had been willing to extend official recognition to the Confederacy but would not do so unless Great Britain did the same. But Charles Francis Adams (U. S. Minister to England, and the son of John Quincy Adams and grandson of John Adams) rallied anti-slavery forces in Europe and England to successfully lobby Great Britain not to extend official recognition to the Confederacy. Those early diplomatic successes by the Union were bolstered by President Lincoln’s 1862 announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in the American states in rebellion – an act very popular among working-class Britons. By October 1863, the Confederacy, not having received the official support it so badly needed, expelled British representatives from southern states.

Although Great Britain never extended official recognition, she did indirectly assist the South in many ways, including supplying the Confederacy with naval cruisers that pillaged Union merchant shipping and also providing weapons to southern troops, including the Whitworth rifle (considered one of the most accurate rifles in the Civil War). A number of Britons even crossed the ocean to serve in the Confederate Army; and in some British ranks, the sympathy for the Confederacy was so strong that after popular Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was accidentally shot down by his own troops, the mourning was just as visible in parts of England as it had been throughout the Confederacy. Some in the British press even likened the death of Jackson to that of their own national hero, Lord Nelson; and a British monument to General Jackson was even commissioned, paid for, and transported to Richmond, Virginia by Confederate sympathizers in Great Britain.

Christian leaders in France – seeing Britain’s unofficial support for the slave-holding Confederacy – dispatched a fiery letter to British clergy, strongly urging them to oppose every British effort to help the Confederacy. As the French clergy explained:

No more revolting spectacle has ever been before the civilized world than a Confederacy – consisting mainly of Protestants – forming itself and demanding independence, in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, with a professed design of maintaining and propagating slavery. The triumph of such a cause would put back the progress of Christian civilization and of humanity a whole century. ²⁹

Foreign observers clearly saw what southern Democrat U. S. Representatives and Senators in Congress had already announced: the Civil War was the result of the South’s desire to perpetuate slavery.

3. The Confederate Constitution

On February 9, 1861 (following the secession of the seventh state), the seceded states organized their new Confederate government, electing Jefferson Davis (a resigned Democrat U. S. Senator from Mississippi) as their national president and Alexander Stephens (a resigned Democrat U. S. Representative from Georgia) as their national vice-president. On March 11 (only a week after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President [Confederate apologists not only claim that slavery was not the central issue to the Confederacy but they also frequently portray Abraham Lincoln as a dictator, tyrant, atheist, homosexual, incompetent, drunk, etc. To “prove” this view, they rely heavily on The Real Lincoln by Thomas Dilorenzo (2002), The Real Lincoln by Charles Minor (1901), and Herndon’s Lincoln by William H. Herndon (1888). These three books (and a few others) portray Lincoln in a negative light, but literally hundreds of other scholarly biographies written about Lincoln – including by Pulitzer Prize-winning historians such as Carl Sandburg, Ida Tarbell, Garry Wills, Merrill Peterson, Don Fehrenbacher, and others – reached an opposite conclusion.
A similar corollary would be to study the life of Jesus only by reading The DaVinci Code or The Last Temptation of Christ, or to study the life of George Washington only by using W. E. Woodward’s George Washington: The Image and the Man. In both cases, those writings present a view of that person but hundreds of other writings present an opposite and more accurate view; so, too, with Lincoln. The view of Lincoln presented by Confederate apologists is indeed a view, but it is contradicted by scores of other writers who, after examining all the historical evidence, reached an opposite conclusion.]), a constitution was adopted for the new confederacy of slave-holding states – a constitution that explicitly protected slavery in numerous clauses:

ARTICLE I, Section 9, (4) No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in Negro slaves shall be passed.
ARTICLE IV, Section 2, (1) The citizens of each state . . . shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any state of this Confederacy with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.
ARTICLE IV, Section 2, (3) [A] slave or other person held to service or labor in any state or territory of the Confederate States under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall . . . be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs.
ARTICLE IV, Section 3, (3) The Confederate States may acquire new territory. . . . In all such territory, the institution of Negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States. ³⁰

Ironically, southern apologists claim that the Confederacy was formed to preserve “states’ rights,” yet the Confederacy expressly prohibited any state from exercising its own “state’s right” to end slavery. Clearly, the Confederacy’s real issue was the preservation of slavery at all costs – even to the point that it constitutionally forbade the abolition of slavery by any of its member states.

4. Declaration of Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens

On March 21, 1861 (less than two weeks after the Confederacy had formed its constitution), Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens delivered a policy speech setting forth the purpose of the new government. That speech was entitled “African Slavery: The Corner-Stone of the Southern Confederacy.” In it, Stephens first acknowledged that the Founding Fathers – even those from the South – had never intended for slavery to remain in America:

The prevailing ideas entertained by him [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature – that it was wrong in principle – socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent [temporary] and pass away. ³¹

What did Vice-President Stephens and the new Confederate nation think about these anti-slavery ideas of the Founding Fathers?

Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. . . . and the idea of a government built upon it. . . . Our new government [the Confederate States of America] is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid – its cornerstone rests – upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery – subordination to the superior [white] race – is his natural and moral condition. This – our new [Confederate] government – is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. ³² (emphasis added)

Notice that by the title (as well as the content) of his speech, Confederate Vice-President Stephens affirmed that slavery was the central issue distinguishing the Confederacy.

Were Economic Policies a Major Factor in Secession?

Many southern apologists assert that the primary cause of the Civil War was unjust economic policies imposed on the South by northerners in Congress, ³³ but secession records refute that claim. In fact, of the eleven secession documents, only five mention economic issues – and each was in direct conjunction with slavery. For example:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions; and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. ³⁴ MISSISSIPPI
Texas [and] Louisiana . . . have large areas of fertile, uncultivated lands peculiarly adapted to slave labor; and they are both so deeply interested in African slavery that it may be said to be absolutely necessary to their existence and is the keystone to the arch of their prosperity. ³⁵ LOUISIANA
They [the northern abolitionists in Congress] have impoverished the slave-holding states by unequal and partial legislation [attempting to abolish slavery], thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance. ³⁶ TEXAS
We had shed our blood and paid our money for its [slavery’s] acquisition. . . . [But b]y their [the North’s] declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property [i.e., slaves] in the common territories of the Union. . . . To avoid these evils, we . . . will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquility [by forming the Confederacy]. ³⁷ GEORGIA
We prefer, however, our system of industry . . . by which starvation is unknown and abundance crowns the land – by which order is preserved by an unpaid police and many fertile regions of the world where the white man cannot labor are brought into usefulness by the labor of the African, and the whole world is blessed by our productions. ³⁸ SOUTH CAROLINA

Clearly, even the economic reasons set forth by the South as causes for secession were directly related to slavery. Therefore, to claim that economic policies and not slavery was the cause of the Civil War is to make a distinction where there is no difference.

Summary

Numerous categories of official Confederate documents affirm that slavery was indeed the primary issue that drove the secession movement and was central to the rebellion; it is therefore blatant and unmitigated revisionism to assert – as do Confederate apologists – that “one of the most important” of the “truths of history” is “that the War Between the States was not a rebellion nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery.” ³⁹

[Many southerners ardently insist on describing the conflict as “The War Between the States” and strenuously object to use of the descriptor “Civil War” (see, for example, “Let’s Say ‘War Between The States’ “ (at: https://www.civilwarpoetry.org/FAQ/wbts.html)). However, cursory examinations of dozens of Confederate documents, as well as histories of the war written by Confederates immediately following the conflict, demonstrate that the descriptor they themselves most frequently used was “Civil War.” (Other descriptors used much less often by southern authors include “War Between the States,” “War of Southern Secession,” and “War for Southern Independence.”) Therefore, the assertion that the term “Civil War” is an inaccurate or biased title for the conflict is refuted by an examination of Confederate soldiers and historians who lived at the time of that conflict. While the question of whether the conflict constituted a “rebellion” was not addressed by this work, a simple query raises a significant implication: If the “war between the states” was not a “rebellion” (as modern southern apologists assert), then why did southern leaders during the Civil War describe themselves and other southern participants as “Rebels” – a derivate of the word “rebellion”? The simple descriptor “Rebels” used by the Confederates themselves certainly suggests that they certainly viewed the Civil War as a “Rebellion.”]

Endnotes

2. “Derby, Kansas Middle School Suspension Denounced by Sons of Confederate Veterans,” Sons of Confederate Veterans which declares “[T]he War Between the States was fought over issues such as the rights of individual states to set their own tariffs, establish their own governments, and receive full profit from their agricultural production. . . . the question of slavery was brought into the war by Lincoln in late 1862 as an emotional one to bolster the sagging Northern war effort . . .”; and “Children of the Confederacy: Creed,” United Daughters of the Confederacy which declares “We, therefore pledge ourselves . . . to study and teach the truths of history (one of the most important of which is, that the War Between the States was not a rebellion, nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery)”; etc.

3.Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America During the Great Rebellion (Washington: Philip & Solomons, 1865), 15-16, “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union,” December 24, 1860.

4.Convention of South Carolina, “Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States,” Teaching American History, December 25, 1860.

5. “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union, January 9, 1861.”

6. Addresses Delivered Before the Virginia State Convention, February 1861 (Richmond: Wyatt M. Elliott, 1861), “Address of Hon. Fulton Anderson, of Mississippi,” 7.

7. Orville Victor, The History, Civil, Political and Military, of the Southern Rebellion (New York: James D. Torrey, 1861), 1:194, Florida, “Preliminary Resolution Prior to Secession,” January 7, 1861.

8. Victor, The History (1861) 1:195, “An Ordinance to dissolve the union between the State of Alabama and the other States united under the compact styled ‘The Constitution of the United States of America,’” January 11, 1861.

9. “A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Georgia to Secede from the Federal Union, January 29, 1861.”

10. Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U. S. 393, at 449-52 (1856). The Dred Scott decision is arguably the first example of judicial activism by the Supreme Court: it struck down the congressional law of 1820 prohibiting the extension of slavery into certain federal territories.

11. Thomas Hudson McKee, The National Conventions and Platforms of All Political Parties, 1789-1905 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1906), 98, Republican Platform of 1856.

12. See, for example, the Democrat Platform following the Dred Scott decision; not only was there no condemnation of decision, but the platform instead declared: “The Democrat Party will abide by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States upon these questions of constitutional law.” McKee, Platforms, 108.

13. See, for example, the Democrat Platform of 1856 declaring: “That Congress has no power under the Constitution, to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States. . . . [And] the Democratic party will resist all attempts at renewing, in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made. . . . [T]he only sound and safe solution of the ‘slavery question.’ . . . [is] non-interference by Congress with slavery in state and territory, or in the District of Columbia.” McKee, Platforms, 91-92.

14. See, for example, the Democrat Platform of 1856 declaring: “All efforts of the abolitionists, or others, made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union.” McKee, Platforms, 91.

15. “Civil War Era: Mayor Wood’s Recommendation of the Secession of New York City,” TeachingAmericanHistory.org, January 6, 1861.

16. The Union! It’s Dangers! And How they can be Averted. Letters from Samuel J. Tilden to Hon. William Kent (New York: 1860), 14-15.

17. William P. Rogers, The Three Secession Movements in the United States (Boston: John Wilson and Son, 1876), 16-17, quoting an editorial in the New York World, September 1, 1864, “The Democratic Platform.”

18. Addresses Delivered Before the Virginia State Convention, February 1861 (Richmond: Wyatt M. Elliott, 1861), “Address of Hon. Henry L. Benning, of Georgia,” 21.

19. Journal of the Secession Convention of Texas, ed. E. W. Winkler (Austin Printing Company, 1912), 122-123, address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana, February 11, 1861.

20. “A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union, February 2, 1861.”

21. “An Ordinance to repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United State of America by the State of Virginia, April 17, 1861.”

22. Southern Pamphlets on Secession, November 1860 – April 1861, ed. Jon Wakelyn (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 334, 338, “State or Province? Bond or Free?” by Albert Pike, March 4, 1861.

23. Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington: Congressional Globe Office, 1861), 589, January 28, 1861; Thomas Ricaud Martin, The Great Parliamentary Battle and the Farewell Addresses of Southern Senators on the Eve of the Civil War (New York and Washington: Neale Publishing Co., 1905), 214, farewell speech of Alfred Iverson, January 28, 1861.

24. Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session (1861), 268-270, January 7, 1861; Martin, The Great Parliamentary Battle (1905), 148-152, 167, 169, 170-171, 172, farewell speech of Robert Toombs, January 7, 1861.

25. Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session (1861), 486, January 21, 1861; Martin, The Great Parliamentary Battle (1905), 202, 204, farewell speech of Clement Clay, January 21, 1861.

26. Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session (1861), 721, February 4, 1861; Martin, The Great Parliamentary Battle (1905), 222-223, farewell speech of John Slidell, February 4, 1861.

27. The Secession Crisis, 1860-1861, ed. P. J. Staudenraus (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963), 16-18, speech of William Yancey, delivered at Columbus, Georgia, in 1855.

28. Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session (1861), p. 238, January 3, 1861; Martin, The Great Parliamentary Battle (1905), 222-223, speech of Judah P. Benjamin, January 3, 1861.

29. William J. Jackman, History of the American Nation (Chicago: K Gaynor, 1911), 4:1124.

30. “Constitution of the Confederate States; March 11, 1861,” Avalon Project; Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America During the Great Rebellion (Washington: Philip & Solomons, 1865), 98-99.

31. Echoes From The South (New York: E. B. Treat & Co., 1866), 85; The Pulpit and Rostrum: Sermons, Orations, Popular Lectures, &c. (New York: E. D. Barker, 1862), 69-70, “African Slavery, the Cornerstone of the Southern Confederacy,” by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy.

32. Echoes From The South (1866), 85-86; The Pulpit and Rostrum (1862), 69-70, “African Slavery, the Cornerstone of the Southern Confederacy,” by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy.

33. Mike Scruggs, “Understanding the Causes of the Uncivil War,” Georgia Heritage Council, June 4, 2005; Charles Oliver, “Southern Nationalism – United States Civil War,” Reason, August, 2001, where he is talking about Charles Adams viewing “the Civil War as a fight about taxes, specifically tariffs.”

34. “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union,” January 9, 1861.

35. Journal of the Secession Convention of Texas, ed. E. W. Winkler (Austin Printing Company, 1912),122-123, address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana, February 11, 1861.

36. “A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union, February 2, 1861.”

37. “Georgia Declaration of Secession,” January 29, 1861.

38. Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America During the Great Rebellion (Washington: Philip & Solomons, 1865), 15, “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union,” December 24, 1860.

39. Plaque from the Children of the Confederacy hanging inside the Texas State Capitol. See also “Children of the Confederacy: Creed,” United Daughters of the Confederacy.

John Adams: Was He Really an Enemy of Christians? Addressing Modern Academic Shallownes

At WallBuilders, we are truly blessed by God, owning tens of thousands of original documents from the American Founding – documents clearly demonstrating the Christian and Biblical foundations both of America and of so many of her Founding Fathers and early statesmen. We frequently post original documents on our website so that others may enjoy them and learn more about many important aspects of America’s rich moral, religious, and constitutional heritage that are widely unknown or misportrayed today.

Posted in the “Historical Documents” section of our website is a, letter from John Adams to Dr. Benjamin Rush (a close friend of Adams and a co-signer of the Declaration of Independence). That letter was Adams’ reply to a remarkable letter written him by Dr. Rush on October 17, 1809, describing a dream Rush believed God had given him about Adams. WallBuilders providentially obtained this original letter from an amazing presidential collection of a 100+ year old Floridian woman.

We often use quotes from that letter, including Adams’ bold declaration that:

The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this Earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost. . . . There is no authority, civil or religious – there can be no legitimate government – but that which is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All without it is rebellion and perdition, or in more orthodox words, damnation.¹

This letter certainly contains profound Christian content, but that is not particularly surprising, for Adams wrote dozens of letters with similarly powerful Christian declarations. Also not surprising is the fact that liberals and atheists have attacked this letter and its content; they dismiss it with the excuse that Adams didn’t really mean what he said in the letter, or that it was code for something different from what he actually said. But what was surprising and unexpected is that this letter and its remarkable content did not set well with some Christians, especially Chris Pinto. Pinto has produced videos claiming not only that America does not have a Biblical foundation but specifically asserting that the Founding Fathers were largely pagans who represented the spirit of the Anti-Christ. He believes that Christians should not be involved in the political arena or similar areas of culture.²

Pinto seems to have developed a fixation with WallBuilders, joining with liberals and atheists to demean it and the Founding Fathers. For example, in one video he prepared against me and the Founding Fathers, he specifically addressed the John Adams letter we posted, claiming:

Barton makes it appear as if John Adams was speaking favorably about the Holy Ghost in a letter he wrote to Benjamin Rush. In reality, Adams was mocking the idea of “Holy Ghost authority” and called Christians “dupes” for believing in it.³

Pinto concludes:

In truth, the letter Barton is presenting provides some of the most damning evidence found anywhere, and is consistent with many of the writings of the Revolutionaries, proving their contempt for Bible-based Christianity. In this letter, John Adams was not speaking in approval of the Holy Ghost, but was rather mocking the idea of it and of the faith of true Christians. . . . Adams did not believe the Holy Ghost was real, and he spoke about it in what can only be called insulting and irreverent terms.⁴

Normally, we simply ignore these types of absurd claims, for we believe that the truth speaks for itself and that it will always eventually prevail. In fact, this is why we post so many original and hand-written Founding documents and letters online – we want individuals to see and read them for themselves to be personally aware of what is and is not true. It is important to follow the model praised by the Apostle Paul in Acts 17:11: always check original sources to establish truth. This is why we heavily document quotes and facts back to original sources – such as our best-selling book Original Intent: it contains some 1,700 footnotes, the vast majority of which are dated to primary-source documents published while the Founders were still alive.

(By the way, a notable ACLU attorney decided he would disprove our thesis that the Founding Fathers were largely Christian. He therefore took Original Intent and undertook a project to expose what he considered to be its falsehoods; he went back and checked our quotes against the original sources cited in the book. At the end of his research, he concluded that we had understated the faith of the Founders – that there was actually much more evidence to support their Christian faith than even what we had cited. This ACLU attorney was completely converted and went on to become an eminent court of appeals judge – all because he followed Paul’s model of Acts 17:11 and checked the evidence for himself. We have numerous similar testimonials of the dramatic change that has occurred in individuals who investigated the original facts for themselves.)

So although we typically do not respond to critics such as Pinto, in this case, his videos have confused many Christians who have respectfully asked us to help them sort out the facts and discern the truth. Hence we have chosen to address Pinto’s patently false claims about John Adams.

Significantly, Pinto reached his conclusions that John Adams was mocking the Holy Spirit only by ignoring, omitting, or not understanding lengthy and important segments of Adams’ letter (which is why we posted the complete letter online: to make it much harder for individuals to twist and distort its true meaning). When the segments that Pinto ignored or did not understand are returned to the letter, it becomes obvious that his premises have been infected with three of the five historical malpractices that characterize the current study of history: Modernism, Minimalism, and Deconstructionism (the other two of the five are Poststructuralism and Academic Collectivism, which Pinto also uses in other areas of his videos).

Modernism is the practice of analyzing historical incidents and persons as if they lived now rather than in the past. Modernism separates history from its context and setting – a practice that regularly produces flawed conclusions.

An illustration of Modernism is the manner in which today’s textbooks uniformly portray the colonial Puritans as intolerant Christians because of the witch trials in which twenty-seven individuals died.⁵ But universally ignored is the fact that witch trials were occurring across the world at that time, not just in America; and in Europe alone, 500,000 were put to death,⁶ including 30,000 in England, 75,000 in France, and 100,000 in Germany.⁷ Additionally, the American witch trials lasted two months, but the European trials lasted for years.⁸ Furthermore, the Massachusetts witch trials were brought to a close when Christian leaders such as the Rev. John Wise, the Rev. Increase Mather, and Thomas Brattle challenged the trials because Biblical rules of evidence and Due Process were not being followed in the courts.⁹ Consequently:

The trials were stopped by Governor Phipps in October, 1692, and five years later the Massachusetts Court publicly repented and set apart a special day of fasting and prayer, that prayers might be offered, asking for forgiveness for “the late tragedy raised amongst us by Satan,” while the twelve jurors published a declaration of sorrow for accepting insufficient evidence against the accused, and Judge Sewall rose in his pew in the South Church and made public confession of his sense of guilt.¹⁰

This is no attempt to defend the inexcusable twenty-seven deaths, but it is undeniable that the so-called “intolerant” conduct of the Puritans was light-years ahead of their “enlightened” contemporaries throughout the rest of the “civilized” Old World of Europe. As early church historian Charles Galloway affirmed, when the Puritans “are compared to their brothers in England and all Europe, they stand out as reformers of the most advanced and majestic type.”¹¹ To accurately portray historic events and individuals (whether it is the Puritans or John Adams), their words and actions must be measured not by today’s thinking and customs but rather in light of what was occurring in their own times – which is what Pinto does not do.

Let’s begin by looking at the extended portion of the letter that Pinto claims contains Adams’ alleged blasphemy against the Holy Spirit:

The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this Earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost, Who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the Bishop on the heads of candidates for the ministry. In the same manner, as the Holy Ghost is transmitted from monarch to monarch by the holy oil in the vial at Rheims which was brought down from Heaven by a dove and by that other phial [vial] which I have seen in the Tower of London. There is no authority civil or religious, there can be no legitimate government but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All without it is rebellion and perdition, or in more orthodox words, damnation. Although this is all artifice and cunning in the sacred original in the heart, yet they all believe it so sincerely that they would lay down their lives under the ax or the fiery fagot [bundle of wood used for burning individuals at the stake] for it. Alas, the poor weak ignorant dupe, human nature. There is so much king craft, priest craft, gentlemens craft, peoples craft, doctors craft, lawyers craft, merchants craft, tradesmens craft, laborers craft, and Devils craft in the world that it seems a desperate [hopeless] and impractical project to undeceive it. Do you wonder that Voltaire and Paine have made proselytes [converts]? Yet there [is] near as much subtlety, craft, and hypocrisy in Voltaire and Paine, and more, too, than in Ignatius Loyola [a Spanish knight who was a founder of the Jesuits].¹²

Recall from above that in Pinto’s analysis of this section he claims that Adams . . .

was mocking the idea of “Holy Ghost authority” and called Christians “dupes” for believing in it. . . . Adams was not speaking in approval of the Holy Ghost, but was rather mocking the idea of it and of the faith of true Christians. . . . Adams did not believe the Holy Ghost was real, and he spoke about it in what can only be called insulting and irreverent terms.¹³

Is Pinto correct? Was Adams mocking Christians and the Holy Ghost? Absolutely not – which will be irrefutably proved below. But the fact that Pinto believes that Adams is insulting Christians and the Holy Spirit demonstrates not only that he employed Modernism but also the second device of historical malpractice: Minimalism.

Minimalism is an unreasonable insistence on over-simplicity – on using simplistic platitudes to reduce everything to monolithic causes and linear effects. As an example, citizens today are regularly taught that America separated from Great Britain because of “taxation without representation,” yet that issue was only one of twenty-seven grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence – and it was actually one of the lesser complaints. While only one grievance in the Declaration addressed taxation without representation, eleven addressed the abuse of representative powers; seven the abuse of military powers; four the abuse of judicial powers; and two the stirring up of domestic insurrection. Taxation without representation was only grievance number seventeen out of the twenty-seven, listed alongside Great Britain’s suppression of immigration and her interference with our foreign trade. While the taxation issue was given little emphasis in the Declaration, Minimalism causes it to virtually be the only issue covered today, thus giving citizens a skewed view of the American Revolution and what caused it.

Minimalism is what Pinto practices in his analysis of Adams’ letter. Rather than delving into the complex areas of church history that Adams directly references several times in the letter, Pinto just dismisses them out of hand, rashly claiming that Adams was being irreverent.

Six key phrases Adams used in the letter unequivocally prove that he was not mocking the Holy Spirit or Christianity:

“monarch to monarch”
“the holy oil in the vial at Rheims”
“brought down from Heaven by a dove”
“that other phial which I have seen in the Tower of London”
“king craft”
“priest craft”

Each of these phrases is a direct reference to a particular period and a definite incident in church history – a history early set forth and ably expounded by the Rev. John Wise (1652-1725) of Massachusetts, considered by prominent historians as one of the six greatest intellectual leaders responsible for shaping American thinking.¹⁴ Wise’s works and sermons were read and widely studied across early America, including by the leading patriots and Founding Fathers. Wise divided the general history of Christianity into three epochs, and all six of Adams’ phrases refer to specific occurrences in one of those periods.

Period I includes the three centuries of Christianity immediately following the life of Christ. According to Wise, this was “the most refined and purest time, both as to faith and manners, that the Christian church has been honored with.”¹⁵ Period I is the “Period of Purity,” and Jesus’ followers throughout that time largely did just what He had taught them to do.

Period II spans the next twelve centuries, and according to Wise, it was a period that “openly proclaimed itself to the scandal of the Christian religion.”¹⁶ The State took control of the Church, with the State decreeing Christianity to be the official religion of the State and all other religions illegal.¹⁷ This was a time of “the secularization of the Church and the depravation of Christianity”¹⁸– a time when the State seized and corrupted the Church and its doctrines, wrongly asserting “that one of the chief duties of an imperial ruler was to place his sword at the service of the Church and orthodoxy.”¹⁹ Christianity became coercive through brutal civil laws attempting to enforce theological orthodoxy.

This age was characterized by autocratic leaders in both State and Church, with monarchies and theocracies (usually oppressive ones) as the primary forms of governance. The Founders frequently described Period II as a time of “kingcraft” and “priestcraft” – a time when kings and priests joined together against the people, using selfish ambition to gain personal wealth and power.²⁰

Period II is called the “Period of Apostasy” or “Period of Corruption,” and during this time, the Church was no longer a collection of individuals joined together in a voluntary association; instead it became a civil hierarchy overseeing a massive organization and numerous facilities. The individual follower of Christ was no longer of consequence; the common man was forbidden access to the Scriptures and education; tyrannical leaders became the pinnacle of consideration. The emphasis shifted from the personal to the structural, from the individual to the institutional – an anti-Biblical paradigm that prevailed for the next twelve centuries. Nearly all the negative incidents in world history associated with Christianity (e.g., the Inquisition, wholesale murder of Jews, tortures, etc.) are almost exclusively from this period of Christian corruption.

Period III, according to Wise, is that which “began a glorious reformation.” Wise explains: “Many famous persons, memorable in ecclesiastical history, being moved by the Spirit of God and according to Holy Writ, led the way in the face of all danger . . . for the good of Christendom.”²¹ Early seeds of this change began with the efforts of numerous Christian leaders, including John Wycliffe (1320-1384), called the “Morning Star of the Reformation.” Nearly two dozen other Christian leaders also worked to spread Bible teachings across their respective countries, including Englishmen such as Thomas Cranmer, William Tyndale, John Rogers, and Miles Coverdale; Czechs such as John Huss and Jerome of Prague; Germans Martin Luther, Thomas Münzer, Andreas Carlstadt, and Kaspar von Schwenkfeld; Swiss Ulrich Zwingli; Frenchmen William Farel and John Calvin; Scotsmen John Knox and George Wishart; Dutchmen Jacobus Arminius, Desiderius Erasmus, and Menno Simons; and others.

This third era, called the “Period of Reformation,” emphasized a return to the Bible as the guidebook for all aspects of life and living. It therefore rekindled many of Christianity’s original teachings, including the Priesthood of the Believer (emphasizing that the individual had direct access to God without need of assistance from any official in Church or State) and Justification by Faith (emphasizing the importance of personal faith and an individual’s personal relationship with the Savior). The renewed Period III Biblical emphasis on the individual altered the way that both Church and State were viewed, thus resulting in new demands and expectations being placed upon each. Self-government and freedom of conscience were advocated for both institutions.

But such Bible teachings were not embraced by all, for they threatened the previously uncontested power of tyrants. Consequently, ruthless leaders in both State and Church initiated bloody purges, utilizing the most cruel tortures and barbaric persecutions to suppress the followers of the renewed Biblical teachings. For example, French leaders conducted the famous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of September 17, 1585, eventually killing 110,000 French Reformation followers (i.e., Huguenots). Some 400,000 others fled France to avoid death and persecution, with many coming to America, especially South Carolina and New York.

Similarly, English leaders such as King Henry VIII attempted to suppress the Reformation’s individualistic teachings by public executions and burnings at the stake; and Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth I, and subsequent monarchs continued those efforts. In fact, King James I even concocted two revolutionary new government-church “doctrines” to help him suppress the growing influence of Reformation teachings in England: the Divine Right of Kings, and Complete Submission and Non-Resistance to Authority.

Not surprisingly, Reformation followers (often known as “Dissenters” for opposing, or dissenting against, the autocratic and tyrannical practices of both State and Church) openly opposed James’ “irrational and unscriptural doctrines,”²² thus prompting him to level additional brutal persecutions against them, including mutilation, hanging, and disemboweling. The Pilgrims came to Massachusetts in 1620 to escape the hounding persecution of King James, and a decade later, 20,000 Puritans also fled England after many received life sentences (or had their noses slit, ears cut off, or a brand placed on their foreheads) for adhering to Reformation teachings.

Despite the brutal worldwide persecution, the Reformation eventually prevailed, resulting in massive changes in both State and Church, finally bringing to an end the corrupt practices of Period II Christianity. The impact of Reformation Christianity upon nations during this period was almost exclusively positive, especially in America, where Reformation teachings took root and grew more quickly than in the rest of the world, having been planted in virgin soil completely uncontaminated by the apostasy of the previous twelve centuries.

American Founding Fathers and leaders (including John Adams) made a clear distinction between America’s Period III Christianity and Europe’s Period II Christianity. For example, Noah Webster emphatically declared:

The ecclesiastical establishments of Europe which serve to support tyrannical governments are not the Christian religion, but abuses and corruptions of it.²³

Daniel Webster agreed, rejoicing that American Christianity was . . .

Christianity to which the sword and the fagot [bundles of wood for burning individuals at the stake] are unknown – general tolerant Christianity is the law of the land!²⁴

Other Founding Fathers made similar distinctions, including John Jay (the original Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court and a co-author of the Federalist Papers), who declared that the Period III Christianity practiced in America was “wise and virtuous,”²⁵ and John Quincy Adams described it as “civilized”²⁶– terms certainly not associated with Period II Christianity.

Significantly, the six phrases identified above from Adams’ letter all refer to specific Period II perversions of orthodox Biblical teachings regarding the Holy Spirit; but Pinto, in his practice of Modernism and Minimalism, ignored all of Adams’ references to this. Consider what Pinto missed by disregarding Adams’ first three aforementioned phrases: “monarch to monarch,” “the holy oil in the vial at Rheims,” and “brought down from Heaven by a dove.”

In 496 AD in the city of Reims, Clovis was converted to Christianity and anointed King of France. Four centuries later, the Archbishop of Reims, attempting to convince the people that kings were the sovereign choice of God to rule the nation, claimed that when Clovis was about to be made king, the anointing oil could not be found. Perplexed as to what to do, the Archbishop claimed that God Himself miraculously sent from Heaven a dove (which church leaders believed to be the Holy Spirit) that carried down to earth a vial of special anointing oil.

This oil was kept in the Cathedral of Reims, and over the next millennia was used to anoint every French king (except one). Whenever the oil was moved or utilized in a coronation, it was accompanied by fifty guards, led by a high priest adorned in golden garb and jewels – reminiscent of the high priest in the Bible moving the Ark of the Covenant.

French tyrants in Church and State used this so-called “doctrine” that holy oil was carried from Heaven by the Holy Spirit to keep the people subjugated to the deplorable heresy of the Divine Right of Kings – a doctrine hated by every Reformation follower and student of the Bible. Thus Adams’ statement that “the Holy Ghost is transmitted from monarch to monarch by the holy oil in the vial at Rheims which was brought down from Heaven by a dove” is a direct reference to very specific and corrupt church doctrines of Period II.

Given the power that the oil of Reims exercised over the minds of the people, it is not surprising that monarchs in other nations, including England, wanted something similar for their own use. English king Edward II (1284-1327 AD) therefore claimed that the anointing oil he used for his coronation was given by the Virgin Mary directly to St. Thomas of Canterbury, who performed the ceremony. This vial of oil was kept safely sequestered under lock and key, to be used only for anointing new kings. This is what Adams described as “that other phial [vial] which I have seen in the Tower of London.” Adams had been America’s diplomat to France and to England, and he had first-hand knowledge of how their “holy” oil and its accompanying doctrine was used in both countries to subjugate the people under the influence of “kingcraft” and “priestcraft” – two more key phrases that Pinto also disregarded.

Adams despised the claim that either the French and British vials of oil had been brought from Heaven by the Holy Spirit. He believed that this false doctrine had caused incomparable suffering in the world. The French people finally came to the same conclusion, for following the French Revolution, they entered the Cathedral at Reims and broke the vial of oil so that it could never again be used to anoint another French tyrant to rule their nation.

Now having a general grasp of this period of both church and world history to which Adams specifically refers in his letter, reexamine his words with this background in mind.

Adams begins by first establishing the accepted doctrine of the Holy Spirit according to Period III Reformation Christianity, telling Rush:

But my friend there is something very serious in this business. The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this Earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost, Who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the bishop on the heads of candidates for the ministry.²⁷

This statement is sound, solid, orthodox Christian doctrine. But Adams then contrasts that positive statement about the Holy Spirit with the perverted doctrine from Period II:

In the same manner, as the Holy Ghost is transmitted from monarch to monarch by the holy oil in the vial at Rheims which was brought down from Heaven by a dove and by that other phial [vial] which I have seen in the Tower of London.²⁸

Notice his use of the very important phrase: “In the same manner, as . . .” That is, having stated the right doctrine of the Holy Ghost, he now looks at the distortion of it – at how it was presented falsely “in the same manner,” but this time not in regards to “candidates for the ministry” (i.e., the Church, which is the proper use), but rather by wrongly teaching that the Holy Ghost is transferred from king to king (i.e., the State, which is not the proper use) by way of the oil brought from Heaven. Concerning this perverted view of the Holy Spirit from Period II, Adams laments:

Although this is all artifice and cunning in the sacred original in the heart, yet they all believe it so sincerely that they would lay down their lives under the ax or the fiery fagot [bundle of wood used for burning individuals at the stake] for it. Alas, the poor weak ignorant dupe, human nature. There is so much king craft, priest craft, gentlemens craft, peoples craft, doctors craft, lawyers craft, merchants craft, tradesmens craft, laborers craft, and Devils craft in the world that it seems a desperate [hopeless] and impractical project to undeceive it.²⁹

Adams clearly is not condemning Christianity or Biblical doctrine regarding the Holy Ghost, but is rather reproaching its twisting during Period II, noting that those who follow the Divine Right of Kings maldoctrine are willing to die for their belief “under the ax or the fiery fagots,” and thus suffer from that “poor weak ignorant dupe, human nature” – that is, human depravity is on full display, and so thoroughly convinced of the truth of this maldoctrine were its followers that it even seemed a waste of time to Adams to try to convince them otherwise.

By the way, many today do not understand the historical use of the term “priestcraft”; it is not a derogatory term used against ministers of the Gospel. As explained by one of the most famous evangelical Christian preachers of the Founding Era, Baptist minister John Leland:

By Priest-Craft, no contempt is designed to be cast upon any of the Lord’s priest’s, from Melchizedeck to Zecharias, nor upon any of the ministers of Christ, either those who have been remarkably endowed with power from on high to work miracles, &c. or those of ordinary endowments, who have been governed by supreme love to the Savior and benevolence to mankind. These, to the world, have been like the stars of night. But by priest-craft is intended the rushing into the sacred work for the sake of ease, wealth, honor, and ecclesiastical dignity. Whether they plead lineal succession or Divine impulse, their course is directed for self-advantage. By good words and fair speeches, they deceive the simple; and [use] solemn threatening of fines, gibbets [the gallows], or the flames of hell to those who do not adhere to their institutes.³⁰

But to Americans such as John Leland and John Adams, the possibility of government officials placing church officials over America (i.e., “kingcraft” and “priestcraft”) was not something of the ancient past – it was still a potential imminent danger to be feared and fiercely repelled. In fact, John Adams repeatedly avowed that one of the principal causes behind the American Revolution had been the possibility of having the king appoint a bishop over America.³¹

Adams letter to Rush merely reinforces the contempt that he and most Americans had for the autocratic Divine Right of Kings doctrine – a doctrine still believed by many at that time to have been delivered directly from Heaven by the Holy Spirit Himself. Adams saw this as a complete perversion of true Bible teachings regarding the role of the Holy Spirit. He therefore queried of Rush:

Do you wonder that Voltaire and Paine have made proselytes [converts]? Yet there [is] near as much subtlety, craft, and hypocrisy in Voltaire and Paine, and more, too, than in Ignatious Loyola [a Spanish knight who was a founder of the Jesuits].³²

That is, given the bad “Christian” teachings that caused so much misery and suffering across Europe, it was not surprising that atheists and anti-religionists such as Voltaire and Paine had such a strong following. It remains an unfortunate fact to this day that non-Biblical Christianity and non-Biblical Christians still drive people away from the Christian faith rather than to it. As affirmed by the Apostle Paul in Romans 2:24, “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” – that is, it is God’s people who often give God a bad name among non-believers. (The prophet Nathan stated the same message in 2 Samuel 12:24 when he said to David, “By this deed, you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.”)

The final evidence that Adams was not being disrespectful to the Holy Ghost or Christians in his letter is seen in his closing statement to Rush that:
Your prophecy, my dear friend, has not become history as yet.³³

This is a very respectful reference to the dream Rush believed that God had given him. There is nothing derogatory or scornful in Adams’ reference to “prophecy” – a direct and positive product of the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21).

Chris Pinto, in his analysis of Adams letter, has managed to ignore more than a millennia of church and world history in his unreasonable attempt to brand John Adams a heretic and blasphemer of the Holy Spirit. And adding insult to his malpractice injury, he also ignored more than thirty volumes of Adams’ published writings, containing hundreds of positive letters and repeated favorable references to religion and Christianity. Thus, Pinto’s claim about Adams’ irreligion is directly refuted not only by the context of the letter itself but also by the powerful evidence of the lifelong proven faith and character of John Adams.

In fact, in the very next letter Adams wrote Rush following letter that Pinto attacks, Adams vigorously defended Christianity against the attack made upon it by Thomas Paine, telling Rush:

He [Thomas Paine] understood neither government nor religion. . . . His billingsgate [vile and vulgar attack] . . . will never discredit Christianity, which will hold its ground in some degree as long as human nature shall have anything moral or intellectual left in it. The Christian religion. . . . will last as long as the world. Neither savage nor civilized man without a revelation could ever have discovered or invented it. Ask me not, then, whether I am a Catholic or Protestant, Calvinist or Arminian. As far as they are Christians, I wish to be a fellow-disciple with them all.³⁴

This letter certainly does not reflect either the tone or the attitude of an heretic who would attack and blaspheme the Holy Spirit. Consider some of the scores of other quotes by John Adams, and contrast them with the anti-religious image that Pinto wrongly attempts to draw of Adams:

Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. . . . What a Eutopia – what a Paradise would this region be!³⁵ 1756
I sat next to John Adams in Congress, and upon my whispering to him and asking him if he thought we should succeed in our struggle with Great Britain, he answered me, “Yes – if we fear God and repent of our sins.” This anecdote will, I hope, teach my boys that it is not necessary to disbelieve Christianity or to renounce morality in order to arrive at the highest political usefulness or fame.³⁶ 1777, Benjamin Rush, Reporting His Conversation with Adams
The idea of infidelity [a disbelief in the inspiration of the Scriptures or the Divine origin of Christianity³⁷] cannot be treated with too much resentment or too much horror. The man who can think of it with patience is a traitor in his heart and ought to be execrated [denounced] as one who adds the deepest hypocrisy to the blackest treason.³⁸ 1778
[All persons elected must] make and subscribe the following declaration, viz. “I do declare that I believe the Christian religion and have firm persuasion of its truth.”³⁹ 1780, Constitution of Massachusetts (Adams wan an Author of this Clause)
On motion of the Hon. Mr. [John] Adams, Voted, That the Convention will attend morning prayers daily, and that the gentlemen of the clergy of every denomination be requested to officiate in turn.⁴⁰ 1788, Massachusetts Convention to Ratify the U. S. Constitution
The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity, let the blackguard [scoundrel, rogue] Paine say what he will.⁴¹ 1796
As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him. . . . I have therefore thought fit to recommend . . . a day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer that the citizens of these States . . . offer their devout addresses to the Father of Mercies.⁴² 1798
[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.⁴³ 1798
The Bible contains the most profound philosophy, the most perfect morality, and the most refined policy that ever was conceived upon earth. . . .The curses against fornication and adultery, and the prohibition of every wanton glance or libidinous ogle at a woman, I believe to be the only system that ever did or ever will preserve a republic in the world. . . . I say then that national morality never was and never can be preserved without the utmost purity and chastity in women; and without national morality a republican government cannot be maintained.⁴⁴ 1807
I think there is nothing upon this earth more sublime and affecting than the idea of a great nation all on their knees at once before their God, acknowledging their faults and imploring His blessing and protection.⁴⁵ 1809
[I]t is notorious enough that I have been a church-going animal for seventy-six years from the cradle.⁴⁶ 1811
The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were . . . . the general principles of Christianity. . . . I will avow that I then believed (and now believe) that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.⁴⁷ 1813
I have examined all [religions], . . . and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.⁴⁸ 1813
Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company: I mean hell.⁴⁹ 1817

There are numerous similar quotes by Adams. This certainly is not the profile of an individual who would blaspheme the Holy Spirit, Christianity, or religion.

One other point that illustrates the absurd results which occur under Modernism is John Adams’ request that Rush burn the letter after he reads it:

This letter is so much in the tone of my friend the Abbe Raynal [a French writer] and the grumblers of the last age, that I pray you to burn it.⁵⁰

Critics also point to this phrase as yet another proof that Adams was blaspheming Christians – that he did not want his true sacrilegious opinions to be known, so he asked Rush to burn the letter. But just as Pinto apparently had no idea what Adams meant when he referenced the oil at Reims or in the Tower of London, apparently critics did not know that a request to burn letters was a common practice in that era (especially for former presidents), regardless of the topic covered in the letter.

For example, after the death of George Washington in 1799, Martha burned all of the letters that had passed between them (only three remain today).⁵¹ George also asked friends to burn letters he sent them.⁵²

It was the same with Thomas Jefferson. Even with individuals whom he completely trusted, he would often ask his friends to return the letter after they read it,⁵³ or else burn, destroy, or keep its contents private.⁵⁴

James Madison also destroyed much of his correspondence, and Dolly Madison did the same with hers. In fact, in much of her correspondence that did survive, she often asked her recipients to burn her letter after reading it.⁵⁵ Even individuals who wrote to Madison asked that he burn their letter.⁵⁶

John Adams had the same practice.⁵⁷

Pinto’s preposterous analysis of Adams’ letter is based on the flawed practices of Modernism and Minimalism. Unfortunately, he repeats these same practices throughout his other videos, frequently taking deep multi-faceted issues, failing to recognize or acknowledge crucial references to historical events or practices, and presenting an especially negative view of history. It is for this reason that Pinto is also a Deconstructionist.

Deconstructionism (another of the five malpractices in the modern study of history) is an approach that “tends to deemphasize or even efface the subject” – that is, to malign or smear the subject by posing “a continuous critique” to “lay low what was once high.”⁵⁸ It is a steady flow of belittling and malicious portrayals of traditional heroes, beliefs, values, and institutions. Deconstructionists happily point out everything that can possibly be portrayed as a flaw, even if they have to distort information to do it; yet they remain ominously silent about the multitude of reasons to be proud of America, her many heroes, and her many successes. As a result of the work of Deconstructionists, most Americans today can recite more of what’s wrong with America and the Founding Fathers than what’s right.

It is time for Americans, and especially Christians, to become better informed about America’s remarkable moral, religious, and constitutional foundations and to reject the efforts of Deconstructionists who attempt to undermine so many positive aspects of America’s extraordinary heritage – a heritage that has provided unprecedented blessings, and a heritage for which we should be humbly grateful to Almighty God.

Endnotes

¹ John Adams letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush on December 21, 1809, from an original in WallBuilders’ Collection.

² See, for example, a series of podcasts “The Hidden Faith of the Founding Fathers,” Waking Jonah, accessed June 13, 2011.

³ Chris Pinto, “David Barton Approves of Sharia Law in America and Misleads Jon Stewart?,” Worldview Times, April 10, 2011.

⁴ Chris Pinto, “David Barton Approves of Sharia Law in America and Misleads Jon Stewart?,” Worldview Times, April 10, 2011.

⁵ Of the 27, 14 women and 5 men were tried, found guilty and hung; 1 man was tortured to death by crushing because he refused to cooperate with the court and answer their questions. To persuade him to talk they took him to a field and put a board on him with rocks, they increased the number of rocks until he would cooperate but he continued to refuse and was crushed to death. He was therefore never convicted but he is considered the 20th victim as he was on trial for being a wizard. And 7 individuals died in prison awaiting trial; one was a baby in prison with her mother, who was awaiting trial as a witch. Salem Witch Museum, January 13, 2011, per the museum’s Department of Education.

⁶ William Warren Sweet, The Story of Religion in America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 61.

⁷ Charles B. Galloway, Christianity and the American Commonwealth (Nashville: Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, 1898), 110.

⁸ Galloway, Christianity and American (1898), 110.

⁹ Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. “Mather, Increase” and “Brattle, Thomas.” See also “The Salem Witch Trials: Reason Returns,” Court TV: Crime Library, accessed February 3, 2011.

¹⁰ Sweet, Story of Religion (1950), 62.

¹¹ Galloway, Christianity and American (1898), 90.

¹² John Adams letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush on December 21, 1809, from an original in WallBuilders’ Collection.

¹³ Chris Pinto, “David Barton Approves of Sharia Law in America and Misleads Jon Stewart?,” Worldview Times, April 10, 2011.

¹⁴ Clinton Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic: Origin of the American Tradition of Political Liberty (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1953), 2.

¹⁵ John Wise, A Vindication of the Government of New-England Churches (Boston: John Boyles, 1772), 3.

¹⁶ Wise, Vindication of the Government (1772), 5.

¹⁷ “Medieval Sourcebook: Banning of Other Religions, Theodosian Code XVI.1.2,” Fordham University.

¹⁸ Samuel Smith Harris, The Relation of Christianity to Civil Society (New York: Thomas Whittaker, 1883), 62.

¹⁹ Joseph Blötzer, transcribed by Matt Dean, “Inquisition,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company. Nihil Obstat, October 1, 1910), VIII, Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

²⁰ Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (New Haven, 1828), s.v., “kingcraft” and “priestcraft.”

²¹ Wise, Vindication of the Government (1772), 6.

²² J. M. Mathews, The Bible and Civil Government, in a Course of Lectures (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1851), 231.

²³ Noah Webster, History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1832), 339.

²⁴ Daniel Webster, Mr. Webster’s Speech in Defense of the Christian Ministry and In favor of the Religious Instruction of the Young. Delivered in the Supreme Court of the United States, February 10, 1844, in the Case of Stephen Girard’s Will (Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1844), 52.

²⁵ John Jay, “Charge to the Grand Jury of Ulster County,” September 9,1777, William Jay, The Life of John Jay (New York:J. &J. Harper, 1833), 80.

²⁶ John Quincy Adams, An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport at Their Request on the Sixty-First Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (Newburyport: Charles Whipple, 1837), 17.

²⁷ John Adams letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush on December 21, 1809, from an original in WallBuilders’ Collection.

²⁸ John Adams letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush on December 21, 1809, from an original in WallBuilders’ Collection.

²⁹ John Adams letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush on December 21, 1809, from an original in WallBuilders’ Collection.

³⁰ John Leland, The Writings of the Late Elder John Leland, Including Some Events in His Life (New York: G. W. Wood, 1845), 484.

³¹ John Adams to Dr. Jedediah Morse, December 2, 1815, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1856), X:185. See also letter from John Adams to Jonathan Mason, August 31, 1820, National Archives.

³² John Adams letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush on December 21, 1809, from an original in WallBuilders’ Collection.

³³ John Adams letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush on December 21, 1809, from an original in WallBuilders’ Collection.

³⁴ Adams to Benjamin Rush, January 21,1810, Works of John Adams, ed. Adams (1854), IX:626- 267.

³⁵ Adams, diary entry for February 22, 1756, Works of John Adams, ed. Adams (1850), II:6-7.

³⁶ Benjamin Rush to John Adams on February 24, 1790, Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L. H. Butterfield (NJ: American Philosophical Society, 1951), I:534.

³⁷ Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), s.v. “infidelity.”

³⁸ John Adams to James Warren, August 4, 1778, Papers of John Adams, ed. Robert J. Taylor (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 1983), 6:348.

³⁹ A Constitution or Frame of Government Agreed Upon by the Delegates of the People of the State of Massachusetts-Bay (Boston: Benjamin Edes & Sons, 1780), 44, Chapter VI, Article I.

⁴⁰ The Debates in the Several Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, ed. Jonathan Elliot (Washington: Printed for the Editor, 1836), II:2, Massachusetts Convention, January 9, 1788.

⁴¹ John Adams diary entry for July 26, 1796, Works of John Adams, ed. Adams (1856), III:421.

⁴² Adams, “Proclamation for a National Fast on March 23, 1798,” Works of John Adams, ed. Adams (1854), IX:169.

⁴³ Adams to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, October 11, 1798, Works of John Adams, ed. Adams (1854), IX:229.

⁴⁴ John Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 2, 1807, Old Family Letters, ed. Alexander Biddle (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1892), 127-128.

⁴⁵ John Adams, Works of John Adams, ed. Adams (1854), IX:291, originally published in the Boston Patriot, 1809, Letter XIII.

⁴⁶ Adams to Benjamin Rush, August 28, 1811, Works of John Adams, ed. Adams, editor (1854), IX:637.

⁴⁷ John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 28, 1813, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb (Washington, D. C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), XIII:293.

⁴⁸ John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 25, 1813, Works of John Adams, ed. Adams (1856), X:85.

⁴⁹ Adams to Thomas Jefferson, April 19, 1817, Works of John Adams, ed. Adams (1856), X:254.

⁵⁰ John Adams letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush on December 21, 1809, from an original in WallBuilders’ Collection.

⁵¹ “Slide Four—A Family Man: A Letter to Martha,” The University of Virginia, accessed June 6, 2011.

⁵² See, for example, George Washington to Arthur Young, December 12, 1793, Letters from His Excellency General Washington to Arthur Young (London: B. McMillan, 1801), 159; George Washington to Clement Biddle, July 20, 1790, The Writings of George Washington, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1891), XI:490; George Washington to George William Fairfax, June 25, 1786, The Writings of George Washington, ed. Jared Sparks (Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Metcalf, and Hilliard, Gray, and Co., 1835), IX:175.

⁵³ Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, August 22, 1813, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, ed. Thomas Jefferson Randolph (Charlottesville: F. Carr, and Co., 1829), IV:206; Jefferson to F. A. Van Der Kemp, April 25, 1816, Writings of Jefferson, ed. Lipscomb (1903), XV:1.

⁵⁴ See, for example, Thomas Jefferson, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905), IX:459, note. See also Jefferson to William Short, April 13, 1820, Memoir, ed. Randolph (1830), IV:320; Benjamin Rush to Thomas Jefferson, May 5, 1803, Letters, ed. Butterfield (1951), II:863-864; Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, May 11, 1785, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), IV:413; Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, January 26, 1799, Works of Jefferson, ed. Ford (1905), IX; Jefferson to Horatio Gates Spafford, January 10, 1816, Works of Jefferson, ed. Ford (1905), Vol. XI; Jefferson to James Cheetham, January 17, 1802, Works of Jefferson, ed. Ford (1905), IX.

⁵⁵ “James Madison’s Nieces and Nephews,” University of Virginia Press, accessed June 8, 2011.

⁵⁶ See, for example, James Madison to Joseph C. Cabell, September 7, 1829, The Writings of James Madison, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1900), IX.

⁵⁷ See, for example, John Adams to John Tudor, July 23, 1774, Works of John Adams, ed. Adams (856), IX.

⁵⁸ Jack M. Balkin, “Tradition, Betrayal, and the Politics of Deconstruction – Part II,” Yale University, 1998.

Christmas-As Celebrated by the Presidents

Even though Christmas did not become a national holiday until 1870, it has a centuries old history in America. Interestingly, in colonial America, the southern regions that were more directly linked to High-Church traditions (e.g., Anglicans, Catholics, Episcopalians) celebrated Christmas; but the northern regions especially linked to Low-Church traditions (e.g., Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers) did not. Those Low-Church colonists associated the pomp and grandeur of Christmas celebrations directly with the autocratic leaders and monarchs in Europe that they so opposed.

Massachusetts therefore passed an anti-Christmas law in 1659, and it was not until the 1830s and 1840s that Christmas celebrations became accepted in New England (although as late as 1870, a student missing school on Christmas Day in Boston public schools could be punished or expelled). But by the 1880s, Christmas celebrations were finally accepted across the country and began to appear at the White House. For example:

In 1889, the first indoor decorated tree was placed in the White House, and in 1895, electric lights were added.
In 1923, the first National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony was held. In 1954 it was named the Pageant of Peace but in 1969 it became embroiled in a legal controversy over the use of religious symbols. In 1973, the nativity scene that had always been part of the Pageant was no longer allowed, but in 1984, it returned.
In 1953, the first White House Christmas card was created by President Dwight Eisenhower. (Ike was an artist in his own right and allowed six of his own paintings to be used as Christmas gifts and cards.) President Kennedy’s 1963 Christmas card was the first to include an explicitly religious element, featuring a photo of a nativity scene. And in 2001, the first White House Christmas card to contain a Scripture was chosen by Laura Bush. It quoted Psalm 27: “Thy face, Lord, do I seek. I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living” – a Scripture she had chosen on September 16 (only 5 days after 9/11), based on a special sermon preached at Camp David.

Christmas was celebrated by our national leaders as a religious holiday, not the secular holiday it has become.

For example, every Christmas Eve, President Teddy Roosevelt and his family would pile into the family sleigh (later the motor car) and travel to a Christmas service at Christ Church in Oyster Bay, New York. Following the pastor’s sermon, Teddy would deliver one of his famous “sermonettes” on the true meaning of Christmas and then close the service with one of his favorite hymns, “Christmas By the Sea.”

President Franklin Roosevelt would set up and decorate a tree on Christmas Eve, gather the family round him, and either read Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” or recite it from memory. (The original story is quite different from the modern movies by that name and is well worth the read.) He would also deliver explicitly religious Christmas Eve messages to the nation. For example, in 1944 following D-Day, he said:

Here, at home, we will celebrate this Christmas Day in our traditional American way – because of its deep spiritual meaning to us; because the teachings of Christ are fundamental in our lives; and because we want our youngest generation to grow up knowing the significance of this tradition and the story of the coming of the immortal Prince of Peace and good will. . . . [FDR then prayed a prayer for the troops, and closed with:] We pray that with victory will come a new day of peace on earth in which all the Nations of the earth will join together for all time. That is the spirit of Christmas, the holy day. May that spirit live and grow throughout the world in all the years to come.

(I recommend you go online to the American Presidency Project and look up and especially read some Christ-centered Christmas messages from Presidents, such as that of Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, Harry Truman in 1949 or 1952, Ronald Reagan in 1982 or 1985, George W. Bush in 2003, and there are many additional examples. You should also watch President Reagan deliver one of his Christmas addresses.)

In recent years, there has been a relentless push from secularists and progressives to transform Christmas. Schools, government offices, and many commercial stores have replaced Merry Christmas with Happy Holidays to appease critics, not realizing that 93% of Americans celebrate Christmas, and 97% are not bothered by the use of the phrase “Merry Christmas.” Yet far too often, the 3% seems to drive public policy; Americans need to push back.

Gratefully, religious Jews have been some of the strongest advocates for keeping Christmas a religious celebration. For example, Burt Prelutsky, a Jewish columnist for a number of national publications, declares:

I never thought I’d live to see the day that Christmas would become a dirty word. . . . How is it, one well might ask, that in a Christian nation this is happening? . . . Speaking as a member of a minority group – and one of the smaller ones at that – I say it behooves those of us who don’t accept Jesus Christ as our savior to show some gratitude to those who do, and to start respecting the values and traditions of the overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens, just as we keep insisting that they respect ours. Merry Christmas, my friends!

Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Daniel Lapin agrees:

Secular fundamentalism has successfully injected into American culture the notion that the word “Christmas” is deeply offensive. . . . Anti-Christianism is unhealthy for all Americans; but I warn my brethren that it will prove particularly destructive for Jews. . . . Let us all go out of our way to wish our many wonderful Christian friends – a very merry Christmas. Just remember, America’s Bible belt is our safety belt.

So . . . Merry Christmas!!!

Guns, Kids and Critics

Shortly after the December 2012 mass shooting of children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, many began calling for severe limitations on private gun ownership and even a complete repeal of the Second Amendment, with its constitutional guarantee for citizens to “keep and bear arms.” David Barton was invited on a one-hour national television program to provide an historical perspective on the issue of gun ownership and gun control. In that one hour show, he presented colonial laws, early state constitutional provisions, statements from the Founding Fathers, positions of various presidents, and court decisions on the issue from both past and present.

In one part of the program, David specifically noted that even in the aftermath of the shootings of Presidents Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan, there were not calls for gun control – that even Reagan (while lying in the hospital recovering from the wound) voiced opposition to such efforts.¹ None of these shootings was used as a reason to immediately call for increased regulation of guns, as was done by President Obama in the aftermath of Sandy Hook (thus applying Rahm Emanuel’s axiom to never let a crisis go to waste). But several of David’s obsessive critics, being more concerned with opportunism than truth or context, quickly took to websites and blogs claiming that his statement concerning Reagan was erroneous – that Reagan did support gun control.² But David’s statement was completely accurate, for it was ten years after Reagan was shot, and three years after he left office before he declared support for the Brady gun control bill. David had made very clear that his context was presidential responses in the aftermath of shootings; and President Reagan, unlike President Obama, had not used an emotional national crisis to call for gun control.

In another part of the program, David pointed out the Founding Fathers’ emphasis on young people being taught the use of guns from an early age, believing that early training increased gun safety and decreased gun accidents and injuries. This view was clearly articulated by John Quincy Adams.

When he was dispatched by President James Madison as America’s official Minister to Russia, he left his three sons in the care of his younger brother, Thomas. Arriving in St. Petersburg, Adams wrote with specific instructions regarding the education and training of his boys (George, age 9; John, age 7; and Charles, age 3), telling his brother:

One of the things which I wish to have them taught – and which no man can teach better than you – is the use and management of firearms. This must undoubtedly be done with great caution, but it is customary among us – particularly when children are under the direction of ladies – to withhold it too much and too long from boys. The accidents which happen among children arise more frequently from their ignorance than from their misuse of weapons which they know to be dangerous.³

Expressing similar views, Founding Father Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a framer of the Bill of Rights, declared:

[T]o preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.⁴

Thomas Jefferson likewise advised his young fifteen year-old nephew:

In order to assure a certain progress in this reading, consider what hours you have free from the school and the exercises of the school. Give about two of them, every day, to exercise; for health must not be sacrificed to learning. A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.⁵

Having established the early American view of training children with the use and handling of guns, David explained that this practice continued for generations thereafter, even citing an example of students in the Old West who drew their guns at a school house in order to protect their teacher from a potential shooter. But David’s critics, being unfamiliar with that story and finding it inconceivable that previous generations could possibly think different about guns than they themselves do today, once against took to websites and blogs, claiming that David had made up this story, or that it was completely fictional.⁶ They were again wrong.

The account comes from noted western historian, Louis L’Amour, one of the most famous writers of both historical western fiction and non-fiction. L’Amour amassed a personal library of as many as 17,000 rare books/diaries/journals/documents⁷ particularly focusing on the American west, including numerous handwritten journals of frontier pioneers and settlers. Additionally, he personally interviewed many personalities who had lived in the waning days of the Old West, including gunfighters, cowboys, lawmen, outlaws, and many others.⁸ For his outstanding body of work across his lifetime, he received the Congressional Gold Medal and then the Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan.⁹

Later in life, L’Amour recorded a number of interviews, relating interesting practices and incidents he had found in his research. In one such interview, he related the specific account (what he called “a true incident”)¹⁰ that David cited – a real-life story that he also included in one of his historical novels¹¹ (he regularly included numerous true stories and anecdotes from the Old West throughout his stories). So not only did David not make up the anecdote, it actually came from one of America’s most celebrated western historians, who personally attested to its authenticity.

Proverbs 18:17 reminds us that one side sounds right until the other side is presented. The critics presented their side; David presented the truth. Proverbs 18:2 states that “A fool has no delight in understanding, but in expressing his own heart,” and several of David’s fixated critics have certainly done this, raising objections and expressing the hate in their heart without adequately researching their claims. For this reason, we always encourage folks to be thorough in their research and get the rest of the story before reaching a conclusion.

Incidentally, for those interested, L’Amour’s interview that includes the account of the students with guns at school follows below.

Interview with Louis L’Amour
Audio CD: South of Deadwood

“Deadwood, South Dakota was a wild boom camp that opened up in the Black Hills after the Indians were pushed out. There’s a lot of dispute about the Black Hills now about who they belonged to, but as a matter of fact, it’s very doubtful whether the Indian tribe had much of a claim on them. The Kiowa’s had them for a while and the Sioux drove the Kiowa’s out and the Sioux now claim that they were pushed out by the white man and want to be paid for it. But why not the Kiowas the Sioux drove out? And the Kiowas drove somebody else out; this was the way of things.

But Deadwood was a boom camp that started there. Some of Custer’s men, they were exploring the Black Hills found gold; and they found gold in several places. But Deadwood was where they found most of it. It started around a group of mines or a mine in particular and it did sprawl on the whole side of the canyon there, and there was a lot of dead wood up on the inside of the other and knocked down by, I imagine by wind (that will do it occasionally). I know a place in Colorado where there was a whole forest lining the side of a hill that a sudden wind blew the trees down. But anyway, Deadwood was very, very famous for that.

And Deadwood burst into growth out of nowhere. Buildings and tent houses and everything sprang up along the street and then the people began to come in: the gamblers and the women and the men who were doing the mining and the men who were trying to take the money away from those who brought it out of the ground. And Deadwood was rough and tough. That was where Hitchcock was killed sometime later, shot in the back. There was a sheriff round there for a while named Seth Bullock; he was quite a well-known man, he was a merchant later in Montana. But he was not a gun fighter at all, just a stern quiet man who knew his business and went about it and was very highly respected.

Calamity Jane was around there for a while, but Calamity Jane was really nobody in the West. The only thing she’s remembered for is because she had that tricky name. She was a prostitute of a particular low order and not good looking enough to do much business in town, so she did her business out on the road with traveling wagon trains.

But it was wild and rough and at one time or another nearly all the gunfighters showed up there. There was a very well-known gunfighter at that time who’s been forgotten pretty much since named Boone May. He was a police officer there, deputy sheriff I should say, and probably as good with a gun as any of the others that you’ve heard about. But he didn’t acquire the reputation.

It was a wild, rough town. There’s a very good book written about it by a woman named Estelle Bennett, whose father was a judge there, who had a quite fine library. And he handled a lot of the cases there in town, and Estelle Bennett was a little girl growing up there when all this was going on. She tells a good account of it.

See, sometimes people wonder how we know about what happened in the West. They think you have to have a good imagination. You don’t. Because there were people there at the time who were writing down what happened, you don’t have to imagine; you know. There are diaries every place, and nearly every town had its newspaper (some had two), that were recording the facts right at the time. You know all about these people; you can check everything right from beginning to end.

What you have to understand is that there were generally two sections in any western town. There was the people on the wrong side of the tracks you might say – the saloons and the red light district and all that, and that’s where most of the rough stuff went on. At the same time this was happening, at the same time that gunfights were going on and everything, on the other side of the track there were churches and schools and people going on and carrying on their lives the way any normal people would. And sometimes all they knew about the gunfights was the sound of the gunfire. They didn’t know who was shooting who until they heard it later. But among the rougher crowd, and among the cowboys in the neighborhood, gunfighters were treated about like baseball stars or football stars now. People talked about their various abilities and what would happen if two of them came together and who would be better than who, you know? And this was a discussion that went on quite often, and it was rough; very rough.

And the saloons in those days were not just a place where you went to drink. They were clearing houses for information. Many of the men who went to saloons didn’t drink at all. But you would go in there, and there at the bar or at the card tables you could get information on any part of the country or anybody you wanted to know. If you wanted to know about the marshal in a certain town, you could ask somebody; they would always know. Or they’d always know where a trail was. And if you happened to be a little bit careful about it, and listen a lot, and ask questions very discreetly, you could find out where the outlaw hideouts were, cause there was always somebody around who knew.

And you see, actually, the West was a relatively small place. It was huge in area, but there weren’t many people. And when a cattle drive, for example, started in Texas to go north to Dodge City or Abilene or Oklahoma or Nebraska or wherever they were going, a man would sit down and draw a trail for them in the dust or the clay, or maybe on a piece of paper in a barroom, and show them where they had to go. And usually he would tell them also about the town marshal in those various towns, he’d tell them about Wild Bill Hickok, or Mysterious Dave Mathers, somebody like that, and how they had to be careful of this man, he was dangerous. So, it was relatively a small world and there was really no place to hide in the West. Once you got out there and people knew you by some name or another, they never asked you what your name was. If you told them a name – and you could say “I’m Shorty” – that was all they ever recognized you by. Or if you said your name was “Mr. John B. Ellison,” they just accepted that. They didn’t ask what your background was, or where you came from, or who you were, or where you went to school – anything. They just took you at your own word. If you came round a ranch and stopped by for some food or something (what they used to call “riding the grub line”), you could stop at any ranch, and any ranch would feed you. So nobody asked you your name or anything; if you wanted to volunteer it, that was up to you. If you had some distinction, they might refer to you by that; they might call you “Red,” or “Shorty,” or “Slim.” I was on a circus briefly where there were about five or six “Shorty’s” and seven or eight “Slim’s,” so they got to designating them as “Overland Slim” and “Red Slim” and that sort of thing.

All kinds of people came west, some of them with pretty bad records behind them. The West was a natural magnet for any adventurer, any drifter, anybody who was at loose ends. So men came there from all over the world, not just from America, but from other countries as well. They came there from Australia, from France, from England. We had a man up in North Dakota, called Marquis de Morès, who built a chateau out on the western plains and ran cattle out there. A very handsome man. He even got in a couple of gun battles. But he was a friend of Teddy Roosevelt also, or at least they were acquainted. And there were others that came. For example, a little-known fact is that five of the men who died with Custer at the Little Bighorn had been members of the Vatican Guard. You never knew who you were talking to in the West.

Once up, I think it was in Idaho, there were some miners sitting round a table and one of them had brought a newspaper into the area. Now newspapers were very rare and hard to come by. So he was reading the paper aloud to all these miners while they’re eating. He was reading everything to them because it was all news to them. And he came to an account of the rowing match between Cambridge and Oxford on the Thames River. And one man sitting down at the end of the table looked up and said, “I used to row on that team.” And he had. You see, you never knew who you were talking to.

There were people out there who were titled men. For example, we have a senator in Washington right now who is the descendant of a titled man: Senator Wallop. Oliver Wallop came over here from England and ranched in the plains of Wyoming for thirty years. And then went back and took a seat in the House of Lords. So you never knew who you were talking to.

But Texas, due to the kind of country it was, developing very rapidly, and with men who were fiercely proud and fiercely independent, naturally gravitated toward the use of guns. There were outlaws, there were Indians, so everybody had to carry the gun from necessity. Even children going to school did. Actually, many of the gunfighters were very young. If a man lived to be, say, thirty-five years old as a gunfighter, usually he lived forever, or for a long, long time. But the fellows who were in most of the gunfights were anywhere from seventeen to twenty-five. After that they began to realize that they were vulnerable too, and they began to be more careful about their gun battles. But they were mostly young. There was no such thing, really as a juvenile delinquent in those days. A boy went right from being a boy in knee pants to being a man. And that’s what he wanted to be more than anything else in the world. He wanted to be a man, and be accepted as a man, and welcomed as a man, and do a man’s work; and that was the important thing for him. So as soon as he got to that point, he’d established himself to a degree, and he was very proud of the fact that he had. But some of them went overboard, and some of them became killers and became very vicious. And if you were old enough to carry a gun, you were old enough to get shot. It was your problem.

There’s a case I use in one of my stories; I use it in the story called Bendigo Shafter. All the kids coming to school used to hang their guns up in the cloakroom because they were miles from home sometimes, and it was dangerous to ride out without a gun. And this is taken from an actually true incident. (emphasis added) I use it in my story and tell the story, but it really happened. Now a man came to kill the teacher. It was a man. And he came with a gun, and all the kids liked the teacher, so they came out and ranged around him with their guns. That stopped it. But kids twelve and thirteen used to carry guns to school regularly.”

Endnotes

¹ “Gun Control: Reagan’s Conversion,” Time Magazine, April 8, 1991.

² Warren Throckmorton, “Did Ronald Reagan oppose James Brady on gun control? No, David Barton, Reagan favored the Brady Bill,” Warren Throckmorton, January 16, 2013.

³ John Quincy Adams, Writings of John Quincy Adams, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914), III:497, to Thomas Boylston Adams on September 8, 1810.

⁴ Richard Henry Lee, An Additional Number Of Letters From The Federal Farmer To The Republican (New York: 1788), 170, Letter XVIII, January, 25, 1788.

<⁵ Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, ed. Thomas Jefferson Randolph (Charlottesville: F. Carr, and Co., 1829), I:287, to Peter Carr on August 19, 1785.

⁶ Chris Rodda, “Is David Barton Now Getting His ‘History’ from Louis L’Amour Novels?” Huffington Post, February 4, 2013; Warren Throckmorton, “What’s the source for David Barton’s Kids with Guns Sotry?” Warren Throckmorton, February 4, 2013.

⁷ “America’s Favorite Storyteller,” The Louis L’Amour Collection (accessed on February 14, 2013). See also “A Brief biography of Louis L’Amour,” The Official Louis L’Amour Website (accessed on February 14, 2013); Donald Dale Jackson, “World’s fasted literary gun: Louis L’Amour,” Smithsonian Magazine, 1987.

⁸ Donald Dale Jackson, “World’s fasted literary gun: Louis L’Amour,” Smithsonian Magazine, 1987.

⁹ “Louis L’Amour Biography,” Bio. True Story (accessed on February 14, 2013).

¹⁰ Louis L’Amour, South of Deadwood (New York: Random House Audio, 1986).

¹¹ Louis L’Amour, Bendigo Shafter (New York: Bantam Books, 1979), 164.

The White House Attack on Religion Continues: Repealing Conscience Protection

by David Barton

Some of the first acts of the Obama presidential administration make it clear that there has been a dramatic change in the way that traditional religious faith is going to be handled at the White House. For example, when the White House website went public immediately following President Obama’s inauguration, it dropped the previously prominent section on the faith-based office.

A second visible change was related to hiring protections for faith-based activities and organizations. On February 5, 2009, President Obama announced that he would no longer extend the same unqualified level of hiring protections observed by the previous administration but instead would extend those traditional religious protections to faith-based organizations only on a “case-by-case” basis.¹

Significantly, hiring protections allow religious organizations to hire those employees who hold the same religious convictions as the organization. As a result, groups such as Catholic Relief Services can hire just Catholics; and the same is true with Protestant, Jewish, and other religious groups. With hiring protections, religious groups cannot be forced to hire those who disagree with their beliefs and values – for example, Evangelical organizations cannot be required to hire homosexuals, pro-life groups don’t have to hire pro-choice advocates, etc.

Hiring protections are inherent within the First Amendment’s guarantee for religious liberty and right of association, and were additionally statutorily established in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Congress subsequently strengthened those protections, declaring that any “religious corporation, association, education institution, or society” could consider the applicants’ religious faith during the hiring process.² The Supreme Court upheld hiring protections in 1987,³ and Congress has included those protections in numerous federal laws.⁴ But when Democrats regained Congress in 2007, on a party-line vote they began removing hiring protections for faith-based organizations.⁵

The current concern about the weakening of traditional faith-based hiring protections was heightened when the White House announced President Obama’s commitment to “pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.”⁶ This act fully repeals faith-based hiring protections related to Biblical standards of morality and behavior, thus directly attacking the theological autonomy of churches, synagogues, and every other type of religious organization by not allowing them to choose whether or not they want to hire homosexuals onto their ministry staffs.

The administration’s third attack on religion occurred in the President’s stimulus bill, which included a provision specifically denying stimulus funds to renovate higher educational facilities “(i) used for sectarian instruction or religious worship; or (ii) in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission.”⁷ As Republican Senator Jim DeMint (SC) explained, “any university or college that takes any of the money in this bill to renovate an auditorium, a dorm, or student center could not hold a National Prayer Breakfast.”⁸ Sen. DeMint therefore introduced an amendment to “allow the free exercise of religion at institutions of higher education that receive funding,”⁹ but his amendment was defeated along a party-line vote.

The fourth attack on tradition religious faith appeared in President Obama’s 2010 proposed budget, which included a seven-percent cut in the deduction for charitable giving. Experts calculate that this will result in a drop of $6 billion in contributions to charitable organizations, including to religious groups.¹⁰

The fifth attack was the White House’s announcement that it will repeal conscience protection for health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions or other health activities that violate their consciences.¹¹

In order to fully understand the far-reaching ramifications of this announcement, it will be helpful to review the history of conscience protection in the United States.

— — — ◊ ◊ ◊ — — —

Today’s liberals and secularists attempt to relegate the effects of America’s Judeo-Christian heritage exclusively to the realm of a personal theological choice, ignoring the fact that Judeo-Christian teachings also encompass a philosophy of living that is directly proportional to the degree of civil liberty enjoyed in a society. Early statesman Dewitt Clinton (1769-1828) correctly recognized that Biblical faith applies not just “to our destiny in the world to come” but also “in reference to its influence on this world,” and therefore must always “be contemplated in [these] two important aspects.”¹²

While today’s post-modern critics refuse to acknowledge the dual aspects of Judeo-Christian faith, America’s Framers wisely recognized and heartily endorsed the influence of those teachings on the civil arena – especially on the formation of America’s unique republican (i.e., elective ) form of government:

The Bible. . . . [i]s the most republican book in the world.¹³ JOHN ADAMS, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION, FRAMER OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS, U. S. PRESIDENT
I have always considered Christianity as the strong ground of republicanism. . . . It is only necessary for republicanism to ally itself to the Christian religion to overturn all the corrupted political . . . institutions in the world.¹⁴ BENJAMIN RUSH, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION, RATIFIER OF THE U. S. CONSTITUTION
[T]he genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament or the Christian religion. . . . and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.¹⁵ NOAH WEBSTER, REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIER, LEGISLATOR, JUDGE
They . . . who are decrying the Christian religion . . . are undermining . . . the best security for the duration of free governments.¹⁶ CHARLES CARROLL, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION, FRAMER OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS
[T]o the free and universal reading of the Bible . . . men were much indebted for right views of civil liberty.¹⁷ DANIEL WEBSTER, “DEFENDER OF THE CONSTITUTION”

Scores of other Framers, statesmen, and courts made similarly succinct declarations about how the Judeo-Christian Scriptures not only shaped republicanism¹⁸ but also many other unique aspects of our civil culture.

For example, when Benjamin Franklin founded America’s first hospital, he chose the Bible’s story of the Good Samaritan for its logo, with the passage from Luke 10:35 beneath: “Take care of him and I will repay thee.” Significantly, it was Jesus Who not only taught that it was proper to help the hurt (Luke 10:25-37) but He also taught that it was proper to feed the hungry, befriend the stranger, clothe the needy, visit the bedridden, and support the imprisoned (Matthew 25:34-40) – and to do so for strangers (Luke 10:27-37) as well as for enemies (Matthew 9:35-39). His teachings provide the true standard for charitable relief and civil benevolence.

Scriptural teachings were so important to society at large that America’s most famous public school textbooks taught students Biblical teachings such as the Good Samaritan;¹⁹ and even today, states continue to pass “Good Samaritan” statutes to protect willing volunteers (i.e., Good Samaritans) from legal liability for good-faith assistance efforts. Incontrovertibly, Biblical teaching such as the Good Samaritan, the Golden Rule (“Do unto others and you would have them do unto you” Matthew 7:12), and many others have elevated the culture; and even though these specific teachings are exclusive to Christianity, their primary application is to civil society.

The Framers thus properly recognized Christian teachings as the basis of America’s great civil benevolence – its unprecedented willingness to help others:

Christian benevolence makes it our indispensable duty to lay ourselves out to serve our fellow-creatures to the utmost of our power.²⁰ JOHN ADAMS
[T]he doctrines promulgated by Jesus and His apostles [include] lessons of peace, of benevolence, of meekness, of brotherly love, [and] of charity.²¹ JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, U. S. PRESIDENT
Let the religious element in man’s nature be neglected . . . and he becomes the creature of selfish passion. . . . [T]he cultivation of the religious sentiment . . . incites to general benevolence.²² DANIEL WEBSTER
Christianity . . . introduce[ed] a better and more enlightened sense of right and justice. . . . It taught the duty of benevolence to strangers.²³ JAMES KENT, “FATHER OF AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE”
The Christian philosophy, in its tenderness for human infirmities, strongly inculcates principles of . . . benevolence.²⁴ RICHARD HENRY LEE, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION, FRAMER OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS

Significantly, nations that are primarily secular in their orientation (or those predominated by non-Judeo-Christian religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Shinto, Confucianism, Jainism, Taoism, Sikhism, Bahá’í, Diasporic, Juche, etc.) rarely become involved in benevolent endeavors, and certainly are not aggressive in organizing humanitarian relief. In fact, when the massive tsunami devastated Muslim Indonesia in 2004, other Muslim nations did little to assist a nation of their own faith, yet America – even though considered by Indonesia’s dominant religion to be the “Great Satan” – was quickly on the scene, providing assistance in money, supplies, labor, and technology.

The benevolence that characterizes America – the compassion and humanitarianism that we have inculcated into our culture – is the unique product of the Bible; and non- and even anti-religious Americans have been trained in Biblical benevolence as characteristic of our culture (even if they do not recognize the source of that principle!).

The Ten Commandments provide another example of Biblical teachings that are also primarily societal. As our early leaders noted:

If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.²⁵ JOHN ADAMS

The law given from Sinai was a civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code . . . laws essential to the existence of men in society and most of which have been enacted by every nation which ever professed any code of laws.²⁶ JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

The fact that Biblical teachings provided so many positive effects on society has been understood by American leaders for over two centuries. For example, President Harry S. Truman acknowledged:

The fundamental basis of this Nation’s law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don’t think we emphasize that enough these days.²⁷

President Teddy Roosevelt agreed:

The Decalogue and the Golden Rule must stand as the foundation of every successful effort to better either our social or our political life.²⁸

In short, the Judeo-Christian system is the basis of many of our cherished civil traits – including our current affection for and commitment to protecting the RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE.

According to America’s first dictionary, “CONSCIENCE” is:

Internal judgment of right and wrong; the principle within us that decides on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of our own actions and instantly approves or condemns them. Conscience is first occupied in ascertaining our duty before we proceed to action, then in judging of our actions when performed. Conscience is called by some writers the moral sense.²⁹

That dictionary then gave a Biblical example to illustrate the meaning of the word:

Being convicted by their own conscience, they went out one by one. John 8.³⁰

Significantly, Christ and His Apostles made the rights of conscience a repeated subject of emphasis, with thirty references to that topic in the New Testament alone. The warning is even issued that if an individual “wounds a weak conscience of another, you have sinned” (1 Corinthians 8:12). Christians were therefore instructed to respect the differing rights of conscience (v. 13). (See also I Corinthians 10:27-29.) Christianity set forth clear protection for the rights of conscience.

However, in the twelve centuries that comprised the Dark Ages, the church sadly abandoned those doctrines; but beginning in the fifteenth century, Biblical leaders began to re-embrace those original teachings. As a result, Menno Simons in Friesland (central Europe),³¹ Jacobus Arminius in Netherlands,³² John Calvin in France,³³ and others, advocated a return to protection for the rights of conscience. Subsequent writers, including Christian philosophers such as John Locke and Charles Montesquieu, also encouraged protection for the rights of conscience that had been reintroduced by Christian leaders.³⁴

Those renewed Biblical teachings on protecting the rights of conscience were eventually carried to America, where they took root and grew to maturity at a rapid rate, having been planted in virgin soil completely uncontaminated by the apostasy of the previous twelve centuries. Hence, Christianity – especially as imported to America – became the world’s single greatest historical force in securing non-coercion and the rights of conscience.

For example, in 1640 when the Rev. Roger Williams established Providence, he penned its governing document declaring:

We agree, as formerly hath been the liberties of the town, so still, to hold forth liberty of conscience.³⁵

Similar protections also became part of subsequent early American documents, including the 1649 Maryland “Toleration Act,”³⁶ the 1663 charter for Rhode Island,³⁷ the 1664 Charter for Jersey,³⁸ the 1665 Charter for Carolina,³⁹ and the 1669 Constitutions of Carolina.⁴⁰ Christian minister William Penn incorporated the same protections into the governing documents he authored, including in 1676 for West Jersey,⁴¹ in 1682 for Pennsylvania,⁴² and in 1701 for Delaware.⁴³ There are many additional examples.

Historically speaking, it was the followers of Biblical Christianity who vigorously pursued and first achieved the protection for the rights of conscience that subsequently became a central characteristic of the American civil fabric. Even Roscoe Pound (1870-1964; a professor at four different law schools and the Dean of the law schools at Harvard and the University of Nebraska) acknowledged that it was the Biblical-minded Puritans who first brought these rights to the forefront of civil protection;⁴⁴ and in the words of an 1824 court:

[B]efore [the American colonial] period, the principle of liberty of conscience appeared in the laws of no people, the axiom of no government, the institutes of no society, and scarcely in the temper of any man.⁴⁵

So thoroughly was American thinking inculcated with protecting conscience that when America separated from Great Britain in 1776, the original state constitutions immediately secured the rights of conscience so long expounded by Christian leaders. (See, for example, the constitutions of Virginia, 1776;⁴⁶ Delaware, 1776;⁴⁷ North Carolina, 1776;⁴⁸ Pennsylvania, 1776;⁴⁹ New Jersey, 1776;⁵⁰ Vermont, 1777;⁵¹ New York, 1777;⁵² South Carolina, 1778;⁵³ Massachusetts, 1780;⁵⁴> New Hampshire, 1784;⁵⁵ etc.)

America’s Framers openly praised those protections. For example, Governor William Livingston (a devout Christian and a signer of the U. S. Constitution) declared:

Consciences of men are not the objects of human legislation.⁵⁶

John Jay (an author of the Federalist Papers, original Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, and President of the American Bible Society) likewise rejoiced that:

Security under our constitution is given to the rights of conscience.⁵⁷

Thomas Jefferson (a signer of the Declaration and a U. S. President) repeatedly praised America’s protections for the rights of conscience:

No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience.⁵⁸
[O]ur rulers can have no authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted.⁵⁹
A right to take the side which every man’s conscience approves . . . is too precious a right – and too favorable to the preservation of liberty – not to be protected.⁶⁰
It is inconsistent with the spirit of our laws and Constitution to force tender consciences.⁶¹

James Madison (a signer of the Constitution, a framer of the Bill of Rights, and a U. S. President) similarly affirmed:

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. . . . [and] conscience is the most sacred of all property.⁶²

Clearly, the right of conscience was a precious right under our Constitution. Today, the safeguards for the rights of conscience originally pioneered by Christian leaders now appear in forty-seven state constitutions and have been extended to cover many diverse areas of life. Consequently:

pacifists and conscientious objectors are not forced to fight in wars;⁶³
Jehovah’s Witnesses are not required to say the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools;⁶⁴
the Amish are not required to complete the standard compulsory twelve years of education;⁶⁵
Christian Scientists are not forced to have their children vaccinated or undergo medical procedures often required by state laws;⁶⁶
Muslim and Jewish men are not required to shave their beards in jobs that otherwise require employees to be clean-shaven;⁶⁷
Seventh-Day Adventists cannot be penalized for refusing to work at their jobs on Saturday;⁶⁸

and there are many additional examples.

America has a centuries-long and cherished tradition of protection for the rights of conscience, but President Obama has announced that he will rescind regulations protecting those rights for medical workers.

Significantly, immediately after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade abortion-on-demand decision, Congress promptly passed medical conscience protection to prohibit discrimination against doctors and nurses who for conscience sake declined to participate in abortions; the law even ordered that federal funds be withheld from medical institutions not providing conscience protection.⁶⁹ (Those federal requirements were included in a series of acts from the 1970s through 2008.⁷⁰)

While medical conscience protections originally centered on abortion,⁷¹ they were soon expanded to include other controversial medical areas, including sterilization,⁷² contraception,⁷³ and executions.⁷⁴ More recent areas of medical conscience concern include issues related to artificial insemination of lesbian couples, “surrogate” motherhood, cloning, embryonic stem-cell procedures, and euthanasia.

In fact, many doctors and pharmacists are completely unwilling to prescribe abortifacient drugs or to dispense the life-ending drugs associated with Washington State’s law authorizing euthanasia.

Even though conscience protections for medial personnel are deeply-rooted in federal law, a recent review found that federal funds were improperly being given to medical facilities and programs that did not provide conscience protection for workers – a violation of federal law. Therefore, Mike Leavitt, the former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, instituted new regulations to “cut off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, health plan, clinic or other entity that does not accommodate doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other employees who refuse to participate in care they find ethically, morally, or religiously objectionable.”⁷⁵

As the Department of Health and Human Services explained: “Over the past three decades, Congress enacted several statutes to safeguard the freedom of health care providers to practice according to their conscience. The new regulation will increase awareness of and compliance with these laws.”⁷⁶ Under those regulations, some 584,000 health-care organizations must provide written certification that they are in compliance with current federal laws on conscious protection or else lose federal funding (or even return funding they have already received).

The response of pro-abortion advocates to enforcing the existing conscience protection regulations was immediate:

In the U. S. Senate in 2008, Senators Patty Murray (D-Wash) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y) filed S. 20⁷⁷ to invalidate the conscience protection regulations.
In 2009, the ACLU and pro-abortion groups filed a lawsuit against the regulations.⁷⁸
President Obama announced that he would rescind the conscience protections.⁷⁹

It is regrettable not only that the President should actively encourage non-enforcement of existing federal laws but that he should also seek to coerce healthcare workers to participate in performing abortions or other medical practices that violate their moral, ethical, or religious convictions.

The response of many physicians to the President’s announcement was clear and unambiguous. For example, U. S. Senator Tom Coburn (a practicing ob/gyn physician who is strongly pro-life) announced:

“I think a lot of us will go to jail.” . . . Coburn meant that doctors, himself included, are willing to defy the law before agreeing to perform medical procedures that violate their conscience.⁸⁰

Regrettably, with the repeal of medical conscience protection regulations, many healthcare professionals may be forced to choose between their conscience and their career. Yet, why stop here? Why not force Jehovah’s Witnesses to say the Pledge of Allegiance or forfeit access to public education? Or why not require pacifists to go to war or lose government benefits such as Social Security or Medicaid? Every one of these coercive scenarios should be reprehensible to citizens – and so, too, should be the repeal of conscience protection for healthcare workers.

Protection for the rights of conscience and non-coercion is just one more reason that Biblical Judeo-Christianity is so beneficial to a culture, and why religious influence must be preserved in America today and secularism must be resisted. History – both ancient and modern – demonstrates that neither secular, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, nor any other non-Judeo-Christian nation offers the societal benefits enjoyed in Judeo-Christian America.

Endnotes

¹ David Brody, The Brody File, “The Faith-Based ‘Hiring Protection’ Issue,” February 5, 2009 (at: https://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/535994.aspx).

² “Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (at: https://www.eeoc.gov/policy/vii.html).

³ Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. Amos, 483 U.S. 327 (1987).

⁴ President Clinton signed four such laws, including the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and the 1998 Community Services Block Grant Act. In the 108th Congress, hiring protections for faith-based organizations were included in Head Start and the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). Congress also reaffirmed hiring protections for private schools that participate in the D.C. voucher program enacted in the Fiscal 2004 Omnibus Appropriations Act. See, for example, “Public Law 104-193, 104th Congress,” GPO.gov, August 22, 1996 (at: https://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=104_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ193.104); “Community Services Block Grant Act,” National Community Action Foundation (accessed on March 12, 2009).

⁵ See, for example, “Conference Report on H.R. 1429 – Improving Head Start Act of 2007,” which notes “Representative Fortuno [Republican] sought to add hiring protections to the Head Start Reauthorization by offering an amendment in Committee, but the amendment failed along a party line vote. Rep. Fortuno also submitted his amendment to Rules when H.R. 1429 was brought to the House floor for a vote, but the [Democrat] Rules Committee did not allow his amendment. During debate on H.R. 1429, the Republican Motion to Recommit offered would have allowed faith-based organizations that receive Head Start funding to be able to hire individuals based upon religious affiliation or belief. The MTR explicitly prohibited federal funds from being used for worship, instruction or proselytization. The MTR would have also prohibited the federal government from requiring a faith-based organization to alter its form of internal governance or remove religious art, icons, scripture, or other symbols. While the House debated the issue of faith-based hiring protections, the Senate bill did not include language to allow faith-based organizations to be providers. This conference report codifies the provision which allows faith-based organizations to be providers, however, it does not contain language that would provide hiring protections to such organizations. Simply, this conference report would mean that faith-based organizations that run Head Start programs would have to hire any person who has the appropriate credentials, even if he or she does not agree with the faith or adhere to the mission of the employing organization.” See this at Republican Study Committee, November 14, 2007.

⁶ The White House, “The Agenda; Civil Rights; Combat Employment Discrimination” (at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/civil_rights/).

⁷. “H.R. 1: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,” Thomas, February 17, 2009 (at: https://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app09.html), “Title XIV: State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, Sec. 14004. Uses of Funds by Institutions of Higher Education.”

⁸ “Congressional Record,” Thomas, February 5, 2009, S1650 (at: https://thomas.loc.gov/home/r111query.html).

⁹ “U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes: On the Amendment (DeMint Amdt. No. 189),” United States Senate, February 5, 2009 (at: https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00047).

¹⁰ Karin Hamilton, “Will Obama tax plan hurt religious groups?,” USA Today, March 22, 2009 (at: https://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-03-22-obama-church-giving_N.htm).

¹¹ See, for example, David Stout, “Obama Set to Undo ‘Conscience’ Rule for Health Workers,” New York Times, February 27, 2009.

¹² William W. Campbell, The Life and Writings of DeWitt Clinton (New York: Baker and Scribner, 1849), p. 305, in an address delivered to the American Bible Society, May 8, 1823.

¹³ John Adams and Benjamin Rush, The Spur of Fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush 1805-1813, John A. Schutz, editor (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1966) p. 82, letter from John Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 2, 1807.

¹⁴ Benjamin Rush, Letters of Benjamin Rush, L. H. Butterfield, editor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), Vol. II, pp. 820-821, letter to Thomas Jefferson, August 22, 1800.

¹⁵ Noah Webster, History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1832), p. 6, 300.

¹⁶ Bernard C. Steiner, The Life and Correspondence of James McHenry (Cleveland: The Burrows Brothers, 1907), p. 475, letter from Charles Carroll to James McHenry, November 4, 1800.

¹⁷ Daniel Webster, Address Delivered at Bunker Hill, June 17, 1843, on the Completion of the Monument (Boston: Tappan and Dennet, 1843), p. 17.

¹⁸ See, for example, John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1854), Vol. IX, p. 636, letter to Benjamin Rush, August 28, 1811; John Hancock, Independent Chronicle (Boston newspaper), November 2, 1780, last page; Abram English Brown, John Hancock, His Book (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1898), p. 269, “Inaugural Address: 1780;” Updegraph v. Commonwealth; 11 Serg. & R. 393, 406 (Sup.Ct. Penn. 1824); Jedidiah Morse, A Sermon, Exhibiting the Present Dangers and Consequent Duties of the Citizens of the United States of America (Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1799), p. 9; Jacob Rush, Charges and Extracts of Charges on Moral and Religious Subjects (Philadelphia Geo Forman, 1804), p. 58, “A Charge on Patriotism,” April, 1799; K. Alan Snyder, Defining Noah Webster: Mind and Morals in the Early Republic (New York: University Press of America, 1990), p. 253, letter to James Madison, October 16, 1829; Noah Webster, A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral Subjects (New York: Webster and Clark, 1843), p. 292, “Reply to a Letter of David McClure on the Subject of the Proper Course of Study in the Girard College, Philadelphia,” October 25, 1836; John Witherspoon, The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon (Philadelphia: William W. Woodard, 1802), Vol. III, pp. 41-42, 46, “The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men,” May 17, 1776; and many, many others.

¹⁹ William H. McGuffey, McGuffey First Reader (Cincinnati: Truman and Smith, 1836-1853), Lesson XX, p. 47.

²⁰ John Adams, Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail Adams, During the Revolution (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1875), p. 118, letter to Abigail Adams, October 29, 1775.

²¹ John Quincy Adams, An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport at Their Request on the Sixty-First Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (Newburyport: Morss and Brewster, 1837), p. 61.

²² Daniel Webster, The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1853), Vol. II, p. 615, “The Addition to the Capitol,” July 4, 1851.

²³ James Kent, Commentaries on American Law (New York: O. Halsted, 1826), Vol. I, p. 10.

²⁴ Richard Henry Lee, The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, James Curtis Ballagh, editor (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914), Vol. II, p. 343, letter to Samuel Adams, March 14, 1785.

²⁵ John Adams, A Defense of the Constitution of Government of the United States of America (Philadelphia: William Young, 1797), Vol. III, p. 217, “The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth Examined,” Letter VI.

²⁶ John Quincy Adams, Letters of John Quincy Adams to His Son on the Bible and Its Teachings (Aubrun, NY: Derby, Miller & Co, 1848), p. 61.

²⁷ Harry S. Truman, “Address Before the Attorney General’s conference on Law Enforcement Problems,” February 15, 1950, American Presidency Project (at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13707).

²⁸ Theodore Roosevelt, American Ideals, The Strenuous Life, Realizable Ideals (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), pp. 498-499.

²⁹ Noah Webster, Dictionary (1828), s. v. “conscience.”

³⁰ Noah Webster, Dictionary (1828), s. v. “conscience.”

³¹ Menno Simon, The Complete Works of Menno Simon (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2005), p. 118, “A Brief Complaint or Apology of the Despised Christians and Exiled Strangers,” (at: https://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;cc=moa;rgn=main;view=text;idno=AGV9043.0002.001); or (at: https://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=moa;cc=moa;idno=AGV9043.0002.001;seq=118).

³² “The Works of James Arminius: Vol. 2, Disputation LVI on the Power of the Church in Enacting Laws,” Christian Classics Ethereal Library (at: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/arminius/works2.txt) (accessed on March 12, 2009).

³³ John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1989), Book 3: Chapter 19, §14, p. 140, Book IV, Chapter 10, Sec. 5, pp. 416-417 (at: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.txt).

³⁴ John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (York: Wilson, Spence and Mawman, 1788), pp. 17-25, 31-33, 45, 55, 65-69, 89, 91, 93, John Locke, “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” The Founders Constitution (at: https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions10.html) (accessed on March 17, 2009). See also Baron de Montesquieu, “Spirit of Laws,” The Founders Constitution, Bk. 12, Chs. 4, 5, 1748 (at: https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions12.html).

³⁵ “Plantation Agreement at Providence,” The Avalon Project, August 27 – September 6, 1640 (at: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/ri01.asp).

³⁶ William MacDonald, Select Charters and Other Documents Illustrative of American History 1606-1775 (New York: MacMillan Company, 1899), p. 104-106, “Maryland Toleration Act,” April, 1649.

³⁷ The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters and Other Organic Laws, Francis Newton Thorpe, editor (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), Vol. VI, p. 3211, “Charter of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations-1663.”

³⁸ “The Concession and Agreement of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of New Caesarea, or New Jersey,” The Avalon Project, 1664 (at: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/nj02.asp).

³⁹ “Charter of Carolina,” June 30, 1665, The Avalon Project (at: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/nc04.asp).

⁴⁰ “Fundamental Constitution of Carolina,” March 1, 1669, The Avalon Project, (at: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/nc05.asp).

⁴¹ “The Charter or Fundamental Laws of West New Jersey,” 1676, The Avalon Project (at: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/nj05.asp).

⁴² “Frame of Government of Pennsylvania,” May 5, 1682, The Avalon Project (at: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/pa04.asp).

⁴³ “Charter of Delaware,” October 28, 1701, University of Maryland (at: https://www.stateconstitutions.umd.edu/Thorpe/display.aspx?ID=119).

⁴⁴ Roscoe Pound, The Spirit of the Common Law (Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1921), p. 42.

⁴⁵ Updegraph v. The Commonwealth, 11 S. & R. 394 (Sup. Ct. Pa. 1824).

⁴⁶ The American’s Guide: Comprising the Declaration of Independence; the Articles of Confederation; the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitutions of the Several States Composing the Union (Philadelphia: Hogan & Thompson, 1845), p. 180, Virginia, June 12, 1776, Art. XVI, “Bill of Rights.”

⁴⁷ Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America (Boston: Norman & Bowen, 1785), p. 91, Delaware, September 10, 1776, Art. 2, “A Declaration of Rights and Fundamental Rules of the Delaware State.”

⁴⁸ Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America (Boston: Norman & Bowen, 1785), p. 132, North Carolina, December 18, 1776, Art. 19, “A Declaration of Rights.”

⁴⁹ Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America (Boston: Norman & Bowen, 1785), p. 77, Pennsylvania, September 28, 1776, Ch. 1, Art. 2, “A Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the State of Pennsylvania.”

⁵⁰ Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America (Boston: Norman & Bowen, 1785), p. 73, New Jersey, July 2, 1776, Art. XVIII, “Constitution of New Jersey.”

⁵¹ The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws, Francis Newton Thorpe, editor (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), Vol. VI, p. 3740, Vermont, July 8, 1777, Ch. 1, Art. III, “A Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the State of Vermont.”

⁵² The Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America (Boston: Norman & Bowen, 1785), p. 67, New York, April 20, 1777, Art. 38, “Constitution of New York.”

⁵³ Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America (Boston: Norman & Bowen, 1785), pp. 152-154, South Carolina, March 19, 1778, Art. 38, “Constitution of the State of South Carolina.”

⁵⁴ Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America (Boston: Norman & Bowen, 1785), p. 6, Massachusetts, March 2, 1780, Part 1, Art. II, “A Declaration of Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

⁵⁵ Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America (Boston: Norman & Bowen, 1785), pp. 3-4, New Hampshire, June, 1784, Part 1, Art. 1, No. 5, “The Bill of Rights.”

⁵⁶ B. F. Morris, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States, Developed in the Official and Historical Annals of the Republic (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1864) pp. 162-163.

⁵⁷ B. F. Morris, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States, Developed in the Official and Historical Annals of the Republic (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1864), p. 152.

⁵⁸ Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew A. Lipscomb, editor (Washington, D.C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. XVI, p. 332, letter to the Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church at New London, CT, February 4, 1809.

⁵⁹ Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, 1794), Query XVII, p. 213.

⁶⁰ Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Julian P. Boyd, editor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), Vol. VIII, p. 260, letter to Katherine Sprowle Douglas, July 5, 1785.

⁶¹ Thomas Jefferson, Papers (1951), Vol. IV, p. 404, “Proclamation Concerning Paroles,” January 19, 1781.

⁶² James Madison, The Writings of James Madison, Gaillard Hunt, editor (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906), Vol. VI, p. 102, “Property,” from the National Gazette, March 29, 1792.

⁶³ United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 (1965).

⁶⁴ West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).

⁶⁵ Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972).

⁶⁶ See, for example, “Some parents falsely claim religious objections to child vaccines,” Associated Press, October 27, 2007.

⁶⁷ Potter v. District of Columbia, Civil Action No. 01-1189 (D.D.C. Sept. 28, 2007).

⁶⁸ Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Commission of Florida, 480 U.S. 136 (1987); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 409 (1963).

⁶⁹ 42 U.S.C. § 300a-7.

⁷⁰ See, Federal Register: December 19, 2008 (Volume 73, Number 245), Rules and Regulations, Pages 78071-78101, from the Federal Register Online via GPO Access, DOCID:fr19de08-20, Page 78071, Part VI, Department of Health and Human Services. A series of acts from 1970-2004 were passed on this issue, including the Public Health Service Act of 1996, and the Weldon Act of 2004. See also “Testimony Re: Abortion Non-Discrimination Act: The Committee on Energy and Commerce,” The Protection of Conscience Project, July 11, 2002.

⁷¹ See, for example, 42 U.S.C. § 300a-7(b) (prohibiting public discrimination against individuals and entities that object to performing abortions on the basis of religious beliefs or moral convictions); 42 U.S.C. § 300a-7(c) (prohibiting entities from discriminating against physicians and health care personnel who object to performing abortions on the basis of religious beliefs or moral convictions); 42 U.S.C. § 300a-7(e) (prohibiting entities from discriminating against applicants who object to participating in abortions on the basis of religious beliefs or moral convictions); 42 U.S.C. § 238n (prohibiting discrimination against individuals and entities that refuse to perform abortions or train in their performance); 20 U.S.C. § 1688 (ensuring that federal sex discrimination standards do not require educational institutions to provide or pay for abortions or abortion benefits).

⁷² See, for example, 42 U.S.C. § 300a-7(b) (prohibiting public discrimination against individuals and entities that object to performing sterilizations on the basis of religious beliefs or moral convictions); 42 U.S.C. § 300a-7(c) (prohibiting entities from discriminating against physicians and health care personnel who object to performing sterilizations on the basis of religious beliefs or moral convictions); 42 U.S.C. § 300a-7(e) (prohibiting entities from discriminating against applicants who object to participating in sterilizations on the basis of religious beliefs or moral convictions).

⁷³ See, for example, Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act, 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-67, § 641, 115 Stat. 514, 554-5 (prohibiting health plans participating in the federal employee health benefits program from discriminating against individuals who, for religious or moral reasons, refuse to prescribe or otherwise provide for contraceptives, and protecting the right of health plans that have religious objections to contraceptives to participate in the program).

⁷⁴ See, for example, 18 U.S.C. § 3597(b) (providing that no state correctional employee or federal prosecutor shall be required, as a condition of employment or contractual obligation, to participate in any federal death penalty case or execution if contrary to his or her moral or religious convictions).

⁷⁵ Rob Stein, “Rule Shields Health Workers Who Withhold Care Based on Beliefs,” Washington Post, December 19, 2008, Page A10 (at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/18/AR2008121801556.html).

⁷⁶ “News Release: HHS Issues Final Regulation to Protect Health Care Providers from Discrimination,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, December 18, 2008.

⁷⁷ “S. 20: To Prohibit the Implementation or Enforcement of Certain Regulations,” Thomas, November 20, 2008. See also “Senators Clinton and Murray Introduce Legislation to Stop New HHS Rule that Would Undermine Women’s Health Care,” United States Senate, November 20, 2008.

⁷⁸ “ACLU Files Lawsuit Against Conscience Protection Rules,” Catholic News Agency, January 17, 2009.

⁷⁹ “Health Workers ‘Conscience’ Rule Set to Be Voided,” The Washington Post, February 28, 2009, A01 (at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022701104.html).

⁸⁰ Josiah Ryan, “U. S. Senator Says He Would Practice Civil Disobedience If Obama Repeals Abortion ‘Conscience Clause’,” CNSNews, March 2, 2009.

* This article concerns a historical issue and may not have updated information.

Health Care and the Constitution

In 2010, after a year of contentious debate, it became clear that the House intended to pass the health care bill by whatever means necessary, even if it required the use of a “deem and pass” procedure whereby Members would not vote directly on the bill. After a massive public outcry arose against that unconstitutional proposal (Article I, § 7, ¶ 2, and § 5, ¶ 3 direct that “the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays” on a measure rather than just “deeming” it passed), Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), head of the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee, urged Democrat House Members to remain quiet and avoid talking about the unconstitutional process in an attempt to lessen the political backlash.¹

That procedure ultimately was not used, but once the health care bill passed, voters demanded of congressional leaders the constitutional provision that authorized the federal takeover of health care. In answering that question, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) replied: “Under several clauses – the Good and Welfare Clause and a couple others. All the scholars – the constitutional scholars that I know (I’m chairman of the Judiciary committee, as you know) – they all say that there’s nothing unconstitutional in this bill.”²

Of course, there is no Good and Welfare Clause in the Constitution, but assuming that Conyers simply made an honest mistake, he likely was referring to the General Welfare Clause, which appears in two locations:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote THE GENERAL WELFARE, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and GENERAL WELFARE of the United States. ART. 1, SEC. 8, PAR. 1

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) agreed that “Congress has ‘broad authority’ to force Americans to purchase” health care “so long as it was trying to promote ‘the general welfare’.”³

(Rep. James Clyburn – the No. 3 ranking Democrat in the House – did not invoke the General Welfare Clause but instead candidly admitted, “Most of what we do down here is not authorized by the Constitution.”⁴)

The attempt by congressional leaders to invoke the General Welfare Clause as a cover for an unconstitutional act is nothing new. In 1792 when New England was suffering a crisis in one of its most important economic industries (fishing), some Congressmen proposed that federal funds be used to subsidize that troubled industry. James Madison quickly asserted that such a proposal was unconstitutional, explaining:

Those who proposed the Constitution knew, and those who ratified the Constitution also knew that this is . . . a limited government tied down to specified powers. . . . It was never supposed or suspected that the old Congress could give away the money of the states to encourage agriculture or for any other purpose they pleased.⁵

Madison then warned about the consequences of allowing Congress to expand the narrow meaning of the “General Welfare Clause”:

If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the “general welfare,” and are the sole and supreme judges of the “general welfare,” then they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the United States; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, everything from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police would be thrown under the power of Congress, for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the “general welfare.”⁶

According to Madison, if the original intent of the General Welfare Clause were ever expanded, then Congress would begin an unbridled intrusion into areas that were deliberately designed by the Constitution to be under the control of the state and local governments. Two specific aspects of the Constitution were intended to prohibit such federal encroachments: (1) the Enumerated Powers Doctrine, and (2) the Bill of Rights – specifically the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

Concerning the first, the Constitution authorizes Congress to address only eighteen specifically enumerated (that is, individually listed) areas and responsibilities; this is called the Enumerated Powers Doctrine. As affirmed by Thomas Jefferson:

Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but is restrained to those specifically enumerated, and . . . it was never meant they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers.⁷

Many other Founders were equally outspoken about Congress’ limitations under the Enumerated Powers Doctrine. In fact, this doctrine was so well understood that in America’s first several decades, presidents had only four cabinet level departments: the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Attorney General (occasionally there was also a separate Secretary of the Navy, but many presidents often placed him under the Secretary of War). Today, however, there are almost four times as many cabinet level positions, including a Secretary of Agriculture, Labor, Commerce, Housing, Education, Transportation, Energy, and many others.⁸ Each of those areas was also very important two centuries ago, but because the Constitution had placed these areas under the jurisdiction of state governments, there was no federal presence involved in them.

Concerning the second point (the Bill of Rights), the Founding Fathers – dedicated students of history, government, and human nature that they were – knew that the federal government would invariably try to step beyond its enumerated powers; they therefore added the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution, directly stipulating that all areas not specifically listed in the Constitution were to remain under the jurisdiction of the states and local governments, which thus included areas such as education, criminal justice, energy, agriculture, and many others. As Thomas Jefferson affirmed:

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: that “all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people” [the Tenth Amendment]. . . . To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.⁹

James Madison agreed:

I declare it as my opinion that [if] the power of Congress be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations . . . of the limited government established by the people of America.¹⁰

Jefferson further explained:

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance and from under the eye of their constituents . . . will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder, and waste. . . . What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building, and office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the state powers into the hands of the federal government!¹¹

As Jefferson summarized it:

The states can best govern our home concerns, and the [federal] government our foreign ones.¹²

Significantly, health care issues often arose in early America – as when various dangerous fevers would periodically appear, ravaging American cities and killing scores of citizens. Concerning health care issues, the Founders specifically placed domestic health care into the hands of the state governments, leaving issues of international health care in the hands of the federal government. As Thomas Jefferson affirmed, the federal government was “to certify with exact truth, for every vessel sailing from a foreign port, the state of health respecting this fever which prevails at the place from which she sails,” but that “the state authorities [are] charged with the care of the public health.”¹³ Under the Constitution, states were to handle domestic health care issues, and the federal government foreign ones.

Notwithstanding the fact that a majority of Congressmen voted for the recent passage of the unconstitutional health care bill, there are many in Congress who do understand the constitutionally limited powers of Congress. Dozens of these Congressmen formed the Constitution Caucus, chaired by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ), and many of its Members have made outstanding efforts to return Congress to its constitutional role; two such measures are highlighted below.

Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ)

Every session since John has been in Congress, he has introduced “The Enumerated Powers Act” which would require “that all bills introduced in the U. S. Congress include a statement setting forth the specific constitutional authority under which the law is being enacted.”¹⁴ As Shadegg explains, “The Enumerated Powers Act will help slow the flood of unconstitutional legislation and force Congress to reexamine the proper role of the federal government.”¹⁵

Not surprisingly, leaders of Congress have not allowed this bill to move forward, nevertheless, what a refreshing idea that Congress should provide constitutional authority for the actions it takes and the bills it passes!

Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX)

Federal law establishes September 17 (the day the Constitution was signed in 1787) as Constitution Day, requiring that on that day every school receiving federal funding spend time studying the Constitution. Despite the law, a survey found that the majority of high school students had never heard of Constitution Day, and only ten percent could recall any such school celebration the prior year.¹⁶ However, Congressman Conaway believed that not just school students but also Members of Congress and their staff should also study the Constitution on that day, so he introduced a congressional resolution to that effect. When the a committee chairman heard the resolution, he told Mike, “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard!” – an attitude far too common among many in Congress.

Nonetheless, Mike (and many other Congressmen like him) continues to study the Constitution regularly. In fact, Mike always carries a pocket Constitution with him and each time he reads through it, he writes the date on the flyleaf of the booklet – a practice he began even before he became a Member of Congress.

— — — ◊ ◊ ◊ — — —Founding Father John Jay wisely advised:

Every member of the State ought diligently to read and to study the constitution of his country. . . . By knowing their rights, they will sooner perceive when they are violated and be the better prepared to defend and assert them.¹⁷

The only way that more Congressmen will begin to study the Constitution is if “We The People” study it first and then, through the power of our voice, calls, letters, and votes, insist that our elected officials also know and observe it.

Endnotes

¹ “Van Hollen memo lays out time line and messaging,” Politico.com, March 12, 2010 (at: https://www.politico.com/livepulse/0310/Van_Hollen_memo_lays_out_time_line_and_messaging_.html).
² Kerry Picket, “Conyers fabricates constitutional law citing ‘good and welfare’ clause,” Washington Times, March 23, 2010.
³ Matt Cover, “Hoyer Says Constitution’s General Welfare Clause Empowers Congress to Order Americans to Buy Health Insurance,” CNSNews.com, October 21, 2009.
⁴ David A. Patten, “Napolitano: Supreme Court to Strike Down Obamacare,” Friday, 26 Mar 2010, Newsmax.com.
⁵ James Madison on “The Cod Fishery Bill,” February 7, 1792, Jonathan Elliott, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (Washington: 1936), 4:428.
⁶ James Madison on “The Cod Fishery Bill,” February 7, 1792, Elliott, Debates in the Several State Conventions (1936), 4:429.
⁷ Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, June 16, 1817, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb (Washington, D. C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), XV:133.
⁸ “The Cabinet,” WhiteHouse.gov (at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/cabinet) (accessed March 30, 2010); “Cabinet Level Departments,” National Defense Industrial Association (accessed March 30, 2010).
⁹ Jefferson’s opinion against the constitutionality of a National Bank, February 15, 1791, Writings of Jefferson, ed. Lipscomb (1903), III:146, .
¹⁰ James Madison on “The Cod Fishery Bill,” February 7, 1792, Elliott, Debates in the Several State Conventions (1936), 4:429.
¹¹ Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, August 13, 1800, Writings of Jefferson, ed. Lipscomb (1903), X:167-168, .
¹² Thomas Jefferson to Judge William Johnson, June 12, 1823, Writings of Jefferson, ed. Lipscomb (1903), XV:450.
¹³ Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, 1789-1873, Message by President Thomas Jefferson “To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America,” on Tuesday, December 3, 1805 (at: https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28sj0044%29%29); Thomas Jefferson, “Fifth Annual Message,” The American Presidency Project, December 3, 1805, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/202789.
¹⁴ “Text of H.R. 450: Enumerated Powers Act,” Govtrack.us, January 9, 2009, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-450.
¹⁵ John Shadegg, “Enumerated Powers Act,” JohnShadegg.com.
¹⁶ David Yalof and Ken Dautrich, survey conductors, “New Constitution Day Survey,” John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, September 20, 2007.
¹⁷ John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, ed. Henry P. Johnston (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890), I:163-164, from his Charge to the Grand Jury of Ulster County, September 9, 1777.

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