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It was therefore not without reason that the colony foreboded
collision with the crown; and, after a full report from a numerous committee, of which
Bradstreet, Hawthorne, Mather, and Norton were members, the general court, on the tenth of
June, 1661, published a declaration of natural and chartered rights. In this paper, which
was probably written by Thomas Danforth, they declare their liberties under God and
their patent to be: to choose their own governor, deputy governor, and representatives; to
admit freemen on terms to be prescribed at their own pleasure; to set up all sorts of
officers, superior and inferior, and point out their power and places; to exercise, by
their annually elected magistrates and deputies, all power and authority, legislative,
executive, and judicial, without appeal, so long as the laws were not repugnant to the
laws of England; to defend themselves by force of arms against every aggression; and to
reject, as an infringement of their right, any parliamentary or royal imposition
prejudicial to the country, and contrary to any just act of colonial legislation."
The duties of allegiance were narrowed to a few points, which conceded neither revenue nor
substantial power.
George Bancroft, History of the United States,
Vol.1, p.368-69
On the first of August, the general court of
Massachusetts, as petitioners, thus addressed their complaints to the king: "Your
poor subjects are threatened with ruin, reproached with the name of rebels, and your
government, established by charter, and our privileges, are violated and undermined; some
of your faithful subjects dispossessed of their lands and goods without hearing them speak
in their cases; the unity of the English colonies, which is the wall and bulwark under
God against the heathen, discountenanced, reproached, and undermined; our bounds and
limits clipped and shortened. A just dependence upon and allegiance unto your majesty,
according to the charter, we have, and do profess and practice, and have by our oaths of
allegiance to your majesty confirmed; but to be placed upon the sandy foundations of a
blind obedience unto that arbitrary, absolute, and unlimited power which these gentlemen
would impose upon us, who in their actings have carried it not as indifferent persons
toward us, this as it is contrary to your majesty's gracious expressions and the liberties
of Englishmen, so we can see no reason to submit thereto."
George Bancroft, History of the United States,
Vol.1, p.378
While America generally was so tranquil, Samuel Adams
continued musing, till the thought of correspondence and union among the friends of
liberty ripened in his mind. "It would be an arduous task," he said, meditating
a project which required a year's reflection for its maturity, "to awaken a
sufficient number in the colonies to so grand an undertaking. Nothing, however, should be
despaired of." Through the press, in October, he continued: "We have nothing to
rely upon but the interposition of our friends in Britain, of which I have no expectation,
or the LAST APPEAL. The tragedy of American freedom is nearly completed. A tyranny seems
to be at the very door. They who lie under oppression deserve what they suffer; let them
perish with their oppressors. Could millions be enslaved, if all possessed the independent
spirit of Brutus, who, to his immortal honor, expelled the tyrant of Rome and his royal
and rebellious race The liberties of our country are worth defending at all hazards. If we
should suffer them to be wrested from us, millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers
in the event. Every step has been taken but one; and the last appeal would require
prudence, unanimity, and fortitude. America must herself, under God, work out her
own salvation."
George Bancroft, History of the United States,
Vol.3, p.406-7
You are in my opinion perfectly right in your supposition,
that "the redress of American grievances likely to be proposed by the ministry will
at first only be partial; and that it is intended to retain some of the revenue duties, in
order to establish a right of Parliament to tax the colonies." But I hope that, by
persisting steadily in the measure you have so laudably entered into, you will, if backed
by the general honest resolution of the people to buy British goods of no others, but to
manufacture for themselves, or use colony manufactures only, be the means, under God,
of recovering and establishing the freedom of our country entire, and of handing it down
complete to posterity
Benjamin Franklin, Smyth 5:220. (1769.)
The congress of Massachusetts, though destitute of
munitions of war, armed vessels, military stores, and money, had confidence that a small
people, resolute in its convictions, out weighs an empire. On the return of Samuel Adams,
they adopted all the recommendations of the continental congress. They established a
secret correspondence with Canada. They entreated the ministers of the gospel in
their colony "to assist in avoiding that dreadful slavery with which all were now
threatened." "You," said they to its people, "are placed by Providence in the post of honor, because
it is the post of danger; while struggling for the noblest objects, let nothing unbecoming
our character as Americans, as citizens, and Christians, be justly
chargeable to us. Whoever considers the number of brave men inhabiting North America will
know that a general attention to military discipline must so establish their rights and
liberties as, under God, to render it impossible to destroy them. But we apprise
you of your danger, which appears to us imminently great." With such words they
adjourned, to keep the annual Thanksgiving which they them selves had appointed, finding
occasion in their distress to rejoice at "the smiles of Divine Providence on
the union in their own province and throughout the continent."
George Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol.4, p.94
"The minister must recede," wrote Garnier to
Vergennes, "or lose America forever." "Your chief dependence," such
were Franklin's words to Massachusetts, "must be on your own virtue and unanimity,
which, under God, will bring you through all difficulties."
George Bancroft, History of the United States,
Vol.4, p.115
When the quiet of a week had revived ancient usages,
Washington attended the Thursday lecture, which had been kept up from the days of Winthrop
and Wilson, and all rejoiced with exceeding joy at seeing this New England Zion once
more a quiet habitation; they called it "a tabernacle of which not one of
the stakes should ever be removed, nor one of the cords be broken." [Isaiah 33:20] The
Puritan ancestry of Massachusetts seemed holding out their hands to bless the deliverer of
their children.
On the twenty-ninth the two branches of the legislature addressed him jointly, dwelling
on the respect he had ever shown to their civil constitution, as well as on his regard for
the lives and health of all under his command. "Go on," said they, "still
go on, approved by heaven, revered by all good men, and dreaded by tyrants; may
future generations, in the peaceful enjoyment of that freedom which your sword shall have
established, raise the most lasting monuments to the name of Washington." And in his
answer he renewed his pledges of "a regard to every provincial institution."
When the continental congress, on the motion of John Adams, voted him thanks and a
commemorative medal of gold, he modestly transferred their praises to the men of his
command, saying: "They were, indeed, at first a band of undisciplined husbandmen; but
it is, under God, to their bravery and attention to duty that I am indebted for
that success which has procured me the only reward I wish to receive, the affection and
esteem of my countrymen."
George Bancroft, History of the United States,
Vol.4, p.330-31
Special Session Message, May 16, 1797.
Gentlemen of the Senate and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives:
* * *
Convinced that the conduct of the Government has been just and impartial to foreign
nations, that those internal regulations which have been established by law for the
preservation of peace are in their nature proper, and that they have been fairly executed,
nothing will ever be done by me to impair the national engagements, to innovate upon
principles which have been so deliberately and uprightly established, or to surrender in
any manner the rights of the Government. To enable me to maintain this declaration I rely,
under God, with entire confidence on the firm and enlightened support of the
National Legislature and upon the virtue and patriotism of my fellow-citizens.
JOHN ADAMS.
Messages and Papers of the Presidents, John Adams,
vol. 1, p.229
The New England Puritans not only ordered their
commonwealth by the Ten Commandments and the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but
constantly drew parallels between themselves and the people of Israel and Judah. The
Puritans thought of themselves as experiencing afresh, under God, the tribulations and the
successes of the Hebrew people. "For answers to their problems," says Daniel
Boorstin, "they drew as readily on Exodus, Kings, or Romans, as on the less narrative
portions of the Bible. Their peculiar circumstances and their flair for the dramatic led
them to see special significance in these narrative passages. The basic reality in their
life was the analogy with the Children of Israel. They conceived that by going out into
the Wilderness, they were reliving the story of Exodus and not merely obeying an explicit
command to go into the wilderness. For them the Bible was less a body of legislation than
a set of binding precedents.
[Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: the Colonial Experience (New
York: Random House, 1958), p. 19.]
Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, p.46
Clinton Rossiter expresses succinctly the cardinal point
[p.48] that American democratic society rests upon Puritan and other Calvinistic
beliefs—and through those, in no small part upon the experience of Israel under
God. "For all its faults and falterings, for all the distance it has yet to
travel," Rossiter states, "American democracy has been and remains a highly
moral adventure. Whatever doubts may exist about the sources of this democracy, there can
be none about the chief source of the morality that gives it life and
substance..."From this Puritan inheritance, this transplanted Hebrew tradition, there
come "the contract and all its corollaries; the higher law as something more than a
'brooding omnipresence in the sky'; the concept of the competent and responsible
individual; certain key ingredients of economic individualism; the insistence on a
citizenry educated to understand its rights and duties; and the middle-class virtues, that
high plateau of moral stability on which, so Americans believe, successful democracy must
always build.''
[Clinton Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic: the Origin of the
American Tradition of Political Liberty (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1953), p. 55.]
Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, p.48
Where in the Constitution is America's status as a nation "under God'
repudiated? Where is this Christian heritage replaced with ACLU-brand secularism?
It was Christians of various denominations, not atheists, who worked to create a
government which separated ecclesiastical power from political power. But NOBODY --
Christian or atheist -- advocated a government which would claim godhead for itself.
And if the common law was the foundation of order, also it was
the foundation of freedom. The high claim of the old commentators on the common law was
this: no man, not even the king, was above or beyond the law. "The king
himself," Bracton wrote, "ought not to be under man but under God, and
under the Law, because the Law makes the king. Therefore, let the king render back to the
Law what the Law gives to him, namely, dominion and power; for there is no king where
will, and not Law, wields dominion." The Law is a bridle upon the king. Though the
king may not be sued, he may be petitioned; if he will not do justice upon receiving a
reasonable petition, the king's own Great Council, or the barons and the people, then may
restrain his power. Just that had been done to King John, less than half a century before
Bracton wrote, and would be done to later kings who tried to set themselves above the Law.
Here are the beginnings of the principle of a government of laws, not of men.'
Kirk, The Roots of American Order, p.190
Without Authority vested somewhere, without regular moral
principles that may be consulted confidently, Justice [p.463] cannot long endure anywhere.
Yet modern liberalism and democracy are contemptuous of the whole concept of moral
authority; if not checked in their assaults upon habitual reverence and prescriptive
morality, the liberals and democrats will destroy Justice not only for their enemies, but
for themselves. Under God, the will of the people ought to prevail; but many liberals and
democrats ignore that prefatory clause. In America, particularly since 1825, there had
been distressingly obvious a tendency to make over the government into a pure and simple
democracy, centralized and intolerant of local rights and powers, upon the model of
Rousseau. That "pure" democracy, if triumphant, would destroy the beneficent
"territorial democracy" (a phrase Brownson borrowed from Disraeli) of the United
States, with its roots in place. This would be a change from a civilized constitution to a
barbaric one. The Civil War, said Brownson, had accelerated the process.
Yet Brownson labored on, an old man in Detroit, exhorting Americans to vigor. Under God,
said Brownson in his emphatic way, the American Republic may grow in virtue and justice. A
century later, the words "under God" would be added to the American
pledge of allegiance. Brownson's principles of justice, after all, expressed those American
moral habits of thought and action that Tocqueville had found strong. The violence and
confusion of Brownson's time would diminish somewhat; Marxism would make little headway in
the United States. So thoroughly American himself, Orestes Brownson knew that there was
more to America's great expectations than the almighty dollar.
Kirk, The Roots of American Order, p.462, 468
For more than half a century, the public school children
of Baltimore had opened their school day by hearing two or three verses from the Bible,
saying the Lord's Prayer, and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance—which, since 1954,
included the words "under God." This was in compliance with a rule adopted in
1905 by the Baltimore Board of Education, pursuant to the authority vested in it by
state statute, requiring each public school within its jurisdiction to open each school
day with exercises consisting primarily of the "reading, without comment, of a
chapter in the Holy Bible and/or the use of the Lord's Prayer." The Baltimore school
authorities now informed [Madalyn Murray O'Hair] that all students must participate in the
morning exercises.
George Goldberg, Church, State and the Constitution, p.73-74
The Court requires government at all levels to maintain a
neutrality between theism and non-theism which results, in practical effect, in a
governmental preference of the religion of agnostic secularism. Justice Brennan argued, in
his concurrence in the 1963 school prayer case, that the words "under God"
could still be kept in the Pledge of Allegiance only because they "no longer have a
religious purpose or meaning." Instead, according to Brennan they "may merely
recognize the historical fact that our Nation was believed to have been founded 'under
God."[Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 304, (1963).] This
false neutrality would logically prevent an assertion by any government official, whether
President or school teacher, that the Declaration of Independence—the first of the
Organic Laws of the United States printed at the head of the United States Code—is in
fact true when it asserts that men are endowed "by [p.156] their Creator" with
certain unalienable rights and when it affirms "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's
God," a "Supreme Judge of the world" and "Divine
Providence." If a pupil asks his public school teacher whether God exists, as the
Declaration affirms He does, and if the teacher says, '"Yes," that is
unconstitutional as a preference of theism; if the teacher says, "No," that is
unconstitutional as a preference of atheism. The only thing the teacher can do, according
to the theory of the Court, is to suspend judgment, to say, "I (the State) do not
know." But this is an affirmation of the religion of agnosticism.
Edward B. McLean, Derailing the Constitution, p.155
My countrymen:
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. I assume this trust in the humility of knowledge
that only through the guidance of Almighty Providence can I hope to discharge its
ever-increasing burdens.
Public Papers of the Presidents, Hoover, 1929, p.1
Inaugural Address. March 4, 1929
Well, there are over 300 more references in my computer search through US documents and
selected other publications. I hope this will disabuse anyone of the idea that America as
a nation "under God" was invented by Cold War anti-communists.
Even if it was invented by them, they were right to do so.
Part Two: For more on the religious
foundations of American Government.
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