Providence and the American Past
Robert P. Hay*
Americans! Glorious is the inheritance received from your GOD,
Watch then, with an eagle’s
and handed down by your fathers .
eye, and defend with a holy valor, this .
liberty. The Almighty,
has indeed not dealt so with any nation.’
. ..
..
The Reverend Richard Furman of South Carolina had little patie
with those who explained the triumphs of the American liberal experin
in terms of natural causes alone. “Some have suggested,” chided
Charleston divine in 1802, “that in ascribing our success to the Provide
of God, we run into enthusiasm; and detract from the merit of our statesr
and heroes. An objection fraught with so much absurdity, pride, and impi
does not deserve to be answered,” cried the good pastor. Yet, having t
dismissed the foolish notion categorically, he returned to it long enougk
answer the charge: “It can surely be no disgrace; but an high honor to
patriots, to say; ‘They acted in the cause of God,’ and that, ‘He smiled
their endeavors.’ ”2 Furman’s verbal lashing of his supposedly imp:
countrymen was hardly necessary. Throughout the first century of t
national history, most Americans seem to have believed unquestionii
that the cause of liberty was the cause of God. In accounting for the prese
of liberty in their land, Americans unabashedly declared their belief in
superintendence of a Providence who intended man to be free.
This essay attempts to delineate some of the major facets of the leg
of providential protection for the nation as the legend manifested itsell
popular thought from 1776 to 1876. The study is limited almost exclusi
to Fourth of July editorials, odes, and orations. This limitation is m
only secondarily because the body of Fourth of July materials, prim2
’
in the form of newspaper accounts and pamphlets, is very extensive.
more important consideration is that these orations, representing the M
of lawyers, clergymen, college professors, politicians, editors, and ordir
citizens, reflect the opinion of a wide cross section of the public. 7
Fourth of July opinions can serve nicely as a microcosm of most gene1
held ideas concerning American nationalism. Bombastic phrases and p
platitudes made the Fourth of July address a masterpiece of oratory accorc
to the standards of an earlier day. But, as Merle Curti has pointed out,
oration nevertheless “epitomized the whole pattern of American patri
* Robert P. Hay is assistant professor of history at Marquette University, Milwai
Wisconsin.
1John B. Johnson, T h e Dealings of God with Israel and America: A Disco
delivered on the Fourth of July, 1798 (Albany, 1798), 14.
2Richard Furman, America’s Deliverance and Duty. A Sermon Preached at
Baptist Church, in Charleston, South-Carolina, on the Fourth Day of July, 1802, Bt
the State Society of the Cincinnati, the American Revolution Society; and the Congi
tion which Usually attends Divine Service in the Said Church (Charleston, 1802),
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thought and
I n a representative collection of orations, another
student has affirmed, “is strikingly enshrined the development and ideologies
of the American national spirit i t ~ e l f . ” ~
To avoid possible confusion, three disclaimers must be made. The
author does not mean to infer that the idea of a protecting Providence
began suddenly in 1776 or that it ended abruptly one hundred years later.
The Puritans had long preceded the Revolutionaries in interpreting their
experience as a part of God’s plan. Although the notion, in its most
blatantly pietistic guise at least, began waning in the latter part of the
nineteenth century, largely as a result of the Darwinian and pragmatic
revolutions in American thought, as late as 1902 Robert E. Thompson
published T h e Hand of God in American H i ~ t o r y .The
~ proverbial man on
the street may still be heard repeating the Providence legend, and even the
sophisticate often says that history is on the side of the American system.
Exploration of the idea in recent times is needed, but the sophisticate’s belief
may be simply a modern, secular rendition of the old conviction that God
in His infinite wisdom will take care of the United States. Nor, secondly,
does the writer mean to imply that expression of the idea was limited in any
way to the occasion of the Fourth of July. The legend was much more
pervasive than that.6 Finally, the author is not suggesting that the conviction
that God has guided the nation’s course is unique with American patriots.
Such a belief has been a common element of many nationalisms.? Yet, if
not uniquely American, the idea of a protecting Providence was characteristic
of American patriotism. Indeed, so primary was this theme that no study
of American nationalism can possibly ignore it and remain faithful to
historical fact.
During a whole century of Fourth of July celebrating, one heard repeatedly
that Providence had reserved this western world to be the theatre of the last
experiment in self-government, that Providence had prepared the continent
for the arrival of liberty seeking Englishmen, that Providence had blessed
the earliest settlers in peculiar ways, that Providence had guided the Americans
toward nationhood during the dark days of the Revolution, and that in later
years Providence had continued to smile upon this the world’s only republic.
And all this was for good reason. The American people were the modern
Israel of the Lord, God’s peculiar people, who, possessing the truths of
religion and politics, were charged with the great mission of showing mankind
3Merle Curti, T h e Roots of American Loyalty (New York, 1946), 140-41.
4 Cedric Larson, “Patriotism in Carmine: 162 Years of July 4th Oratory,” Quarterly
Joumal of Speech, XXVI (February, 1940), 12-25.
6Merle Curti, T h e Roots of American Loyalty, 55.
eSee, for examples, Edward McNall Burns, T h e American Idea of Mission:
Concepts of National Purpose and Destiny (New Brunswick, N. J., 1957); Paul C.
Nagel, One Nation Indivisible: T h e Union in American Thought, 1776-1861 (New
York, 1964); and John William Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New
York, 1955).
7See Boyd C. Shafer, Nationalism: M y t h and Reality (New York, 1955), 17-21.
Providence and the American Past
81
by marvelous example the proper way for man to live with man in society.
As God’s chosen people in the modern world, Americans believed that they
must recognize and respect the vital link between religion and liberty. That
true freedom was somehow dependent upon Christianity, they were certain.
If, then, liberty was to continue to flourish, if America was to remain
basking in the smiles of an approving heaven, the nation must always be
one of sincere Christian patriots.
According to this Providence legend, the American liberal experiment
had nothing short of a divine origin. I n a century when American nationalists
were plagued by doubts and fears that their vaunted republic might go the
way of Greece and Rome, to say nothing of lesser states, it was reassuring
indeed to believe that their patriotic aspirations were at the same time the
commands of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God. As one explores
the dimensions of this Providence legend, one discovers the abundant proof
that Americans offered to support their faith. To a sophisticated generation
schooled in more nearly “objective” or “scientific” history, this “proof’ may
seem hopelessly naive and utterly unconvincing. But the importance of the
Providence legend lies not in a present day evaluation of its objective validity
but in the great subjective appeal it had for the first century of American
nationalists. “The nation, expanding violently, needed confidence to carry
on its gigantic task,” John William Ward has said. “In its optimism it
firmly believed that God had foreordained its success and it therefore saw
God’s hand in the most unlikely places. There is no sense in protesting the
logic of the confident creed of expansion since, in the human process of
self-justification, logic has little place.”8 These earlier Americans, it seems
clear, believed.
Among those who shared the popular view that Providence had from
the beginning of time ordained that man should be free was Amos Kendall.
When this Kentucky editor wrote his heroic poem of more than three hundred
lines in honor of the nation’s fortieth birthday, he thought it natural to begin
with these words:
When the Creator with Almighty hand,
Spread forth the ocean and built up the land,
To angels he proclaimed the first decree,
The first great right of man is liberty.
The sons of Adam knew no ruler’s care,
From land to land they wandered free as air,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
No tyrant then with sceptre red with blood,
Reigned o’er the land or rode the flood;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
No ideot [sic] lords or haughty nobles then
Wore gems & diamonds bright with tears of men,
Or saw ten thousand slaves their tribute bring
To deck a strumpet or adorn a king.
Ward, Andrew Iackson, 110-11.
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For some reason as illogical as his eating the forbidden fruit in Eden, man
had turned his back on his initial freedom. As Kendall put it, man “Bowed
to a mortal, and forgot his God.” Once he had tasted tyranny, there was
plenty of time for regret; but not in Greece and Rome and certainly not in
the “Dark Ages” had man been able to regain that liberty that had been
his birthright. In politics as in religion, however, God gave rebellious man
a second chance. As Kendall expressed it,
God in mercy to mankind oppressed
Prepared for them a refuge in the West,
And by Columbus to their view unfurled
The blissful regions of this western world.9
On the same day that Kendall recited his poem to a Kentucky throng,
a Massachusetts clergyman was assuring his congregation in a similar manner
that “The genius of Columbus was illumined, his soul fortified, and his little
vessel guided by an agency evidently not his own.”1o The discoverer of
America was not just a mariner in the employ of Queen Isabella; he was
the agent of God. There were two popular explanations for the providential
timeliness of this voyage by the Admiral of the Ocean Sea. The faithful
patriot could believe with Daniel A. Clark, a New Jersey orator, that “Divine
Goodness, which had long kept it [the American Continent] in reserve for
us, raised it into view just at the moment when oppression was preparing
our fathers to wish and pray for some asylum where they and their children
might be free.”ll Providence, according to this view, called forth the New
World to redress the political and spiritual tyranny of the Old.
Still, it was possible to hold to the theory that God revealed this continent
only when conditions in Europe were becoming better for liberty, not worse.
In his 1855 anniversary address, Augustus Woodbury explained to a
Massachusetts audience that political and spiritual revolutions were required
to bring to the fore men equal to the task of planting American colonies
dedicated to freedom. Magna Carta and the Protestant Reformation marked
the commencement of this political and spiritual liberty, the orator insisted.
“Was it by chance that this broad expanse of country . . . remained unsettled
. till there were Protestant Republicans to settle it?” Woodbury
demanded.12 Another Massachusetts patriot, Caleb Cushing, could have
supplied the obvious answer. For in a later oration on the same theme,
..
Georgetown (Ky.) Patriot, July 13, 1816.
loDaniel C. Sanders, A n Address, Delivered in Medford, 4th July, 1816 (Dedham,
Mass., 1816), 3.
11Daniel A. Clark, IndependenceSermon, Delivered July 4 , 1814, at Hanover,
N . Jersey (Newark, N. J., 1814), 8. See also, James Hamilton, Jr., An Oration,
Delivered on the Fourth of July, 1821, before the Cincinnati and Revolution Societies
(Charleston, S . C., 1821), 5, and Thomas Buford, Address, delivered on the Fourth
of july, 1846, at Midway, Woodford Co., Ky. (Lexington, Ky., 1846), 3.
I * Augustus Woodbury, T h e Character and Influence of American Civilization.
A n Oration delivered before the Authorities of Lowell, July 4 , 1855 (Lowell, Mass.,
1855), 5.
.
Providence and the American Past
83
Gushing was moved to cry out: “I say once again-wonderful, most wonderful,
was that Divine Providence, which had thus prepared and held in reservation”
this new “Eden of God” until Europe’s most intense political and spiritual
upheavals had produced men worthy to colonize the New World, colonizers
deserving enough to be called “the Adam and Eve of the new creation.”ls
Moreover, God had created the New World in such a way as to entice
to its shores only those who valued liberty more than pelf. How fortunate
indeed for freedom that “No Eldorado hung down its golden fruit to the
touch, or spread out its pavement of precious stones beneath the feet, of
English e~plorers.”’~One orator could praise Providence because America
had not been peopled by “the subjects of Catholic Spain, searching for
gold, but by the free men of Protestant England, fleeing from the oppression
which was binding them at home.”1s Another patriot could
assure hi^, Fourth of July audience that adventurers and fortune hunters
had had but scant success in North America because “the Almighty reserved
this spot of the globe on purpose as an asylum for our persecuted ancestors.”l8
Clearly the Almighty had fashioned in North America a habitat for freedom.
In that occult logic in which many an American patriot specialized, it was
“almost a maxim that freedom flourishes most in tractless deserts and lofty
mountains.”’’ And here was a virgin land, immense and fertile. Thus when
the Pilgrims landed, their love of liberty was “strengthened by the very
scenery of the country they had chosen to inhabit. Every thing around them
retained the primitive features of nature.’’18 Since river, lake, mountain, and
forest stood in their “original integrity,” the settlers necessarily resolved that
“man, too, should maintain the proud dignity of his nature.”’* Simply
to live in such a land made it unlikely that man would allow infringements
to be made on his liberties.
But America was not really a virgin; already she had yielded up her
charms to the red man. Already the Indian made his home in those “tractless deserts and lofty mountains” where freedom flourished. What had
Providence planned for him? In a word, destruction. Even “a pious mind,”
like that of an 1816 orator, could discern the hand of God in the decimation
of the New World’s “heathen” inhabitants. By the time of the first settlers’
arrival, their “Protector through the sea had made ready for them a large
place on the land.” Some of the Indian tribes had become wholly extinct,
...
1 s Caleb Gushing, Oration delivered before the Tammany Society, or Columbian
Order, at Tammany Hall, on Monday, ]uly 5th, 1858 (New York, 1858), 6.
14Charles W. Upham, Oration, delivered ut the request of the City Authorities of
Salem, ]uly 4, 1842 (Salem, Mass., 1842), 9.
1s Augustus Woodbury, T h e Character and Influence of American Civilization, 5 .
18 John Gushing, A Discourse, Delivered at Ashburnham, ]uly 4, 1796 (Leominster,
Mass., 1796), 7.
1 7 Lexington (Ky.) Reporter, July 11, 1809.
18Robert Elfe, A n Oration o n the Forty Fifth Anniversary of American Zndependence, Delivered before the Charleston Riflemen (Charleston, S. C., 1821), 14.
I* Frankfort (Ky.) Commonwealth, July 19, 1837.
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and all had been greatly reduced in number by intertribal wars, by pestilence,
by vice, “and by the dreadful judgments of heaven. By other power than
that of man, the heathen had been cast out, and large room made for the
people of
There was no need to cry injustice at the fate of the
first Americans because “Providence for its own good purposes” destined ‘‘a
peculiar people” to oust the new “Canaanites.”21 Indeed, to cry injustice
was to question the Deity.
The time and the place and the men had thus been providentially
selected. The actual crossing of the Pilgrims was the theme of hundreds of
patriotic poems and songs. Typical was one penned by George W. Adams,
the son of John Quincy Adams, for the fiftieth anniversary celebration in
Boston :
Across the wide ocean the poor Pilgrim came,
To worship his God as his free conscience taught;
For a pillar of cloud and pillar of flame,
He trusted his Father, whose service he sought.
Mid storms he came o’er
To this iron bound shore,
To see the fair land of his sires no more;
Nor vain was his effort: God favor’d the free,
And gave him a Refuge across the rude sea.22
This aspect of the legend demonstrates how carefully patriots selected their
facts in order to make them fit. For the Adamses of Massachusetts were
not alone in portraying the Pilgrim Fathers as God’s seed, carefully selected
for the planting of America. A Kentuckian was also fond of saying that
Americans were descended, spiritually at least, from that “handful of wretched
pilgrims [who] landed upon our shores.”23 It was patriotic to gloss over
the economic motive for colonization, to forget the profiteers in the London
Company and the gold seekers of Jamestown. Plymouth was the American
patriot’s ancestral home.
Once the Pilgrims arrived, Providence assisted them in their early trials.
To later Americans, the very survival of those colonists seemed almost
miraculous. One New Hampshire clergyman was so struck by this realization
that in 1825 he preached his Fourth of July sermon on that theme, taking
as his text Psalms 74:2, 3 : “If it had not been the Lord, who was on our
side, when men rose up against us; then they had swallowed us up quick,
when their wrath was kindled against us.” When the colonists were “repeatedly
20Daniel C. Sanders, A n Address, Delivered in Medford, 4 t h July, 1816, 3-4. See
also, A. L. Stone, A n Oration delivered before the Municipal Authorities of the City
of Boston, at the Celebration of the Seventy-Eighth Anniversary of American Independence, July 4 , 1854 (Boston, 1854), 11.
21 Benjamin Faneuil Hunt, A n Oration, Delivered by their appointment, before
the Washington Society, in Charleston, South-Carolina, on the 4 t h of July, 1839
(Charleston, 1839), 8.
22 Frankfort (Ky.) Argus of Western America, August 30, 1826.
28 Frankfort Commonwealth, July 21, 1846.
Providence and the American Past
85
upon the very brink of ruin,” Providence intervened. Especially did it seem
providential that the Indians often lived in peace with the colonists in the
early days when the whites were few. Had the savages attacked the settlers
then, “nothing but a miracle could have saved them. But God mercifully
disposed the savages to live with them on terms of peace and friendship, for a
number of years, till they had extended their settlements, and greatly increased
in numbers and strength.”24 Thus the Providence of this nationalist legend
was considered to be exclusively a white man’s God. The Indians not actually
destroyed “by the dreadful judgments of heaven”25 were made too docile to
resist “the Adam and Eve of the new creation,”26 at least until it was too late.
Perhaps even more in the crises of the Revolution than in the colonial
beginnings could the beneficence of Providence be seen. Later American
nationalists never tired of relating the revolutionaries’ obvious reliance upon
God. “Indeed,” wrote a Louisville journalist in his 1841 Fourth of July
editorial, “when we contemplate their position and the circumstances which
surrounded them, we are forced to the conclusion that those master-spirits
of seventy-six were fully aware of the responsibility of the part which
Providence had assiped to them to perform.”2T Despite the editor’s rhetoric,
his conclusion was one to which most Americans did not have to be “forced.”
Nor was the Whigs’ dependence upon heaven recognized only from the
vantage point of many years. At the first celebration of the Fourth of July
the theme was stressed. “Let others attach‘d to a false philosophy, ascribe the
seperation [sic] of the United States of America from Great-Britain to moral
and natural causes, without taking into view the providential concern of the
Most High in order to the accomplishment of his own divine purpose,” cried
the Reverend William Gordon, Boston’s orator in 1777, “but let every religious
assembly say, the king hearkened not unto the people, for the cause was from
the Lord; this thing is from God.’’28 I n a ditty penned in 1785 one patriotic
wag used less pious words to express his similar belief that the Revolution
was providential :
When pregnant nature strove relief to gain
Her nurse was Washington, her midwife Paine;
The infant Independence scarce began
To be, e’re he ripen’d into man;
France his god father, Britain was his rod,
Congress his guardian, and his father GOD.29
24 Jonathan Ward, A Sermon, delivered at Plymouth, N . H . , July 4, 1825, in
Commemoration of American Independence (Plymouth, 1826), 7-9.
25Daniel C. Sanders, A n Address, Delivered in Medford, 4th July, 1816, 3-4.
26Caleb Cushing, Oration, delivered before the Tammany Society . . . , 6.
2~LouisvilleDaily Journal, July 5 , 1841. See also, the Charleston (S.C.) Courier,
July
- . 4,. 1803.
28 William Gordon, T h e separation of the Jewish tribes, after the death o f Solomon,
accounted for, and applied to the present day, in a sermon preached before the
General court, on Friday, July the 4th, 1777. Being the anniversary of the Declaration
of independency (Boston, 1777), 26-28.
29 Richmond Virginia Gazette and Richmond and Manchester Advertiser, July 7,
1794.
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These limes in addition suggest what was considered to be the ultimate
cause of the Revolutionary War: God‘s ordering of nature in such a way
that she must eventually give rise to a new, independent nation in the West.
“The author of creation seems to have stampt it on the first page of the
great volume of nature, that America should be mistress of herself,” insisted
Benjamin Hichborn of Boston two years after the Treaty of Paris had formally
ended the war.8o The thesis did not soon lose its appeal. Years later David
Ramsey reassured a group of South Carolinians celebrating the Fourth of
July that “The God of order and of justice could never have decreed the
subjection of a great continent, to a paltry island, on the other side of the
ocean. .
The voice of reason, justice, and truth, cries out against it.’’31
Of course what cried loudest against “the subjection,” though Ramsey and
his hearers were doubtless sincerely enamored of their own explanation, was
the voice of an ardent patriotism.
In the more immediate causes of the separation of the “great continent”
from the “paltry island,” greater than mortal power was again manifested,
according to the legend. Had Britain heeded the colonists’ just remonstrances,
opined a Charleston orator in 1810, the Union Jack might still have been
waving in America. After some reconsideration, however, he modified his
position, declaring that the “weak-sighted and corrupt ministry” of Great
Britain had probably pursued the only course it could, given the extenuating
circumstance. For “that Providence, which rendered Belshazzar [i. e.,
Nebuchadnezzar] deaf to the instructions of Daniel, until his folly was recorded
in the ruin of his throne, blinded the ministry to the interests of their country,
and caused them . . to cut the golden cord, that connected America and
Britain.”a2 Edmund Burke and the party of conciliation could not possibly
have overcome the Providence induced inanity of king, ministry, and Parliament.
American patriots celebrating their national holiday also pointed to the
conduct of the War for Independence as further proof of the workings of
God. Daniel Webster was fond of summing up the whole matter by saying
that “the kind hand of over-ruling Providence conduct[ed] us, through toils,
fatigues and dangers, to Independence and Peace.”33 Such a general statement
about the divine intervention probably satisfied many. Yet if any man had
pangs of doubt, there was abundant and more detailed evidence that the
..
.
SoBenjamin Hichborn, A n Oration, delivered before the Inhabitants of the T o w n
Boston, on the Fourth of July, 1784 (Boston, 1784), 14. See also, William J. Hobby,
A n Oration Delivered in St. Paul’s Church, Augusta, on the Fourth of July, One
Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety-Eight, being the Twenty-Second Anniversary of
American Independence (Augusta, Ga., 1798), 6.
81 David Ramsey, A n Address Delivered on the Fourth of July, 1820, by appointment of ‘76 Association (Charleston, S . C., 1820), 3.
82Hext M’Call, A n Oration, Delivered in S t . Michael’s Church, before the
Inhabitants o f Charleston, South Carolina, on the Fourth of July, 1810, in Commemoration o f American Independence (Charleston, 1810), 6.
3a The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (18 vols., Boston, 1903), XV, 479.
of
Providence and the American Past
87
struggle was a glorious event in the moral government of God. “That it was
the purpose of GOD it [the Revolution] should be,” declared a Fourth of
July orator in 1789, ‘(isevident in his almost miraculous interpositions in favor
of it.”34 A later patriot was even more emphatic: “Thousands of instances,
in the course of our astonishing revolution, of the miraculous interposition of
providential assistance, must convince the most hardened and inveterate of
infidels.”s6 No American was so “hardened” as to need to hear all these
“thousands” of instances related one by one. Consequently orators commonly
dwelt on only a few of them. Considering the odds that the American colonists
faced, Paul Allen, a Massachusetts patriot, could ask: what gave the Americans
the courage to promulgate the Declaration of Independence in the first place?
What caused them to challenge the military and naval power of the British
Empire? The question was raised solely for effect, of course. For, as Allen
delighted in pointing out, “The answer is easy. A certain grandeur of heart,
the property of but few, who may in the strictest sense be called Heaven’s
favourites.” Indeed, while proclaiming their nation’s independence, these
revolutionaries scarcely appeared to be human at all. They were “under the
operation of superior power; it was not until its departure, that they sunk
down to the level of
Selleck Osborn, a Connecticut orator, was more fascinated with the early
unity that the colonists displayed in supporting the war effort, despite the
dissimilarity of their ethnic and national backgrounds. In the singlemindedness
with which they rallied around the standards of freedom and nationality, this
Fourth of July speaker saw clearly “the protecting aid of heaven. . . . What
but this could have given such a spirit of harmony, such strength of union
and such concert of action to a widely scattered people, of various habits and
pursuits?”37 T o Osborn’s hearers-who could easily ignore the fact, if they
knew it, that about one third of the colonists were Loyalists at heart while
another one third were indifferent to the American cause-the answer was
obvious.
Another manifestation of divine intercession in the Revolution was God’s
providing the infant American nation with a father. One patriotic pastor
explained in 1803 that just as Providence had raised up men of old to do
34 Samuel Stillman, A n Oration, Delivered July 4th, 1789, at the Request of the
Inhabitants of Boston, in Celebration of the Anniversary of American Independence
(Boston, 1789), 5 .
86 Nathaniel Cogswell, A n Oration, delivered before the Republican Citizens of
Newburyport, on the Fourth of July, 1808 (Newburyport, Mass., 1808), 7.
86 Paul Allen, A n Oration, Delivered on the Fourth of July, A . D . 1806, in the
Congregational Meeting-House, in the East Precinct of Rehoboth, Massachusetts (Providence, R. I., 1806), 6-7. There were many poetic variations on the theme that the
Declaration was a “Divine Decree” or at least made “at Heav’n’s command.” For
illustrations, see the Virginia Gazette and Richmond and Manchester Advertiser, July 21,
1794; the Frankfort (Ky.) Palladium, July 4, 1799; and the Charieston (S. C.) Courier,
July 4, 1810, July 4, 1846.
37 Selleck Osborn, A n Oration, commemorative of American Independence, delivered
to a Republican Audience at New-Bedford, Mass. July Fourth, 1810 (New Bedford,
1810), 9.
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his will, so the United States had been led in the cabinet and in the field
by men who held commissions from on high. “Such distinguished characters
have . . been as really [sic] fitted by heaven . . . as these worthies of old.
Who but an infidel does not see the hand of heaven, in raising up and
qualifying a WASHINGTON for the several important stations he so ably
filled?”38
The interventions of Providence in the fields of battle were often cited
aspects of the national legend. Considering the disparity between the British
and American armies in training, in experience, and in equipment, what
patriot could doubt that heaven had given the Americans their victory? A
Kentuckian was repeating a commonplace when he summed up the whole
Revolutionary War in a single Fourth of July sentence: “At last we were
victorious; the hand of Providence was made manifest in every struggle
that we fought, and we seemed to be under the protection of O m n i p ~ t e n c e . ” ~ ~
Even the skeptic could behold the hand of God through the smoke of
battle at Trenton or Saratoga or Yorktown. But where, he might inquire,
was Providence when the Americans met defeat? A South Carolinian modified
the legend to make it fit these facts: “Some of the disasters which befel [sic]
ourselves may be assigned to the same cause [as our victories] ; though as
mercifully intended to convince us, when become confident and secure, where
our true strength lay.”40 The defeats in Canada and on the Lakes, the repulse
at Savannah, and the fall of Charleston-all these were, rightly viewed, the
necessary warnings of the Diety that the Americans must not become cocky
or forget their utter dependence on Providence.
When the founding fathers sought to secure in the Constitution the
liberties recently defended in battle, the smiles of heaven were still upon
them. Surely it was providential that newly independent states of many
diverse interests could, in defiance of all precedent, achieve “the voluntary
and peaceable adoption of a system of government, the traits of which are
power with responsibility, and liberty without l i ~ e n t i o ~ s n e ~That
~ . ” ~such
~
a
marvelous event could transpire, one contemporary Fourth of July orator
from Pennsylvania could only ascribe “with all the glow of piety, to the
interposition of that BEING whose Throne is exalted in the highest heavens.”42
Later patriots continued to echo the belief that the nation under the Articles
.
88Samuel Taggart, A n Oration: Spoken at Cokain, July 4, 1803. Being the
Anniversary of American Independence (Greenfield, Mass., 1803), 9. “WASHINGTON!-A seeming emanation of the divinity, charged with the salvation of his country!”
cried Keating Lewis Simons in A n Oration, Delivered in the Independent Circular
Church, Before the Inhabitants of Charleston, South-Carolina, on Friday, the Fourth
of July, 1806; in Commemoration of American Independence (Charleston, [ 18061 ), 11.
89 Frankfort Commonwealth, August 3, 1847.
40 Richard Furman, America’s Deliverance and Duty . . . , 12.
4l Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, July 10, 1789. The oration was
delivered by the Reverend William Rogers before a July Fourth meeting of the
Pennsylvania State Society of the Cincinnati.
42 Ibid.
Prouidence and the American Past
89
of Confederation was rapidly approaching “anarchy and dis~rganization”~~
and that ratification of the Constitution was a providentially inspired preventive to national disaster.
Faced on every hand with this plentiful evidence that God had been
active in the establishment of their nation, few patriots were inclined to
disagree when reminded that, great as the Whigs of 1776 were in their own
right, they were venerable principally because they were “the illustrious
agents employed in the divine commission of our country’s emancipation.”44
Behind the Washingtons and the Jeffersons, yea even behind the Sam Adamses
and the Patrick Henrys, there was God.
Americans not only related their colonial and revolutionary past in
such a way as to make God’s guidance the central theme, but there was
also a continuing awareness throughout the nineteenth century that America’s
liberty and happiness depended upon a merciful Providence. The realization
of this “fact” struck Hezekiah Niles with peculiar force on the “Sabbath of
Liberty” in 1824. “I felt disposed to renew my vows,” wrote the ardent
Baltimore nationalist, “that . . . I would continue to do what I could, that
we might hold on to the blessings conferred on my country and countrymen,
by a beneficent Providen~e.”~~
Similarly, a Virginia poet wrote that the
Fourth of July brought to all Christians and patriots pride in the nation’s
glorious past, anticipation of the nation’s future grandeur,
And gratitude to Him, its God and Guide,
Whose hand sustained it o’er the adverse tide,
Wheron ’twas launched, ‘mid tempests wild and dark
And guards it still, His freedom-freighted ark.46
Year after year holiday orators glowed with pride as they pointed out
the stupendous material achievement of the American people. Just as the
Puritan had earlier viewed pecuniary success as a possible s i p of his individual
election, so patriots now interpreted the material attainments of the nation as
a whole as an indication of the divine favor that had been bestowed upon
the United States. “The prosperity that has ever marked this country, but
more especially since her independence, is further proof that God is with
us,” declared a New Hampshire clergyman in 1829. Standing almost equidistant
in time between the panics of 1819 and 1837, this patriot could tell his
audience that “The Almighty seems to have determined in
[our] fa~or.”~‘
...
43 James D . Hopkins, A n Oration Pronounced before the Inhabitants of Portland,
July 4th, 1805, in Commemoration of American Independence (Portland, Maine District,
1805), 11-12.
44 J. H. Farnham, Oration at Versailles, Kentucky, July 4, 1816, Georgetown
Patriot, July 27, 1816, and Lexington (Ky.)Reporter, September 18, 1816.
45 Niles’ Weekly Register, XXVI (July 10, 1824), 297.
46 J. B. Clarke, Poem, for the Celebration, by the Public Schools, and Citizens of
Wheeling, Va., of the National Anniversary, July 4, 1849 (Wheeling, 1849)) 4.
47 J. N. Maffitt, Oration at Portsmouth, New Hampshire) July 4, 1829, Dover
(N. H.)Dover Gazette and Strafford Advertiser, July 14, 1829.
90
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T h e protection of Providence seemed obvious in good times, but
especially in periods of national adversity Americans could behold the hand
of God leading them on. Virtually every crisis resulted in the extension and
embellishment of the Providence legend. Decrying in 1812 the British
attempts to goad the Indians onto the warpath and to stir up strife and
treason within the United States as a prelude to John Bull’s endeavor to
reconquer his lost provinces, a Kentuckian exulted: “But HE, who holds the
destiny of nations in hands, overruled the perfidious attempt, and we were
Despite a year of military reverses, George Hay could assure the
residents of Richmond in 1813 that heaven had decreed that the British
plan to overwhelm the young republic must ultimately fail. “Engaged as we
are in a just cause, the blessings of Almighty God will be upon us.”49 Hay
believed that both the Almighty and the Americans were the adversaries of
Britain.
Perhaps the most remarkable “divine intercession” of the entire century
occurred on July 4, 1826, as millions of Americans were celebrating their
nation’s fiftieth birthday. Just as patriots were praising Thomas Jefferson
and John Adams for their revolutionary deeds and for their long lives spent
in the nation’s service, the two “Patriarchs” died. In this timely event, which
few believed to be mere coincidence, Daniel Webster discerned the work of
God: “As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not
willing to recognize in their happy termination, as well as in their long
continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are objects of His
care?”5o By calling away these two founding fathers on the fiftieth Fourth
of July, heaven demonstrated anew its favor to the nation that they had
been instrumental in establishing. What great orators proclaimed at the
memorial services in the large cities, little known speakers declared in hamlets
throughout the land. Meeting in Macon to consider the “Wonderful
coincidence!” Georgians concluded with eulogist James S. Frierson that the
American mind, searching for causes, “wanders through a labarinth [sic] of
difficulty-is lost in its own investigation-recoils upon itself, and is forced
to this conclusion-it is the work of Him who governs all!”s1 When, shortly
after July 4, “a celebrated Mathematician” calculated that the chance of
this occurrence was “only one in twelve hundred millions,”52 this statistical
48 Jesse Head, Oration in Mercer County, Kentucky, July 4, 1812, Lexington (Ky.)
Reporter, August 1, 1812.
40 George Hay, Oration at Richmond, Virginia, July 5, 1813, Richmond Enquirer;
reprinted in two parts in the Lexington (Ky.) Reporter, August 7, 14, 1813.
50 Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, I, 290-91. See also, Charles Francis
Adams (ed.), Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from
1795 to 1848 (12 vols., Philadelphia, 1874-1877), VII, 122, 125; Niles’ Weekly
Register, XXX (August 5, 1826), 403-408; Caleb Cushing, A Eulogy on John Adams
and Thomas Jefferson, Pronounced in Newburyport, July 15, 1826 (Cambridge, Mass.,
1826), 3-4, 9-11, 52.
51 Macon Georgia Messenger, August 22, 1826. See also, the Edwardsville (Ill.)
Spectator, August 25, 1826.
62New Haven (Conn.) Columb$ Register, July 22, 1826. Still remoter odds,
“more than 1721 millions to 1 against, appeared in the Chameleon, a student publication of the University of Virginia, and were reprinted in the Dover Gazette and
Strafford Advertiser, July 12, 1831.
Providence and the American Past
91
proof only lent the confirmation of the head to what Americans already
believed in their hearts. Just five years later, when Providence again
“interceded” by calling James Monroe to rest on the Fourth of July, the
legend received anew the sanctity of sober factF3
Even when American leaders died under less fortuitous circumstances,
eulogists reiterated their conviction that the demise of a few great statesmen
could not adversely affect the heaven directed flow of American history.
Washington and all the “Fathers of the Republic are gone,” lamented the
Reverend Dr. Gardiner Spring in 1852.54 Indeed, the second generation of
American leaders was now passing from the scene. John Quincy Adams
and John C . Calhoun had recently died, and on this Fourth of July morning
New Yorkers heard a eulogy for Henry Clay, who had died five days before
in Washington. Still, there was little cause for despair, Dr. Spring insisted,
for “our liberties are not buried in the tombs of our great men! Our Liberties
survive, and preserved by the GOD of Nations [we] will be free! ‘Whom the
Son maketh free is free indeed!’”65
During the Civil War, the greatest test of American nationality, more
than one Unionist attempted to quiet the fears of skeptics by Fourth of
July assurances that “God did not create this fair land to be the theatre of
unceasing anarchy and strife. The rebellion will be subdued. . . . The hand
of a great destiny beckons us on.”66 That Confederates also claimed that
their cause represented the will of heaven only emphasizes the importance
of the idea of a protecting Providence in the popular thought of all the
nation’s sections. When, shortly before the Fourth of July, 1862, the
Confederate capital withstood a. Yankee onslaught, the editor of the Daily
Richmond Enquirer interpreted the meaning of the triumph for his readers:
“The God of Battles has given us the victory over our enemies; they have
been driven from the gates of the city; the army sent to crush and subjugate
us has been defeated, routed, almost completely decimated.” There was no
Fourth of July glorification, pyrotechnic displays, or idle boasting in Richmond,
however. Instead several churches were thrown open, and “the peer and the
peasant knelt in humble thankfulness to the Lord on high, that we had been
delivered from bondage.” This was but the natural thing to do, the editor
believed; for “to God is all the glory due, and a c ~ o r d e d . ” ~ ~
53 For illustrations of popular opinion, see Niles’ Weekly Register, XL (July 23,
1831), 371; New York Evening Post, as reprinted in the Trenton (N. J.) Emporium
and True American, July 9, 1831; and the New York Evening Post, July 5 , 1831, as
reprinted in the York (Pa.) Gazette, July 12, 1831.
64New York Daily Times, July 5, 1852.
Ibid.
56 Celebration of the Eighty-Sixth Anniversary of the Independence of the United
States, in Chicago, July 4th, 1862 (Chicago, 1862), 20. The orator was B. F. Ayer.
See also, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Oration delivered before the City Authorities of
Boston, on the Fourth of July, 1863 (Boston, 1863), 11-12; N. P. Banks, A n Address
delivered at the Customhouse, New Orleans, on the Fourth o f July, 1865 (n.p., n.d.),
23; Celebration at North Bridge, Salem, July 4th, 1862 (Boston, 1862), 7-8.
57 Daily Richmond Enquirer, July 5, 1862. See also, the Mobile (Ala.) Advertiser
and Register, July 7, 1864.
92
Indiana Magazine of History
Military success seemed to sanction northerners as the more rightful
claimants of the Providence legend, though this conclusion was by no means
logically inevitable. I n any case, those who believed that the Union had
been saved by greater than human force found it easy to credit the theory
that God had raised up a leader to do His bidding. I n his editorial written
for “our nation’s holyday” in 1865, a Kentucky Unionist called upon his
patrons to pay “tribute to memory of him [Abraham Lincoln] who was the
chosen instrument of God to lead us out of the darkness of the past into
this marvellous light.”58 Similarly, a New Yorker, Seymour L. Stebbins, argued
that it was impossible, “even for a mind not accustomed to look beyond
natural causes,” to reflect on the critical war years without perceiving the fiat
of the Almighty. Thus Abraham Lincoln was surely God’s instrument for
putting down the rebellion and ridding the nation of the dreadful scourge of
slavery. T o Stebbins it seemed certain that just as “the hand of Providence
has been leading this nation through the bloody past; that hand will guide it
through the peaceful future.”59
While Fourth of July references to the superintendence of Providence
were fewer after 1865 than before, they were still to be heard. An Indiana
Republican, George W. Julian, who insisted that he had “no taste for
glittering generalities,” nevertheless included the notion of America’s reliance
on God in his Fourth of July speech in 1872. Decrying the monopoly of
banks, “the railway power,” and the precarious position of labor, Julian could
still maintain his faith in democracy. Why? Because “the Almighty will not
now call a halt in the grand march of events, through which he is bringing
our land with real liberties and lasting peace.”s0
As orators reflected on the first century of American nationality, it
seemed to some of them that the legend of a protecting Providence provided
the key to understanding their country’s past. Thus in 1876 Colonel Michael
P. Nolan reminded residents of Dayton, Ohio, that Washington had secured
the nation’s independence, that Jackson had maintained it at New Orleans
against foreign foes, and that Lincoln had only lately preserved “the ensign
of American nationality” from domestic assault. “In the one hundred years
which this day terminates,” the Fourth of July orator summed up his case,
“we have had three grand epochs, and Providence has furnished us with a
man gifted for each emergency.’’61
Granting that Providence had obviously been kind to Americans, the
skeptic might still have inquired if Providence had not also blessed Britons
and Italians and Greeks. Could a pious Frenchman not discern the hand
5 8 Frankfort Commonwealth, July 4, 1865.
@*SeymourL. Stebbins, Oration delivered at the Celebration of the Anniversary of
our National Independence, at Rondout, N . Y., July 4, I865 (New York, 1865), 6, 13.
60 George W. Julian, Speech at Vincennes, Indiana, July 4, 1872, Indianapolis
Indiana State Sentinel, July 9, 1872.
61 1876. Independence Day. Its Centennial Celebration in Dayton (n. p., n. d.),
4-6.
Providence and the American Past
93
of God in his nation’s past just as clearly as the Yankee beheld it in his? Scoffing at such foolish notions, most Americans would have retorted that God was
watching over their liberties with peculiar care. Frequently they used biblical
analogies to show the sacredness and exclusiveness of this tie that bound
Providence and the American people, this link joining a nation of patriots
and their own national God. Samuel P . P. Fay, for example, likened the
emergence of the American nation in the political world to Christ’s birth
in the spiritual realm. “On one side, the English Herod fought [for] the
destruction of our infant state, with all the violence of power, armed with
all the machinery of death,” explained the Massachusetts orator at a Fourth
of July gathering at Concord in 1801. “On the other, the intrepid votaries
of freedom opposed their bosoms in its defence, with all the magnanimity
of resolution and despair.’’6z Another well worn Fourth of July analogy
pictured the American colonists as a youthful David battling the dreadful
giant, Great Britain; and “like the young hero, relying on the justice of
our cause and the smiles of approving heaven, we resisted, we fought, we
conq~ered.”~~
The idea that America was the special concern of God was most often
and most fully developed in the portrayal of the nation as the modern
Israel, the chosen people of the Lord. When seen in this light, the Revolution
seemed to be the providential release of the American Israel from the
Egyptian bondage of Great Britain. Looking back upon the struggle after
ten years, the former president of Congress, Elias Boudinot, admonished his
countrymen “to remember, with reverential gratitude to our supreme Benefactor, all the wonderful things he has done for us, in our miraculous
deliverance from a second Egypt-another
house of bondage.”G4 “Our
deliverance from foreign domination may be not inaptly compared to the
deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage,” agreed the Reverend Eliphalet
Nott in his Fourth of July discourse at Albany in 1801.65 Nor were only
northerners and clergymen enamored of the theme. Years later, Francis D.
Quash of South Carolina assured members of the American Revolution
Society and the Society of the Cincinnati that during the War for Independence
oppressed freemen had put “their only trust in Him, who never deserts the
faithful, who as he once led his chosen people from the task-masters of Egypt,
62 Samuel P. P. Fay, A n Oration, Delivered at Concord, on the Anniversary of
American Independence, July 4th, I801 (Cambridge, Mass., 1801 ) , 11.
68Cushing Otis, An Oration, Pronounced at Scituate, July 4, 1800, at the Request
of the Inhabitants, in Commemoration of American Independence (Boston, 1800),
6. See also, James B. M. Potter, Oration Delivered at Kingston, R . I , July 4 , 1843
(Boston, 1844)’ 10.
64 Elias Boudinot, A n Oration, Delivered at Elitabeth-Town, New-Jersey, Agreeably
to a Resolution of the State Society of Cincinnati, on the Fourth of July, M . DCC.
X C I I I . (Elizabethtown, 1793), 7.
65 Eliphalet Nott, A Discourse Delivered in the Presbyterian Church, in Albany,
the Fourth of July, A.D. 1801. at the Celebration of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of
American Independence (Albany, 1801), 5 .
Indiana Magazine of History
was able to carry his American Israel through the waves and wilderness of
pvolution, and to place them in the Canaan of peace and independence.’)66
At this point the Providence legend transformed the Mount Vernon
planter into the modern Moses. “In the case of the Hebrews, God qualified
and raised up Moses, as the leader of his people,” a patriotic Connecticut
clergyman reminded his Fourth of July congregation, adding in the same
breath, “In like manner, God raised up a WASHINGTON’ to guide His
American Israel out of the captivity of British tyranny into the “Promised
Land” of liberty and pea~e.~’
To a Mississippian as well as to a New Englander
this portrayal of the Father of his Country as the modern Moses seemed
entirely apt.68
Still believing that their nation was God’s modern Israel, some later
Americans pictured the Civil War as the country’s release from the Egyptian
bondage of Negro slavery and cast another statesman in the role of the great
Hebrew leader. Abraham Lincoln was “our Moses, in this our pilgrimage;
and like Moses, only permitted to look at the reward he strove to gain,’’
contended New Jersey orator Cortlandt Parker in 1865. Indeed, Parker
insisted that Lincoln was “better than Moses, in that no aggravation provoked
him to undue temper-no dark or sorrowful hour shook his faith in God
and his justice.’) For like the Jewish patriarch whose name he bore, Lincoln
had gone forth, “not knowing whither he went, committing his way unto
God, and looking only at present duty, ‘believed God.’”69 In this way,
Parker was striving to make a major facet of the Providence legend relevant
for his own time. The psychological necessity for Parker and his contemporaries to believe that the Civil War had been laden with providential meaning
seems obvious.
Ancient Israel had been charged with a mission: it was the Hebrews’
responsibility to instruct the pagan world in the precepts of the true religion.
In like manner, if God had raised up America as His modern Israel, He
must have had a mission for America to accomplish. For what purpose had
Providence raised up a peculiar people in the modern world? Why did there
need to be a modern Israel of the Lord? Time and time again American
patriots brought up these logical questions. In fact they did so with
enthusiasm, for they were gifted in relating answers which infused being an
American with a meaning and purpose that was part of a holy design. Most
Americans would probably have agreed with that Fourth of July orator
66Francis D. Quash, A n Oration Delivered on the Fourth of July, 1820, before
the Cincinnati and Revolution Societies (Charleston, S . C., 1820), 8. See also,
the Washington, D.C. United States‘ Telegraph, July 14) 1826, for W. B. Tappan’s
“Hymn.”
67 Cyprian Strong, A Discourse, Delivered at Hebron, at the Celebration of the
Anniversary of American Independence, July 4th, 1799 (Hartford, 1799)) 6. See also,
in Albany .
, 15.
Eliphalet Nott, A Discourse Delivered
68 See, for instance, the Natchez (Miss.) Ariel, July 26, 1828.
e8Cortlandt Parker, Our Triumph and our New Duties. Oration delivered at
Bloomfield, N . J., July 4, 1865 (Newark, N. J., 1865), 13.
...
..
Providence and the American Past
95
of 1799 who held that there was obviously some weightier reason for “the
many great and distinguished interpositions of Divine Providence” in favor
of the United States than the mere granting of a distinct nationhood. It
was clear that “GOD has some great and important designs in the event,
which has made such a revolution in American affairs, besides raising us
to consideration among earthly kingdoms. He is constantly prosecuting his
great and glorious purposes.”7o Four decades later, Benjamin Faneuil Hunt
echoed these sentiments for South Carolinians. “The American Revolution
is the instrument by which Providence is accomplishing the destinies of the
world,” Hunt told the Washington Society of Charleston at its Fourth of
July meeting. Nothing since the Christian revelation promised so much of
benefit to the masses of mankind.71
The intention of Providence, it was commonly held, was that America
should reverse the verdict of history that republics were unstable and soon
came to grief because man was not capable of self-government. “For
four thousand years the world has been waiting, hoping, and longing with
anxious soul, for an example of self-government, universal intelligence, free
conscience, and moral power,” a South Carolina clergyman explained,
“and we believe that it is ours to offer that example.”72 Such knowledge
of God’s plan was not the peculiar province of clerics alone, however. When
John Palmer, a Briton, attended the Fourth of July ceremony at Cincinnati
in 1817, he heard the entire throng sing a song which suggested that God
had decreed from the beginning of time that His modern Israel should
show the world the way to liberty:
When first the sun o’er ocean glow’d,
And earth unveil’d her virgin breast;
Supreme ’mid nature’s vast abode,
Was heard the Almighty’s dread behest.
Rise Columbia, brave and free,
Poise the earth, and rule the sea!
In darkness wrapp’d, with fetters chain’d,
Will ages grope, debased and blind;
With blood the human hand be stain’d,
With tyrant power the human mind.73
Although the Briton might find in this hymn “too much boasting and
bombast,”74 to Americans it seemed to be the common sense of the matter
that their nation, in providing the world with an example of the just way
...
.
70Cyprian Strong, A Discourse, Delivered at Hebron
, 16.
71Benjamin Faneuil Hunt, A n Oration, Delivered . . in Charleston
, 6.
7 2 Charles M. Taggart, T h e Moral Mission of OUT Country, T w o Discourses delivered
before the Unitarian Christians, o f Charleston, S. C . on Sunday, July 3d, 1853
(Charleston, 1853), 11. See also, Isaac N. Shannon, Divine Providence in American
history and politics. A Discourse Delivered in the Second Presbyterian Church, NewBrunswick, N . I.
July
, 4, 1852 (New Brunswick, 1852), 3.
75 John Palmer, Journal of Travels in the United States of North America, and
(London, 1818), 81.
in Lower Canada, performed in the year 1817
74 Ibid.
. ..
...
Indiana Magazine of History
96
for man to live with man in society, was simply obeying “the Almighty’s
dread behest.”
This conviction seemed to be substantiated by the fact of numerous
revolutions abroad. The American mission was having an impact. What had
caused the revolutions in France, in Poland, in Greece, in Italy, not to
mention the internal overthrow of most of Spain’s New World empire, “what
but the example of the American Union-the Moral sun which God is
holding up to illumine and guide the nations, to freedom, to knowledge, and
to peace?”7s The French Revolution of 1789, as well as some subsequent
foreign revolutions, had eventually become so bloody and socially disruptive
that many patriots in the United States were forced to deny that they were
the legitimate offspring of the earlier American rebellion, but this in no way
implied fault in the American pattern.76 I n some cases the genuine lovers
of freedom allegedly were overwhelmed by the too powerful legions of
despotism ; in others, the rebels themselves were too licentious and unstable
to fashion a republic. But let no flaw be imputed to the American example,
patriots seemed to be saying. There was nothing wrong with the modern
Israel.
Even when the European revolutions of the 1820s and 1830s and
especially the heartbreaking reversals of 1848 failed to bear out American
hopes that despotism was in its waning stages, the appeal of the theme
remained powerful. If Providence had raised up the American Israel to
provide a liberal example for the world, then no temporary setbacks could
affect her destiny. O r so it seemed to many patriots. Neither the oppressors
in France and England nor indeed all the despots of the world combined
could possibly halt “the sublime approachings of the Eagle Republic,” cried
George F. Gordon in 1858. “She soars aloft under the Divine Aegis, the
mighty instrumentality for the final overthrow of kingdoms and powers
hitherto and always despotic-for the flooding of the nations of the Old
World with the American element of freedom!” T o this Philadelphia
orator it was vital that his countrymen be “indoctrinated” anew with “the
missionary destiny” of the United States. “There is a great work to be done
in the world, and we must do it! Our natural tendencies are all that way,
and no diplomatic fogyism can stand in the battle-path of the American
democratic element, as it rushes onward destiny-driven and God-directed,
baptizing the nations with the American waters of political ~alvation!”~‘The
Charles M. Taggart, T h e Moral Mission of our Country . . . , 11.
Orators who believed that the American and French revolutions were basically
dissimilar included Richard E. Newcomb, A n Oration, Spoken at Greenfield, on the
Anniversary of American Independence. July 4th. 1799 (Greenfield, Mass., 1799) and
Westerlo Woodworth, Oration Delivered before the Young Men’s Association, July 4,
1834 (Albany, 1834).
77 George F. Gordon, Oration delivered on the Eightysecond Anniversary of the
Declaration of Independence, Monday, July 5th, 1858 (Philadelphia, 1858), 12-13.
See also, Henry W. Adams, T h e Past, Present, and Future of America. A n Oration
delivered in the First Presbyterian Church, Orange, New Jersey, July 4th, 1865 (New
York, 1865), 9 et passim.
76
76
Providence and the American Past
97
modern American Israel, perhaps even superior to the chosen people of the
ancient world because she possessed the truths of both religion and politics,T8
must constantly keep in mind the world mission that heaven had selected
her to perform.
A final aspect of the legend of a protecting Providence merits elaboration.
Many nineteenth century American nationalists seem to have subscribed to
the notion that God best remembers those who remember Him. Everyone
knew that whenever ancient Israel rebelled and broke faith with the Lord,
catastrophe ensued. Numerous patriots, carrying the often repeated Fourth
of July analogy to its logical conclusion, warned that if the modern Israel
were ungrateful or negligent of her Christian duties, then she too must fall
upon evil days. Indeed, so worried were the residents of one tiny New
Jersey hamlet in 1814 that they subscribed for one thousand copies of a
Fourth of July sermon which had been preached from the text of Isaiah
1:2: “Hear, 0 Heavens, and give ear, 0 earth; for the Lord hath spoken:
I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against
me.” Recounting “in this evil day” the story of God’s deliverance of His
American Israel, the local divine warned that the infidelity of God’s modern
people had at least equalled-if
it did not actually surpass-that of Judah
of old. Such degeneracy and rebellion were present in the lack of family
prayer, neglect of discipline in families and churches, profanation of the
Sabbath, swearing, and intemperance that Providence might have to chastize
His errant American ~hildren.’~
Few patriots doubted that there was a definite relationship between
religion and political stability. John Jones Spooner, a Virginian, told a
Fourth of July audience in 1794 that even among the heathens “public
affairs were prospered, according as they observed the rites of their religion.”
At no time were the ancient republics of Greece and Rome so prosperous
and stable as when “they practiced most assiduously those duties which
their religion (erroneous as it was) enjoined upon them,” Spooner added.*O
If religion in general had a salutary effect upon politics, then Christianity,
as the true religion, must surely bolster liberty. “The prevalence of real
Christianity, tends to promote the principles and the love of political freedom,”
declared the Reverend Samuel Miller before the Tammany Society of New
York in 1793. It did this, the divine explained, by teaching the doctrines
of the popular basis of all just power and the intrinsic equality of the rulers
and the ruled and by inculcating the virtues of moderation, justice, simplicity
of manners, brotherly love, and benevolence. Christianity “tends to quench
every extravagant thirst for power; to beat down every high thought, that
..
78See, John B. Johnson, T h e Dealings of God with Israel and America
. , 14,
and the Frankfort Commonwealth, July 20, 1847.
IsDaniel A. Clark, Independence-Sermon
. , 3-24.
80 John Jones Spooner, A Discourse, Delivered in the Court-House of Prince
George County, Virginia; on the Anniversary of American Independence, July 4th,
1794 (Petersburg, Va., 17951, 10-11,
. .
98
Indiana Magazine of History
exalteth itself against the general good.”81 Other patriots might cite different
Christian virtues beneficial to republicanism, but the connection between the
two was clear. Repeatedly pastors used the occasion of the Fourth of July
to tell their congregations that the Bible not only allowed loyalty to country
but in fact commanded it. They never tired of reiterating that Christians
made the best patriots. They even insisted that the Master had set the
example for national loyalty in the love he had for his own native land:
“Jesus Christ was a patriot.”8z
When revolutionary Frenchmen, glorifying human reason and abandoning
traditional Christianity, failed to stabilize a liberal regime, Americans interpreted this development as new proof of their general theory that “a departure
from the pure principles of religion has been, in all ages, and in every country,
the sad prelude to destru~tion.”~~
Oliver Cobb of Massachusetts, who abhorred
the radical, anti-Christian course of the French Revolution, warned his
countrymen against being influenced by the insidious wiles of those rationalists
who held that “religion is nothing but a whim of the imagination” and
destructive to freedom. Such a view was totally out of keeping with traditional
American commitments, Cobb declared in 1803. If patriots would look back
to the colonial and revolutionary periods, they would find that the great
leaders then “were not ashamed to acknowledge the superintending Providence
of God-they were not ashamed of a crucified Saviour-they were not ashamed
to look to Heaven for the Divine Benediction. In their distress, they did
look-they prayed. They were heard-they were
The idea that freedom was dependent upon religion was not merely a
conservative response to the French effort to abolish Christianity, however.
The idea long outlived the reaction. Throughout the first century of American
nationality the theme was often reiterated. “The Gospel is our only hope,”
declared the president of Jefferson College in his 1839 statement of the view
that the nation’s liberty was no stronger than its practice of Christian principles.
“If we cast this away,” he cautioned, “all is lost. If infidelity, ignorance,
superstition and vice, shall gain the ascendency, I repeat it, all is
To be sure, there were many who claimed that only Protestant Christianity
could provide a climate for liberty. The Reverend Charles B. Boynton, one
of the most outspoken members of this group, told a Fourth of July gathering
Samuel Miller, A Sermon, Preached in New-York, July 4th, 1793. Being the
Anniversary of the Independence of America: at the Request of the Tammany Society,
or Columbian Order (New York, [1793]), 15-22.
a2 George W. Bethune, Our Liberties: Their Danger, and the Means of Preserving
Them (Philadelphia, 1835), 5-6. See also, W. H. Furness, T w o Discourses occasioned
by the approaching Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (Philadelphia,
1843), 13; George F. Gordon, Oration delivered on
. July 5th, 1858, 1: Patriotism
and Christianity are “twin brothers.”
Eliphalet Nott, A Discourse Delivered
in Albany . , 23.
a4 Oliver Cobb, A n Oration Delivered in the First Congregational Meeting-House
in Rochester; on the Fourth Day of July, 1803 (New Bedford, Mass., 1803), 10-11.
Matthew Brown, Address delivered in the Chapel o f Jefferson College, Canonsburgh, Pa., on the Fourth of July, 1839 (Pittsburgh, 1839), 18.
..
. ..
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99
of native Americans in Cincinnati in 1847 that “genuine American principles
are identical with those of Protestant Christianity.”88 As immigration increased
and as non-Protestants “threatened” the overwhelming native American
majority around the middle of the nineteenth century, one heard with increased
frequency the assertion that American liberty “originated with men who read
the Bible and found no prelacy there.”87 The intimation that only such men
could or would preserve freedom was of course obvious.
Roman Catholics challenged the view that Providence had raised up His
American Israel as the home of Protestant freemen only.88 I t is an indication
of the universal popularity of the idea that Christianity and freedom were
conjoined that the president of St. Louis University, like many a Protestant
counterpart, used I1 Corinthians 3: 17-“Where the spirit of the Lord is,
there is liberty.”-as the text of his Fourth of July oration.se However much
Protestants and Roman Catholics might quarrel, they both held that Christianity was the basis of true liberty. And both believed that if their countrymen
remained true to their Lord, Providence would go on protecting the American
Israel.
The nuances involved in the idea of a protecting Providence and the
implications of this idea for American popular thought deserve a thorough
study. Yet even this preliminary investigation reveals the widespread appeal
of the belief. For most Americans, God was personal, active, and intimately
concerned with the course of their nation’s history. Providence had intervened in that history in behalf of the Pilgrims, the revolutionaries, and the
Constitution makers and continued to work out His will for America in the
present day.
While admitting the existence of abundant references to Providence in
popular thought from 1776 to 1876, the more secularly oriented student in
the twentieth century still may wonder why the legend exercised such a
prominent influence. In part the American notion of a protecting Providence
typifies the tendency that western man has always had to think in terms of
his Judeo-Christian religious traditions. Even when he has attempted to
throw off what he considers to be the religious shackles of the Middle Ages,
western man has continued to speak of “inevitability,” of “mission,” and of
“destiny.” He has often attempted to submerge his naive faith in God, only
86 Charles B. Boynton, A n Oration, Delivered on the Fiffh of July, 1847, before
the Native Americans of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, 1847), 7-8.
87 Henry A. Rowland, Christian Liberty; or the Elements of Civil and Religious
Liberty, growing out of the doctrine of justification by faith, in contrast with civil and
religious despotism, originating in the high pretensions of prelacy. A discourse delivered
in the Presbyterian Church, Honesdale, Penn., on the Sabbath Evening succeeding the
Day commemorative of our national independence (New York, 1850), 43-44.
ssFor examples of Fourth of July observances by Roman Catholics, see the St.
Augustine East Florida Herald, July 11, 1826, and the Lebanon (Ky.) Post, July 7,
1852; July 13, 1853; July 5, 12, 1854; July 4, 1855.
88 J. Van de Velde, S. J., Oration delivered on the day of the Celebration of
the Sixty-Fifth Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Independence of the United
States of America, 5th July, 1841 (St. Louis, 1841).
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to replace it with an equally naive faith in Nature, or Science, or the Perfectibility of Man. For example, in his Heavenly City of the EighteenthCentury Philosophers, Carl Becker argues convincingly that the period usually
referred to as the Age of Reason did not destroy the basically Christian
mode of thinking, that Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, and Locke were actually
living in a medieval world, and that these philosophers “demolished the
Heavenly City of St. Augustine only to rebuild it with more up-to-date
rnaterial~.”~~
If these eighteenth century thinkers, willfully trying to escape
their Judeo-Christian concepts, had but scant success, early American patriots,
who glorified piety, could hardly be expected to think in nonreligious terms.
These Americans, faced with the task of creating a usable past, were molding
their nation’s history in the religious motif with which they, as Westerners
in this Judeo-Christian tradition, were most familiar.
Moreover, the first century of American nationalists lived before the
rise of “objective” or “scientific” history. I n this period, national history
and national faith were generally mixed. None was more skilled at blending
the two than George Bancroft, probably the most outstanding American
historian of this first one hundred years. What was Bancroft’s purpose in
writing his multivolume history? I n his introduction he says that he intends
“to follow the steps by which a favouring Providence, calling our institutions
into being, has conducted the country to its present happiness and glory.”91
It was the scientific revolution of the late nineteenth century which made
Bancroft’s brand of history-and the Providence legend-archaic.
Early American nationalists frequently boasted that only they could
look backward in time without embarrassment, that American history was
unique: America was free from Europe’s kings and priests and popes and
feudal lords.92 Actually this was a freedom from the very institutions which
often served as a focus of national pride in Europe and, more important still,
gave Old World nations a sense of historical security. The lack of such a
usable past proved to be emotionally and psychologically disturbing for
American patriots. I n attempting to make the ideologies of the young nation
intelligible, Chester M. Destler has said, it is important to take into account
“the psychological necessities of a youthful nation, whose republican system and
immature culture required justification and the support of an optimistic
faith in the face of the continued ascendency of European cultural standards
and its superior political, monarchical power.”s3 America’s “psychological
90 Carl L. Becker, T h e Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New
Haven, 1932), 31 et passim.
91 George Bancroft, History o f the United States from the Discovery of the
American Continent (10 vols., Boston, 1834-1874), I, 4.
92 For illustrations, see Samuel Brazer, A n Oration, Pronounced at Springfield, on
July 4th, 1809, in Commemoration of American Independence (Springfield, Mass.,
1809), 5 ; Lexington Kentucky Gazette, July 9, 1811; Samuel Adams Wells, A n Oration,
Pronounced July 5 , 1819, at the Request of the Republicans of the T o w n of Boston, in
commemoration of the Anniversary of American Independence (Boston, 1819), 3-4.
8 3 Chester M. Destler, review of Arthur Alponse Ekirch, T h e Idea of Progress in
America, 1815-1860 (New York, 1944), Journal of Southern History, XI (May, 1945),
269-71.
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101
necessities” doubtless account, in large measure, for the pervasiveness of the
Providence legend. Constantly declaring that they were unique in the
world, that not even a Greece or Rome offered a worthy precedent for their
republic, but as yet unable to point to the emergence of America as a world
power or to the material accomplishments of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries as proof of their worth as a people, Americans resorted
to such devices as the Providence legend and from it derived much of what
they knew of national self-justification. When, in the latter part of the
nineteenth century, scientific discoveries began to make providential intervention more and more unacceptable as a theory of historical causation, the
material abundance which the Industrial Revolution brought in its wake
together with America’s development into a great world power provided new
justifications of the American experiment. But during the republic’s first
century, it had been the conviction of Americans that they were heaven’s
favorites which had done most to sustain a nation of patriots.