History Of The Black Robe Regiment

HISTORY OF THE BLACK ROBE REGIMENT

The Black Robed Regiment was the name that the British placed on the courageous and patriotic American clergy during the Founding Era (a backhanded reference to the black robes they wore). [1] Significantly, the British blamed the Black Regiment for American Independence, [2] and rightfully so, for modern historians have documented that:

There is not a right asserted in the Declaration of Independence which had not been discussed by the New England clergy before 1763. [3]

It is strange to today’s generation to think that the rights listed in the Declaration of Independence were nothing more than a listing of sermon topics that had been preached from the pulpit in the two decades leading up to the American Revolution, but such was the case.

But it was not just the British who saw the American pulpit as largely responsible for American independence and government, our own leaders agreed. For example, John Adams rejoiced that “the pulpits have thundered”[4] and specifically identified several ministers as being among the “characters the most conspicuous, the most ardent, and influential” in the “awakening and a revival of American principles and feelings” that led to American independence. [5]

Across subsequent generations, the great and positive influence of the Revolutionary clergy was faithfully reported. For example:

As a body of men, the clergy were pre-eminent in their attachment to liberty. The pulpits of the land rang with the notes of freedom. [6] The American Quarterly Register [MAGAZINE], 1833

If Christian ministers had not preached and prayed, there might have been no revolution as yet – or had it broken out, it might have been crushed. [7] Bibliotheca Sacra [BRITISH PERIODICAL], 1856

The ministers of the Revolution were, like their Puritan predecessors, bold and fearless in the cause of their country. No class of men contributed more to carry forward the Revolution and to achieve our independence than did the ministers. . . . [B]y their prayers, patriotic sermons, and services [they] rendered the highest assistance to the civil government, the army, and the country. [8] B. F. Morris, HISTORIAN, 1864

The Constitutional Convention and the written Constitution were the children of the pulpit. [9] Alice Baldwin, HISTORIAN, 1918

Had ministers been the only spokesman of the rebellion – had Jefferson, the Adamses, and [James] Otis never appeared in print – the political thought of the Revolution would have followed almost exactly the same line. . . . In the sermons of the patriot ministers . . . we find expressed every possibly refinement of the reigning political faith. [10] Clinton Rossiter, HISTORIAN, 1953

The American clergy were faithful exponents of the fullness of God’s Word, applying its principles to every aspect of life, thus shaping America’s institutes and culture. They were also at the forefront of proclaiming liberty, resisting tyranny, and opposing any encroachments on God-given rights and freedoms. In 1898, Methodist bishop and church historian Charles Galloway rightly observed of these ministers:

Mighty men they were, of iron nerve and strong hand and unblanched cheek and heart of flame. God needed not reeds shaken by the wind, not men clothed in soft raiment [Matthew 11:7-8], but heroes of hardihood and lofty courage. . . . And such were the sons of the mighty who responded to the Divine call. [11]

But the ministers during the Revolutionary period were not necessarily unique; they were simply continuing what ministers had been doing to shape American government and culture in the century and a half preceding the Revolution.

For example, the early settlers who arrived in Virginia beginning in 1606 included ministers such as the Revs. Robert Hunt, Richard Burke, William Mease, Alexander Whitaker, William Wickham, and others. In 1619 they helped form America’s first representative government: the Virginia House of Burgesses, with its members elected from among the people. [12] That legislature met in the Jamestown church and was opened with prayer by the Rev. Mr. Bucke; the elected legislators then sat in the church choir loft to conduct legislative business. [13]As Bishop Galloway later observed:

[T]he first movement toward democracy in America was inaugurated in the house of God and with the blessing of the minister of God. [14]

In 1620, the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts to establish their colony. Their pastor, John Robinson, charged them to elect civil leaders who would not only seek the “common good” but who would also eliminate special privileges and status between governors and the governed [15] – a radical departure from the practice in the rest of the world at that time. The Pilgrims eagerly took that message to heart, organizing a representative government and holding annual elections. [16] By 1636, they had also enacted a citizens’ Bill of Rights – America’s first. [17]

In 1630, the Puritans arrived and founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and under the leadership of their ministers, they, too, established representative government with annual elections. [18] By 1641, they also had established a Bill of Rights (the “Body of Liberties”) [19] – a document of individual rights drafted by the Rev. Nathaniel Ward. [20]

In 1636, the Rev. Roger Williams established the Rhode Island Colony and its representative form of government, [21] explaining that “[t]he sovereign, original, and foundation of civil power lies in the people.” [22]

The same year, the Rev. Thomas Hooker (along with the Revs. Samuel Stone, John Davenport, and Theophilus Eaton) founded Connecticut. [23] They not only established an elective form of government [24] but in a 1638 sermon based on Deuteronomy 1:13 and Exodus 18:21, the Rev. Hooker explained the three Biblical principles that had guided the plan of government in Connecticut:

I. [T]he choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God’s own allowance.

II. The privilege of election . . . belongs to the people . . .

III. They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates [i.e., the people], it is in their power also to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place. [25]

From the Rev. Hooker’s teachings and leadership sprang the “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut” – America’s first written constitution (and the direct antecedent of the federal Constitution). [26] But while Connecticut produced America’s first written constitution, it definitely had not produced America’s first written document of governance, for such written documents had been the norm for every colony founded by Bible-minded Christians. After all, this was the Scriptural model: God had given Moses a fixed written law to govern that nation – a pattern that recurred throughout the Scriptures (c.f., Deuteronomy 17:18-20, 31:24, II Chronicles 34:15-21, etc.). As renowned Cornell University professor Clinton Rossiter affirmed:

[T]he Bible gave a healthy spur to the belief in a written constitution. The Mosaic Code, too, was a higher law that men could live by – and appeal to – against the decrees and whims of ordinary men.[27] (emphasis added)

Written documents of governance placed direct limitations on government and gave citizens maximum protection against the whims of selfish leaders. This practice of providing written documents had been the practice of American ministers before the Rev. Hooker’s constitution of 1638 and continued long after.

For example, in 1676, New Jersey was chartered and then divided into two religious sub-colonies: Puritan East Jersey and Quaker West Jersey; each had representative government with annual elections. [28] The governing document for West Jersey was written by Christian minister William Penn. It declared:

We lay a foundation for after ages to understand their liberty . . . that they may not be brought in bondage but by their own consent, for we put the power in the people. [29]

Under Penn’s document . . .

Legislation was vested in a single assembly elected by all the inhabitants; the elections were to be by secret ballot; the principle of “No taxation without representation” was clearly asserted; freedom of conscience, trial by jury, and immunity from arrest without warrant were guaranteed. [30]

In 1681, Penn wrote the Frame of Government for Pennsylvania. It, too, established annual elections and provided numerous guarantees for citizen rights. [31]

There are many additional examples, but it is indisputable that  ministers played a critical role in instituting and securing many of America’s most significant civil rights and freedoms. As Founding Father Noah Webster affirmed:

The learned clergy . . . had great influence in founding the first genuine republican governments ever formed and which, with all the faults and defects of the men and their laws, were the best republican governments on earth. At this moment, the people of this country are indebted chiefly to their institutions for the rights and privileges which are enjoyed. [32]

Daniel Webster (the great “Defender of the Constitution”) agreed:

[T]o the free and universal reading of the Bible in that age men were much indebted for right views of civil liberty. [33]

Because Christian ministers established in America freedoms and opportunities not generally available even in the mother country of Great Britain, they were also at the forefront of resisting encroachments on the civil and religious liberties that they had helped secure.

For example, when crown-appointed Governor Edmund Andros tried to seize the charters of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, revoke their representative governments, and force the establishment of the British Anglican Church upon them, opposition to Andros’ plan was led by the Revs. Samuel Willard, Increase Mather, and especially the Rev. John Wise. [34] The Rev. Wise was even imprisoned by Andros for his resistance but he remained an unflinching voice for freedom, penning in 1710 and 1717 two works forcefully asserting that democracy was God’s ordained government in both Church and State, [35] thus causing historians to title him “The Founder of American Democracy.” [36]

And when Governor Berkley refused to recognize Virginia’s self-government, Quaker minister William Edmundson and the Rev. Thomas Harrison led the opposition. [37] When Governor Thomas Hutchinson ignored the elected Massachusetts legislature, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper led the opposition. [38] And a similar pattern was followed when Governor William Burnet dissolved the New Hampshire legislature, Governor Botetourt disbanded the Virginia House of Burgesses, Governor James Wright disbanded the Georgia Assembly, etc.

And because American preachers consistently opposed encroachments on civil and religious liberties, when the British imposed on Americans the 1765 Stamp Act (an early harbinger of the rupture between the two nations soon to follow), at the vanguard of the opposition to that act were the Revs. Andrew Eliot, Charles Chauncey, Samuel Cooper, Jonathan Mayhew, and George Whitefield [39]

(Whitefield even accompanied Benjamin Franklin to Parliament to protest the Act and assert colonial rights). [40]In fact, one of the reasons that American resistance to the Stamp Act became so widespread was because the “clergy fanned the fire of resistance to the Stamp Act into a strong flame.” [41]

Five years later in 1770 when the British opened fire on their own citizens in the famous “Boston Massacre,” ministers again stepped to the forefront, boldly denouncing that abuse of power. A number of sermons were preached on the subject, including by the Revs. John Lathrop, Charles Chauncey, and Samuel Cooke; [42] the Massachusetts House of Representatives even ordered that Rev. Cooke’s sermon be printed and distributed.[43]

As tensions with the British continued to grow, ministers such as the Rev. George Whitefield [44] and the Rev. Timothy Dwight [45] became some of the earliest leaders to advocate America’s separation from Great Britain.

There are many additional examples, but the historical records respecting the leadership of the clergy were so clear that in 1851, distinguished historian Benson Lossing concluded:

[T]he Puritan preachers also promulgated the doctrine of civil liberty – that the sovereign was amenable to the tribunal of public opinion and ought to conform in practice to the expressed will of the majority of the people. By degrees their pulpits became the tribunes of the common people; and . . . on all occasions, the Puritan ministers were the bold asserters of that freedom which the American Revolution established. [46] (emphasis added)

However, Christian ministers did not just teach the principles that led to independence, they also participated on the battlefield to secure that independence. One of the numerous examples is the Rev. Jonas Clark.

When Paul Revere set off on his famous ride, it was to the home of the Rev. Clark in Lexington that he rode. Patriot leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams were lodging (as they often did) with the Rev. Clark. After learning of the approaching British forces, Hancock and Adams turned to Pastor Clark and inquired of him whether the people were ready to fight. Clark unhesitatingly replied, “I have trained them for this very hour!” [47]When the original alarm sounded in Lexington to warn of the oncoming British menace, citizens gathered at the town green, and according to early historian Joel Headley:

There they found their pastor the [Rev. Clark] who had arrived before them. The roll was called and a hundred and fifty answered to their names . . . . The church, the pastor, and his congregation thus standing together in the dim light [awaiting the Redcoats], while the stars looked tranquilly down from the sky above them. [48]

The British did not appear at that first alarm, and the people returned home. At the subsequent alarm, they reassembled, and once the sound of the battle subsided, some eighteen Americans lay on Lexington Green; seven were dead – all from the Rev. Clark’s church. [49] Headley therefore concluded, “The teachings of the pulpit of Lexington caused the first blow to be struck for American Independence,” [50] and historian James Adams added that “the patriotic preaching of the Reverend Jonas Clark primed those guns.” [51]

When the British troops left Lexington, they fought at Concord Bridge and then headed back to Boston, encountering increasing American resistance on their return. Significantly, many who awaited the British along the road were local pastors (such as the Rev. Phillips Payson [52] and the Rev. Benjamin Balch [53]) who had heard of the unprovoked British attack on the Americans, taken up their own arms, and then rallied their congregations to meet the returning British. As word of the attack spread wider, pastors from other areas also responded.

For example, when word reached Vermont, the Rev. David Avery promptly gathered twenty men and marched toward Boston, recruiting additional troops along the way, [54] and the Rev. Stephen Farrar of New Hampshire led 97 of his parishioners to Boston. [55] The ranks of resistance to the British swelled through the efforts of Christian ministers who “were far more effective than army recruiters in rounding up citizen-soldiers.” [56]

Weeks later when the Americans fought the British at Bunker Hill, American ministers again delved headlong into the fray. For example, when the Rev. David Grosvenor heard that the battle had commenced, he left from his pulpit – rifle in hand – and promptly marched to the scene of action, [57] as did the Rev. Jonathan French. [58]

This pattern was common through the Revolution – as when the Rev. Thomas Reed marched to the defense of Philadelphia against British General Howe; [59] the Rev. John Steele led American forces in attacking the British;[60] the Rev. Isaac Lewis helped lead the resistance to the British landing at Norwalk, Connecticut; [61] the Rev. Joseph Willard raised two full companies and then marched with them to battle; [62] the Rev. James Latta, when many of his parishioners were drafted, joined with them as a common soldier; [63] and the Rev. William Graham joined the military as a rifleman in order to encourage others in his parish to do the same [64]. Furthermore:

Of Rev. John Craighead it is said that “he fought and preached alternately.” Rev. Dr. Cooper was captain of a military company. Rev. John Blair Smith, president of Hampden-Sidney College, was captain of a company that rallied to support the retreating Americans after the battle of Cowpens. Rev. James Hall commanded a company that armed against Cornwallis. Rev. William Graham rallied his own neighbors to dispute the passage of Rockfish Gap with Tarleton and his British dragoons. [65]

There are many additional examples. No wonder the British dubbed the patriotic American clergy the “Black Regiment.” [66] But because of their strong leadership, ministers were often targeted by the British. As Headley confirms:

[T]here was a class of clergymen and chaplains in the Revolution whom the British, when they once laid hands on them, treated with the most barbarous severity. Dreading them for the influence they wielded and hating them for the obstinacy, courage, and enthusiasm they infused into the rebels, they violated all the usages of war among civilized nations in order to inflict punishment upon them. [67]

Among these was the Rev. Naphtali Daggett, President of Yale. When the British approached New Haven to enter private homes and desecrate property and belongings, Daggett offered stiff and at times almost single-handed resistance to the British invasion, standing alone on a hillside, repeatedly firing his rifle down at the hundreds of British troops below. Eventually captured, over a period of several hours the British stabbed and pricked Daggett multiple times with their bayonets. Local townspeople lobbied the British and eventually secured the release of the preacher, but Daggett never recovered from those wounds, which eventually caused his death.[68] When the Rev. James Caldwell offered similar resistance in New Jersey, the British burned his church and he and his family were murdered. [69]

The British abused, killed, or imprisoned many other clergymen, [70] who often suffered harsher treatment and more severe penalties than did ordinary imprisoned soldiers. [71] But the British targeted not just ministers but also their churches. As a result, of the nineteen church buildings in New York City, ten were destroyed by the British, [72] and most of the churches in Virginia suffered the same fate. [73] This pattern was repeated throughout many other parts of the country.

Truly, Christian ministers provided courageous leadership throughout the Revolution, and as briefly noted earlier, they had also been largely responsible for laying its intellectual foundation. To understand more of their influence, consider the Rev. John Wise.

As early as 1687, the Rev. Wise was already teaching that “taxation without representation is tyranny,” [74] the “consent of the governed” was the foundation of government, [75] and that “every man must be acknowledged equal to every man.” [76] In 1772 with the Revolution on the horizon, two of Wise’s works were reprinted by leading patriots and the Sons of Liberty to refresh America’s understanding of the core Biblical principles of government. [77] (The first printing sold so fast that a quick second reprint was quickly issued. [78]) Significantly, many of the specific points made by Wise in that work subsequently appeared four years later in the very language of the Declaration of Independence. As historian Benjamin Morris affirmed in 1864:

[S]ome of the most glittering sentences in the immortal Declaration of Independence are almost literal quotations from this [1772 reprinted] essay of John Wise. . . . It was used as a political text-book in the great struggle for freedom. [79]

And decades later when President Calvin Coolidge delivered a 1926 speech in Philadelphia on the 150thanniversary of the Declaration of Independence, he similarly acknowledged:

The thoughts [in the Declaration] can very largely be traced back to what John Wise was writing in 1710. [80]

It was Christian ministers such as John Wise (and scores like him) who, through their writings and countless sermons (such as their Election Sermons and other sermons on the Biblical principles of government) laid the intellectual basis for American Independence.

Christian clergy largely defined America’s unique political theory and even defended it in military combat, but they were also leaders in the national legislative councils in order to help implement what they had conceived and birthed. For example, the Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon was a member of the Continental Congress who served during the Revolution on the Board of War as well as on over 100 congressional committees. [81] Other ministers who served in the Continental Congress included the Revs. Joseph Montgomery, Hugh Williamson, John Zubly, and more.

Numerous ministers also served in state legislatures – such as the Rev. Jacob Green of New Jersey, who helped set aside the British government in that state and was made chairman of the committee that drafted the state’s original constitution in 1776; [82] the Rev. Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, who helped draft Pennsylvania’s 1776 constitution; [83] the Rev. Samuel Stillman, who helped draft Massachusetts’ 1780 constitution; [84] etc.

When hostilities ceased at the end of the Revolution, Christian ministers led in the movement for a federal constitution. For example, the Revs. Jeremy Belknap, Samuel Stanhope Smith, John Witherspoon, and James Manning began pointing out the defects of the Articles of Confederation, [85] and when the Constitution was finally complete and submitted to the states for ratification, nearly four dozen clergymen were elected as ratifying delegates, [86] many of whom played key roles in securing its adoption in their respective states.

Following the adoption of the new federal Constitution, ministers were highly active in celebrating its ratification. For example, of the parade in Philadelphia, signer of the Declaration Benjamin Rush happily reported:

The clergy formed a very agreeable part of the procession. They manifested by their attendance their sense of the connection between religion and good government. They. . . . marched arm in arm with each other to exemplify the Union. [87]

When the first federal Congress under the new Constitution convened, several ministers were Members, including the Revs. Frederick Augustus and John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, Abiel Foster, Benjamin Contee, Abraham Baldwin, and Paine Wingate.

Ministers were intimately involved in every aspect of introducing, defining, and securing America’s civil and religious liberties. A 1789 Washington, D. C., newspaper therefore proudly reported:

[O]ur truly patriotic clergy boldly and zealously stepped forth and bravely stood our distinguished sentinels to watch and warn us against approaching danger; they wisely saw that our religious and civil liberties were inseparably connected and therefore warmly excited and animated the people resolutely to oppose and repel every hostile invader. . . . [M]ay the virtue, zeal and patriotism of our clergy be ever particularly remembered. [88]

Incidentally, besides their contributions to government and civil and religious liberty, the Black Robed Regiment was also largely responsible for education in America. Ministers, understanding that only a literate people well versed in the teachings of the Bible could sustain free and enlightened government, therefore established an education system that would teach and preserve the religious principles so indispensable to the civil and religious liberties they forcefully advocated.

Consequently, in 1635 the Puritans established America’s first public school, [89] and in 1647 passed America’ first public education law (“The Old Deluder Satan Act” [90]). And Harvard University was founded through the direction of Puritan minister John Harvard; [91] Yale was founded by ten congregational ministers; [92] Princeton by Presbyterian ministers Jonathan Dickinson, John Pierson, and Ebenezer Pemberton; [93] William and Mary by Episcopal minister James Blair; [94] Dartmouth by Congregational minister Eleazar Wheelock; [95] etc.

This trend of Gospel ministers founding and leading American educational institutions continued for the next two-and-a-half centuries, and by 1860, ninety-one percent of all college presidents were ministers of the Gospel – as were more than a third of all university faculty members. [96] Of the 246 colleges founded by the close of that year, only seventeen were not affiliated with some denomination; [97] and by 1884, eighty-three percent of America’s 370 colleges still remained denominational colleges. [98] As Founding Father Noah Webster (the “Schoolmaster to America”) affirmed, “to them [the clergy] is popular education in this country more indebted than to any other class of men.” [99]

In short, history demonstrates that America’s elective governments, her educational system, and many other positive aspects of American life and culture were the product of Biblical-thinking Christian clergy and leaders. Today, however, as the influence of the clergy has waned, many of these institutions have come under unprecedented attack and many of our traditional freedoms have been significantly eroded. It is time for America’s clergy to understand and reclaim the important position of influence they have been given. As the Rev. Charles Finney – a leader of the Second Great Awakening – reminded ministers in his day:

Brethren, our preaching will bear its legitimate fruits. If immorality prevails in the land, the fault is ours in a great degree. If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the public press lacks moral discrimination, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the world loses its interest in religion, the pulpit is responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it. Let us not ignore this fact, my dear brethren; but let us lay it to heart, and be thoroughly awake to our responsibility in respect to the morals of this nation. [100]

America once again needs the type of courageous ministers described by Bishop Galloway:

Mighty men they were, of iron nerve and strong hand and unblanched cheek and heart of flame. God needed not reeds shaken by the wind, not men clothed in soft raiment [Matthew 11:7-8], but heroes of hardihood and lofty courage. . . .And such were the sons of the mighty who responded to the Divine call. [101]

It is time to reinvigorate the Black Robed Regiment!

[1] Boston Gazette, December 7, 1772, article by “Israelite,” and Boston Weekly Newsletter, January 11, 1776, article by Peter Oliver, British official. See also Peter Oliver, Peter Oliver’s Origin & Progress of the American Rebellion, Douglas Adair and John A. Schutz, editors (San Marino California: The Huntington Library, 1961), pp. 29, 41-45; Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 334; and Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1958), pp. 98, 155.

[2] Alpheus Packard, “Nationality,” Bibliotheca Sacra and American Biblical Repository (London: Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1856), Vol. XIII p.193, Article VI. See also Benjamin Franklin Morris, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1864), pp. 334-335.

[3] Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1958), p. 170.

[4] John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), Vol. III, p. 476, “The Earl of Clarendon to William Pym,” January 20, 1766.

[5] John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1850), Vol. X, p. 284, to Hezekiah Niles, February 13, 1818. See also John Adams, The Works of John  Adams, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1856), Vol. X, pp. 271-272, letter to William Wirt, January 5, 1818.

[6] “History of Revivals of Religion, From the Settlement of the Country to the Present Time,” The American Quarterly Register, (Boston: Perkins and Marvin, 1833) Vol. 5, p. 217. See also Benjamin Franklin Morris,Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1864), pp. 334-335.

[7] Alpheus Packard, “Nationality,” Bibliotheca Sacra and American Biblical Repository (London: Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1856), Vol. XIII p.193, Article VI. See also Benjamin Franklin Morris, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1864), pp. 334-335.

[8] Benjamin Franklin Morris, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States(Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1864), pp. 334-335.

[9] Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1958), p. 134.

[10] Clinton Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1953), pp. 328-329.

[11] Charles B. Galloway, Christianity and the American Commonwealth (Nashville, TN: Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, 1898), p. 77.

[12] Colonial National Historical Park, “The First Legislative Assembly at Jamestown, Virginia,” National Park Service (at: http://www.nps.gov/archive/colo/Jthanout/1stASSLY.html) (accessed on September 24, 2010).

[13] Charles B. Galloway, Christianity and the American Commonwealth (Nashville, TN: Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, 1898), pp. 1131-114; John Fiske, Civil Government in the United States Considered with some Reference to Its Origins (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1890), p. 146.

[14] Charles B. Galloway, Christianity and the American Commonwealth (Nashville, TN: Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, 1898), p. 114.

[15] Old South Leaflets, (Boston: Directors of the Old South Work), p. 372, “Words of John Robinson (1620)”; “John Robinson’s Farewell Letter to the Pilgrims, July 22, 1620,” Pilgrim Hall Museum,  July 22, 1620 (at: http://www.pilgrimhall.org/RobinsonLetter.htm).

[16] “Plymouth Colony Legal Structure,” Plymouth Colony Archive Project (at: http://etext.virginia.edu/users/deetz/Plymouth/ccflaw.html) (accessed on September 24, 2010). See also Robert Baird, Religion in America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1845), p. 51.

[17] “Plymouth Colony Legal Structure,” Plymouth Colony Archive Project (at: http://etext.virginia.edu/users/deetz/Plymouth/ccflaw.html) (accessed on September 24, 2010).

[18] Henry William Elson, History of the United States of America, (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1904), Ch. IV, pp. 103-111. See also “Massachusetts Bay,” History of the USA (at: http://www.usahistory.info/New-England/Massachusetts.html) (accessed on September 30, 2010).

[19] “Plymouth Colony Legal Structure,” Plymouth Colony Archive Project (at: http://etext.virginia.edu/users/deetz/Plymouth/ccflaw.html) (accessed on September 30, 2010).

[20] George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1858), Vol. I, p. 416-417; Charles B. Galloway, Christianity and the American Commonwealth(Nashville, TN: Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, 1898), pp. 124-125; Old South Leaflets, (Boston: Directors of the Old South Work), p. 261-280, “The Body of Liberties: The Liberties of the Massachusetts Colonie in New England, 1641.”

[21] “Charter of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” The Avalon Project, July 15, 1663 (at: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/ri04.asp).

[22] Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1958), p. 27 quoting Roger Williams’ The Bloody Tenet, p. 137, quoted by Isaac Backus, Church History of New England, I. 62 of 1839.

[23] “Connecticut to 1763,” Connecticut’s Heritage Gateway (at: http://www.ctheritage.org/encyclopedia/ctto1763/overviewctto1763.htm) (accessed on September 30, 2010).

[24] The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws, Francis Newton Thorpe, editor (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), Vol. 1, p. 534, “Charter of Connecticut-1662.”

[25] Clinton Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1953), p. 171.

[26] John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1898), pp. 127-128.

[27] Clinton Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1953), p. 32. See also, J. M. Mathews, The Bible and Civil Government, in a Course of Lectures (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1851), pp. 67-68.

[28] “Province of West New Jersey in America,” Art. I, The Avalon Project, November 25, 1681 (at: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/nj08.asp); “The Fundamental Constitutions for the Province of East New Jersey in America, Anno Domini 1683,” Art. II-III, The Avalon Project, 1683 (at: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/nj10.asp). See also “Colonial America,” United States History (at: http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h591.html) (accessed on September 23, 2010).

[29] Ernest Sutherland Bates, American Faith (New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 1940), pp. 186-187.

[30] Ernest Sutherland Bates, American Faith (New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 1940), pp. 186-187.

[31] “Charter for the Province of Pennsylvannia-1681,” The Avalon Project, February 28, 1681 (at: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/pa01.asp).

[32] Noah Webster, Letters of Noah Webster, Harry R. Warfel, editor (New York: Library Publishers, 1953, p. 455, letter to David McClure, October 25, 1836.

[33] Daniel Webster, Address Delivered at Bunker Hill, June 17, 1843, on the Completion of the Monument(Boston: T. R. Marvin, 1843), p. 31.

[34] John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1898), pp. 267-272.

[35] John Wise, A Vindication of the Government of New- England Churches (Boston: John Boyles, 1772), p. 45.

[36] “Top Ipswich Patriots by Thomas Franklin Waters & Mrs. Eunice Whitney Farley Felten,” Lord Family Album, 1927 (at: http://www.bwlord.com/Ipswich/Waters/TwoPatriots/JohnWise.htm).

[37] John Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1901), Vol. II, p. 57, and Vol. I, pp. 306, 311.

[38] Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), s.v. “Samuel Cooper.”

[39] Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1958), p. 90; Stephen Mansfield, Forgotten Founding Father: The Heroic Legacy of George Whitefield (Cumberland House, 2001), p. 112.

[40] Stephen Mansfield, Forgotten Founding Father: The Heroic Legacy of George Whitefield (Cumberland House, 2001), p. 112.

[41] Alice M. Baldwin, The Clergy of Connecticut in Revolutionary Days (Yale University Press, 1936), p. 30.

[42] Claude H. Van Tyne, The Causes of the War of Independence (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1922), p. 362.

[43] John Wingate Thornton, Pulpit of the American Revolution (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1860), pp. 147-148.See also Claude H. Van Tyne, The Causes of the War of Independence (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1922), p. 362.

[44] George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1858), Vol. V, p. 193.

[45] 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. 367-368.

[46] Benjamin Lossing, Pictorial Fieldbook of the Revolution (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851), Vol. I, p. 440.

[47] Franklin Cole, They Preached Liberty (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1941), p. 34.

[48] J. T. Headley, The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution (New York: Charles Scribner, 1864), p. 79.

[49] J. T. Headley, The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution (New York: Charles Scribner, 1864), pp. 79-82

[50] J. T. Headley, The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution (New York: Scribner, 1864), p. 82.

[51] James L. Adams, Yankee Doodle Went to Church: The Righteous Revolution of 1776 (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1989), p. 22.

[52] Franklin Cole, They Preached Liberty (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1941), p. 36.

[53] Franklin Cole, They Preached Liberty (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1941), p. 36.

[54] Franklin Cole, They Preached Liberty (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1941), p. 36.

[55] Franklin Cole, They Preached Liberty (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1941), p. 36.

[56] James L. Adams, Yankee Doodle Went to Church (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1989), p. 153.

[57] Franklin Cole, They Preached Liberty (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1941), p. 36.

[58] Franklin Cole, They Preached Liberty (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1941), p. 36.

[59] J. T. Headley, The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution (New York: Charles Scribner, 1864), p. 68.

[60] J. T. Headley, The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution (New York: Charles Scribner, 1864), p. 69;Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, s.v. “John Steele.”

[61] J. T. Headley, The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution (New York: Charles Scribner, 1864), pp. 71-72.

[62] Franklin Cole, They Preached Liberty (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1941), p. 36.

[63] J. T. Headley, The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution (New York: Charles Scribner, 1864), p. 72.

[64] J. T. Headley, The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution (New York: Charles Scribner, 1864), p. 69.

[65] Daniel Dorchester, Christianity in the United States from the First Settlement Down to the Present Time (New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1888), p. 265.

[66] Boston Gazette, December 7, 1772, article by “Israelite,” and Boston Weekly Newsletter, January 11, 1776, article by Peter Oliver, British official. See also Peter Oliver, Peter Oliver’s Origin & Progress of the American Rebellion, Douglas Adair and John A. Schutz, editors (San Marino California: The Huntington Library, 1961), pp. 29, 41-45; Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 334; and Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1958), pp. 98, 155.

[67] J. T. Headley, The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution (New York: Charles Scribner, 1864), p. 58.

[68] William Buell Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit: Trinitarian Congregation, (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1857), p. 482.

[69] 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. 350.

[70] Daniel Dorchester, Christianity in the United States from the First Settlement Down to the Present Time (New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1888), p. 265.

[71] J. T. Headley, The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution (New York: Charles Scribner, 1864), p. 58.

[72] Daniel Dorchester, Christianity in the United States from the First Settlement Down to the Present Time (New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1888), p. 266.

[73] Daniel Dorchester, Christianity in the United States from the First Settlement Down to the Present Time (New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1888), p. 267.

[74] Linda Stewart, “The Other Cape,” American Heritage (at: http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/2001/2/2001_2_50.shtml) (accessed on September 24, 2010).

[75] Clinton Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1953), p. 219.

[76] “Top Ipswich Patriots by Thomas Franklin Waters & Mrs. Eunice Whitney Farley Felten,” Lord Family Album, 1927 (at: http://www.bwlord.com/Ipswich/Waters/TwoPatriots/JohnWise.htm).

[77] “Top Ipswich Patriots by Thomas Franklin Waters & Mrs. Eunice Whitney Farley Felten,” Lord Family Album, 1927 (at: http://www.bwlord.com/Ipswich/Waters/TwoPatriots/JohnWise.htm).

[78] Claude H. Van Tyne, The Causes of the War of Independence (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1922), Vol. I, p. 357.

[79] John Wise, A Vindication of the Government of New England Churches: and the Churches’ Quarrel Espoused (Boston: Congregational Board of Publication, 1860), pp. xx-xxi, “Introductory Remarks” by Rev. J. S. Clark. See also 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. 341

[80] Calvin Coolidge, “Speech on the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,”Teaching American History, July 5, 1926 (at: http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=41).

[81] Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730-1805, Ellis Sandoz, editor (Indianapolis, Liberty Fund: 1998), Vol. 1, p. 530, from Sermons 17 on John Witherspoon intro.

[82] 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. 366.

[83] William Warren Sweet, The Story of Religion in America (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1950), p. 182.

[84] Frank Moore, Patriot Preachers of the American Revolution (Boston: Gould and Lincoln: 1860), p. 260.

[85] James Hutchinson Smylie, American Clergymen and the Constitution of the United States of America (New Jersey: Princeton Theological Seminary, doctoral dissertation 1958), pp. 127-129, 139, 143.

[86] John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1987), p. 352, n. 15.

[87] Benjamin Rush, Letters of Benjamin Rush, L. H. Butterfield, editor (Princeton: American Philosophical Society, 1951), Vol. I, p. 474, letter to Elias Boudinot, “Observations on the Federal Procession in Philadelphia,” July 9, 1788.

[88] Gazette of the United States (Washington, D.C.: May 9, 1789), p. 1, quoting from “Extract from “American Essays: The Importance of the Protestant Religion Politically Considered.”

[89] “About BLS: History,” Boston Latin School (at: http://www.bls.org/podium/default.aspx?t=113646&rc=0) (accessed on October 1, 2010)

[90] The Code of 1650, Being a Compilation of the Earliest Laws and Orders of the General Court of Connecticut(Hartford: Silus Andrus, 1822), pp. 90-92. See also Church of the Holy Trinity v. U. S., 143 U. S. 457, 467 (1892).

[91] Appleton‘s Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1888), s.v. “John Harvard.”

[92] Noah Webster, Letters to a Young Gentleman Commencing His Education (New Haven: Howe & Spalding, 1823), p. 237.

[93] John Maclean, History of the College of New Jersey, from its Origin in 1746 to the Commencement of 1854(Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1877), Vol. I, p. 70.

[94] The History of the College of William and Mary, from its Foundation, 1660, to 1874 (Richmond, VA: J.W. Randolph & English, 1874), p. 95.

[95] “Dartmouth History,” Dartmouth University (at: http://www.dartmouth.edu/home/about/history.html) (accessed on October 1, 2010).

[96] Warren A. Nord, Religion & American Education (North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995), p. 84, quoting from James Tunstead Burtchaell, “The Decline and Fall of the Christian College I,” First Things, May 1991, p. 24, and George Marsden, The Soul of the American University (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 11, and Charles B. Galloway, Christianity and the American Commonwealth (Nashville: Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, 1898), p. 198.

[97] E. P. Cubberley, Public Education in the United States (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1919), p. 204. See alsoLuther A. Weigle, The Pageant of America: American Idealism, Ralph Henry Gabriel, editor (Yale University Press, 1928), Vol. X, p. 315.

[98] Charles B. Galloway, Christianity and the American Commonwealth (Nashville: Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, 1898), pp. 209-210.

[99] Noah Webster, A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral Subjects (New York: Webster and Clark, 1843), p. 293, from his “Reply to a Letter of David McClure on the Subject of the Proper Course of Study in the Girard College, Philadelphia. New Haven, October 25, 1836.”

[100] The Christian Treasury Containing Contributions from Ministers and Members of Various Evangelical Denominations (Edinburgh: Johnstone, Hunter and Co., 1877), p. 203.

[101] Charles B. Galloway, Christianity and the American Commonwealth (Nashville, TN: Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, 1898), p. 77.

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Political Sermons and the American Revolution

Foreword

Inspiration for this collection of sermons came over a number of years as I did research on the American founders’ political philosophy. I discovered that the “pulpit of the American Revolution”—to borrow the title of John Wingate Thornton’s 1860 collection—was the source of exciting and uncommonly important material. What had passed for pamphlets in my reading of excerpted eighteenth-century American material often turned out to be published sermons. I began to realize that this material, showing the perspective of biblical faith concerning fundamental questions of human existence during our nation’s formative period, was extraordinarily abundant and extraordinarily little known.

The rule of this collection has been to reprint unannotated editions of complete sermons that would permit their authors to speak fully for themselves. The genre is the political sermon, broadly construed so as to include a few pieces never preached that are sermonic in sense and tone—that is, hortatory and relating politics to convictions about eternal verities. The chief criterion for selection of the various pieces was their intellectual interest. I was looking especially for political theory in American sermons preached and then published from the onset of the Great Awakening to the beginning of the Second Awakening and Thomas Jefferson’s second administration. An effort was made to diversify viewpoints denominationally, theologically, politically, geographically, and even nationally. Since only previously published materials have been selected—that is, nothing from manuscript sources has been included1 a limitation resided in the fact that the publication of sermons in America in the eighteenth century was a specialty, if not a monopoly, of New Englanders.

To permit the religious perspective concerning the rise of American nationhood to have representative expression is important because a steady attention to the pulpit from 1730 to 1805 unveils a distinctive rhetoric of political discourse: Preachers interpreted pragmatic events in terms of a political theology imbued with philosophical and revelatory learning. Their sermons also demonstrate the existence and effectiveness of a popular political culture that constantly assimilated the currently urgent political and constitutional issues to the profound insights of the Western spiritual and philosophical traditions. That culture’s political theorizing within the compass of ultimate historical and metaphysical concerns gave clear contours to secular events in the minds of Americans of this vital era.

Religion gave birth to America, Tocqueville observed long ago.2 On the eve of revolution, in his last-ditch attempt to stave off impending catastrophe, Edmund Burke reminded the House of Commons of the inseparable alliance between liberty and religion among Englishmen in America3 Mercy Otis Warren noted in her 1805 history of the American Revolution: “It must be acknowledged, that the religious and moral character of Americans yet stands on a higher grade of excellence and purity, than that of most other nations.”4 Of the Americans on the eve of the Revolution Carl Bridenbaugh has exclaimed, “who can deny that for them the very core of existence was their relation to God?”5

Although they present a range of viewpoints on many different problems over a period of seventy-five years, all our writers agree that political liberty and religious truth are vitally intertwined. And while the role of the clergy as the philosophers of the American founding has not received great attention from students of political theory, it was abundantly clear to contemporaries. Perhaps the best insight into the role of the ministry was expressed by a participant, Reverend William Gordon of Roxbury, Massachusetts, who wrote the celebrated History of the American Revolution. “The ministers of New England being mostly congregationalists,” Gordon wrote,

are from that circumstance, in a professional way more attached and habituated to the principles of liberty than if they had spiritual superiors to lord it over them, and were in hopes of possessing in their turn, through the gift of government, the seat of power. They oppose arbitrary rule in civil concerns from the love of freedom, as well as from a desire of guarding against its introduction into religious matters. . . . The clergy of this colony are as virtuous, sensible and learned a set of men, as will probably be found in any part of the globe of equal size and equally populous. . . . [I]t is certainly a duty of the clergy to accommodate their discourses to the times; to preach against such sins as are most prevalent, and to recommend such virtues as are most wanted. . . . You have frequently remarked that though the partizans of arbitrary power will freely censure that preacher, who speaks boldly for the liberties of the people, they will admire as an excellent divine, the parson whose discourse is wholly in the opposite, and teaches, that magistrates have a divine right for doing wrong, and are to be implicitly obeyed; men professing Christianity, as if the religion of the blessed Jesus bound them tamely to part with their natural and social rights, and slavishly to bow their neck to any tyrant. . . 6 .

Whatever the differences among them, all the sermon authors take as their reality the still familiar biblical image of Creator and creation, of fallen and sinful men, striving in a mysteriously ordered existence toward a personal salvation and an eschatological fulfillment. They knew that these goals are themselves paradoxically attainable only through the divine grace of election, a condition experienced as the unmerited gift of God, discernible (if at all) in a person’s faith in Christ, which yields assurance of Beatitude. The relationships are variously symbolized by personal and corporate reciprocal covenants ordering individual lives, church communities, and all of society in multiple layers productive of good works, inculcating divine truth and attentiveness to providential direction according to the “law of liberty” of the sovereign God revealed in the lowly Nazarene.7 The picture that thus emerges is not merely parochially Puritan or Calvinistic but Augustinian and biblical.

The varieties of spiritual belief fundamental to the writers represented herein cannot be explored here, but some background can be indicated. For though our concern is with political sermons—and thus exceptional expressions of the faith of a people who looked to the eternal beyond for the perfect fulfillment of their pilgrimage through time in partnership with God—the spiritual root of that collaborative enterprise directed by Providence requires a word or two of clarification. Of course, the political background is the direct movement of disparate British colonial societies toward independent nationhood, federally organized under a Constitution that preserves the essentials of English liberty under law. It was a passage of history that involved the concerted effort of military force evinced in the Revolution and the articulation of the principles of free government; these principles inspired creation of a national community and became the grounds of a political orthodoxy called republican and constitutional government. Momentous developments crescendoed with British adoption of the Stamp Act of 1765, leading in little more than a decade to the decision for independence in 1776, which demanded eight years of fighting and formally ended with the signing of the peace treaty in Paris in 1783. The Federal Convention in 1787 provided a barely accepted Constitution, one immediately embellished by a Bill of Rights, that became the supreme law of the land in 1791. By the beginning of Jefferson’s second term, the institutional arrangements had been tested and operations refined, the first party system had emerged, and the country had doubled in size thanks to the Louisiana Purchase. But another strand of history accompanies, interacts with, and gives roots to this familiar progress, one that is less known and lacks the direct line of development just rehearsed.

The revolution in the spiritual life of America began within a decade of the preaching of the first sermon reprinted here, that of the celebrated Benjamin Colman in Boston in 1730. It is called the Great Awakening. There is reason to suppose that the two lines of development are intimately, even decisively, connected. Narrowly construed as occurring in the years 1739 to 1742, the Great Awakening designates the outburst of religious revival that swept the colonies in those years.8 It reached from Georgia to New England and affected every stratum of society. Since the earthquake of 1727 that Benjamin Colman alludes to in his sermon, however, there had been a quickening of religious impulses. The Awakening was a spiritual earthquake, one that, as Alan Heimert and Perry Miller write, “clearly began a new era, not merely of American Protestantism, but in the evolution of the American mind.”9 A turning point and crisis in American society, it rumbled and echoed through the next decades.

American events could be seen as part of the general rise of religious sentiment traceable in Europe between 1730 and 1760, particularly in England, where the catalysts were the itinerant Anglican priests John and Charles Wesley, the founders of Methodism, and their compatriot George Whitefield. These men played a large part in rescuing England from the social debauchery and political corruption associated with the Gin Age, aspects of the period portrayed in Hogarth’s prints and Fielding’s novels.10 Near the end of this volume’s time period the so-called Second Awakening began, starting in 1800–1801 with revival camp meetings on the frontier and in the backcountry. The great political events of the American founding, thus, have a backdrop of resurgent religion whose calls for repentance and faith plainly complement the calls to resist tyranny and constitutional corruption so as to live virtuously as God-fearing Christians, and, eventually, as responsible republican citizens.11

The preeminent awakener in America throughout much of this whole period was the English evangelist George Whitefield (see no. 4, herein), who first visited the colonies in 1738 and made six more preaching tours of the country, and who died in 1770 one September morning just before he was to preach in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Regarded as not only the most controversial preacher of his time but as “perhaps the greatest extemporaneous orator in the history of the English church,” it is Whitefield’s view of the human plight and its remedy that will best show the thrust of the Awakening as formative of the American mind. James Downey has written:

The theme of his preaching is that of evangelicals in every age: in his natural state man is estranged from God; Jesus Christ, by his death and Atonement, has paid the price of that estrangement and made reconciliation with God possible; to achieve salvation man, with the guidance and the grace of the Holy Ghost, must repudiate sin and openly identify himself with Christ. To Whitefield religion, when properly understood, meant “a thorough, real, inward change of nature, wrought in us by the powerful operations of the Holy Ghost, conveyed to and nourished in our hearts, by a constant use of all the means of grace, evidenced by a good life, and bringing forth the fruits of the spirit.” There was, of course, nothing new in this belief. Its special appeal for eighteenth-century audiences lay partly in the fact that it answered an emotional need the established Church had for too long tried to ignore, and partly in the charismatic personality of the man who revived it.12

It is perhaps worth stressing in a secularized age that the mystic’s ascent and the evangelist’s call, although conducted in different forums, have much in common. For each seeks to find the responsive place in a person’s consciousness where a vivid communion with God occurs, with the consequence that this concourse becomes the transformative core for that person, who therewith sees himself as a “new man”: initially in the conversion experience (represented as a spiritual rebirth) and subsequently in the continuing meditative nurture of the soul, pursued by every means but chiefly, in American Protestantism, through prayer, sermons, and scriptural meditation. The great cry of the awakeners was for a converted ministry, one able to revive religious communities lacking vitality and zeal, so as to make the presence of God with his people a palpable reality. Such hortatory preaching and intent were the hallmarks of the so-called New Light, or New Side, clergy, as contrasted with their opposites (Old Light, Old Side ministers), who eschewed emotion and experimental religion. Many of the former, like Whitefield himself, had no church of their own but traveled the country preaching in homes and pastures or wherever they could four and five times in a day that often began before dawn. They were not always treated as welcome visitors by the established clergy, with whom serious conflict sometimes arose.

It is against the experiential background of such preaching that the political teaching of the ministers of the eighteenth century is to be seen as it was powerfully displayed in crisis and revolution. From their biblical perspective, it can be said that man is a moral agent living freely in a reality that is good, coming from the hand of God: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”13 With the responsibility to live well, in accordance with God’s commandments and through exercise of his mind and free will, man longs for knowledge of God’s word and truth and seeks God’s help to keep an open heart so as to receive them. Among the chief hindrances to this life of true liberty is the oppression of men, who in service to evil deceive with untruth and impose falsehood in its place, proclaiming it to be true. Man, blessed with liberty, reason, and a moral sense, created in the image of God, a little lower than the angels, and given dominion over the earth (Psalm 8; Hebrews 2:6–12), is the chief and most perfect of God’s works.

Liberty is, thus, an essential principle of man’s constitution, a natural trait which yet reflects the supernatural Creator. Liberty is God-given. The growth of virtue and perfection of being depends upon free choice, in response to divine invitation and help, in a cooperative relationship. The correlate of responsibility, liberty is most truly exercised by living in accordance with truth. Man’s dominion over the earth and the other creatures, his mastery of nature through reason, is subject to no restraint but the law of his nature, which is perfect liberty; the obligation to obey the laws of the Creator only checks his licentiousness and abuse.

Our preachers, however, understood that this gift of freedom to do right and live truly carries another possibility, rebellion and rejection, as well. This, in turn, leads to the necessity of government to coerce a degree of right living and justice from a mankind fallen from the high road of willing obedience to the loving Father. Unfortunately, coercive law can be inflicted in ways that are not merely just and conducive to truth, righteousness, and union with God, but not infrequently to their very opposites. This biblical understanding of the human condition is reflected in the most famous passage of The Federalist (no. 51), which turns on the sentiments that if men were angels there would be no need for government, for what is government but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? It remains true, James Madison continued, that “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”

A few words may now be said about the sermon as a rhetorical and symbolic form, particularly the political sermon. It was the axiom of one of the leading figures of the New Light movement and the educator of preachers, Nathanael Emmons, “Have something to say; say it.” The suggestion of terseness is misleading, however, since eighteenth-century preachers had a great deal to say. The Sunday service might typically open with a prayer that lasted an hour as measured by a glass on the pulpit; it would then be turned twice during the course of the sermon. A short break for lunch would be taken, and then the preaching would continue in the afternoon. The form of Puritan sermons followed a model taught by William Perkins’s Arte of Prophysying (1592, translated in 1607). The principle basic to his approach was, following Augustine and Calvin, that the Bible is reflexive in the sense of providing its own explanation of its meaning in a consistent whole. This literal meaning is to be found through use of the three methods of circumstance, collation, and application. Thus, it is the task of the preacher as interpreter to place any scriptural text into its circumstances and context, collating that text with similar texts elsewhere in the scriptures, to find consistent meaning, and then to finish by conforming his preaching to the “analogie of faith.” This means that any statement made had to be in harmony with or contained in the Apostles’ Creed.14

The key to finding the unity of the Bible, according to William Perkins, was to begin by first mastering Paul’s Letter to the Romans; then, and only then, ought the student move to the remainder of the New Testament and subsequently to the Old Testament. The result of this, because of the emphases in Romans, will be a stress on justification, sanctification, and true faith.

The steps in writing and delivering the sermon begin with the reading of the divine text, considered as the holy Word of God and superior to or outside of the remainder of the presentation. The text is to be read aloud to the congregation by way of “opening” the Word, for (in the Calvinist conception, at least) it is the Word and the Word alone that is the proper province of preaching. The duty of the preacher, then, is merely to “open” the one clear and natural sense of scripture, so that the Holy Spirit can move through the preacher’s words into the hearers’ souls to effect spiritual transformation. Thus, in Perkins’s formal outline, the preacher ought:

• 1. To read the Text distinctly out of the canonicall Scripture.
• 2. To give the sense and understanding of it being read by the Scripture itself.
• 3. To collect a few and profitable points of doctrine out of the naturall sense.
• 4. To applie (if he have the gift) the doctrines rightly collected to the manners of men in a simple and plain speech.

This form is understood to embody the circumstances, collations, and analogies of faith previously mentioned.15 The format of Text, Doctrine, and Application remained typical of sermons, especially on such formal occasions as the political sermons reproduced here, and in the hands of the most accomplished preachers (such as Jonathan Edwards the Elder) the old form could be effective for “sustaining rigorous analysis and dramatizing the essential relationships among the Word, human intelligence, and conduct.”16 It is no surprise that a mastery of classical rhetoric is displayed in the sermons of the eighteenth century, since this was the “golden age of the classics” in America.17

Of the several vehicles for expounding political theology available to American ministers, the most venerable were the election sermons preached for 256 years in Massachusetts and 156 years in Connecticut. The practice began in Vermont in 1778 and in New Hampshire in 1784 in the sermon by Samuel McClintock (no. 26, herein). These were sermons preached annually to the governor and legislature after the election of officers. To be chosen for the task was an honor, and the sermons were published and distributed to each official with an extra copy or two for the ministers of the official’s home district. It is at least arguable that a published sermon is a mark of its excellence to begin with, whatever the occasion of its utterance. (In the screening of several thousand items, the intention has been that only leading clergymen putting their best foot forward on important political matters are here represented.) One index of quality is suggested by the fact that very few of the sermons preached ever were published; thus Samuel Dunbar, an Old Light minister from Stoughton, Massachusetts, wrote out some eight thousand sermons during his long career but published only nine of them (see no. 7).

Besides the election sermon, the artillery sermon was also an annual affair in Massachusetts and dealt with civic and military matters. The Thursday or Fifth-day Lecture was begun by the Reverend John Cotton in Boston in 1633 and was practiced for 200 years; it was a popular event and was combined with Market Day for gathering and discussing matters of social and political interest. Election sermons were sometimes then repeated for a different audience. The Lecture was no Boston or Congregationalist monopoly, as can be seen from Abraham Keteltas’s sermon preached during the evening Lecture in the First Presbyterian Church at Newburyport in 1777 (no. 19, herein). Convention sermons also were political in nature and grew out of election-day ceremonies.

There were many other opportunities for political discourse, such as the annual observation of January 30 as the execution day of the king-turned-tyrant, Charles I. Century sermons were preached to mark the Glorious Revolution’s centenary, on November 5, 1788, the anniversary of William III’s landing in England to secure it from popery and tyranny and to preserve traditional British liberties. The century sermon of Elhanan Winchester is included here (no. 33). Days of prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving were proclaimed for particular occasions throughout the eighteenth century and even earlier. Such times were nationally proclaimed (“recommended”) at least sixteen times by the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War; and the entire American community repaired to their various churches on such days of fasting, prayer, and humiliation to repent of sins, seek forgiveness, and implore God to lift the affliction of their suffering from them—the jeremiad form so central to American consciousness.18 Days of thanksgiving were likewise proclaimed when divine favor was experienced. The end of the war brought a great outpouring of praise and gratitude, and four sermons, nos. 24 through 27, reflect these sentiments. Such proclamations became rarer under the Constitution but did not disappear during Washington’s or Adams’s administrations, and their suspension during Jefferson’s administration was followed by a reinstatement under James Madison. The Fourth of July regularly occasioned political sermons as well as orations. The death of Washington evoked a universal grief and countless sermons extolling the character of the American Joseph; an example is that of Henry Holcombe, a Baptist, who preached in Savannah, Georgia (no. 49). The Boston Massacre sermons and orations commemorated the events of March 5, 1770, and the “Patriots’ Day” observances, as they are now called, marked the battles of Lexington and Concord in New England each year on April 19. Not only was such preaching widely attended, repeated, and published as tracts, but it was often reprinted in the newspapers as well.

This rhetorical form expressed the philosophical mean that free government is based on liberty, and liberty is founded in truth and justice as framed by eternal laws. Republicanism and virtue were far from split apart by James Madison and his colleagues at the Federal Convention, as the clergy understood our constitutional system. For these preachers and their flocks, the two remained essentially bound together. The political culture of this country was not only all the things it is most frequently said to be (I think of Bernard Bailyn’s five items), but was deeply rooted in the core religious consciousness articulated above all by the preachers; theirs were the pulpits of a new nation with a privileged, providential role in world history. What America’s religious consciousness consisted of in the tumultuous and triumphant years of founding is what this book will disclose.

October 1990

Ellis Sandoz

Ellis Sandoz is a Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.

[1. ]Whether printed or manuscript sermons are more representative is a question debated in the literature; see Donald Weber, Rhetoric and History in Revolutionary New England (New York, 1988), 7.

[2. ]Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence, ed. J. P. Mayer (Garden City, N.Y., 1969), II, 432; cf. 46–47, 288–91.

[3. ]Edmund Burke, “Speech on Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775” in Burke, Selected Writings and Speeches, ed. Peter J. Stanlis (1963; rpr. Chicago, n.d.), 147–85, esp. 158–60.

[4. ]Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, Interspersed with Biographical, Political and Moral Observations, 2 vols., ed. Lester H. Cohen (Indianapolis, 1988), II, 686.

[5. ]Carl Bridenbaugh, Spirit of ’76: The Growth of American Patriotism Before Independence, 1607-1776 (New York, 1975), 117. The argument underlying this paragraph is stated more fully in Ellis Sandoz, A Government of Laws: Political Theory, Religion and the American Founding (Baton Rouge, La., 1990), esp. chaps. 3 to 6; see also the Bibliographic Note herein.

[6. ]William Gordon, The History of the Rise, Progress and Establishment of the United States of America, including An Account of the Late War, 3 vols., 2d ed. (New York, 1794), I, 273–74. See the study of Gordon’s History in Lester H. Cohen, The Revolutionary Histories: Contemporary Narratives of the American Revolution (Ithaca, N. Y., 1980). Apparently overlooked by Cohen is the rare and important volume by [Bernard] Hubley, History of the American Revolution (Northumberland, Pa., 1805). Projected as a two-volume work, only the first volume, of 606 pages, appeared, covering the years 1773 to 1775 (Evans 137105; Huntington 7593).

[7. ]The “law of liberty” or “perfect law of freedom (nomon teleion eleutherias)” of James 1:25 (cf. James 2:12 and I Peter 2:16) echoes the Johannine Christ: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make [set] you free (eleutheroosei)" as given in John 8:32 and reiterated in subsequent verses (8:33, 36), culminating in the great declaration: “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”

[8. ]Alan Heimert and Perry Miller, eds., The Great Awakening: Documents Illustrating the Crisis and Its Consequences (Indianapolis, Ind., 1967), xiii.

[9. ]Ibid., xiv; cf. Perry Miller, “The Great Awakening from 1740 to 1750,” Encounter (The Divinity School, Duke University, Durham, N. C., March 1956), 5–9; also Herbert L. Osgood, American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century, 4 vols. (1924; rpr. Gloucester, Mass., 1958), III, 407-490; and Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt: Urban Life in America, 1743–1776 (New York, 1955), 64, 150–56, 404.

[10. ]See the biographical notes and sermons numbered 4, 13, 14, and 18 herein. On the Gin Age, see W.E.H. Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, 7 vols. (London, 1892), II, chap. 5; also M. Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (1925; rpr. New York, 1964), 27–37 and passim; more entertainingly, see the first modern novels, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749) and, especially, Amelia (1751).

[11. ]A fine, concise account of the relationship of the Great Awakening to political developments is given by William G. McLoughlin in “ ‘Enthusiasm for Liberty’: The Great Awakening as the Key to the Revolution,” in Jack P. Greene and William G. McLoughlin, Preachers & Politicians: Two Essays on the Origins of the American Revolution (Worcester, Mass., 1977), 47–73; see also, Donald Weber, Rhetoric and History in Revolutionary New England (New York, 1988).

[12. ]James Downey, The Eighteenth-Century Pulpit: A Study of the Sermons of Butler, Berkeley, Secker, Sterne, Whitefield and Wesley (Oxford, 1969), 155, 157, internal quote cited from J. Gillies, ed., Works on Whitefield, 6 vols. (London, 1771–1772), V, 161.

[13. ]Genesis 1:31. This, and Psalm 119:134 (“Deliver me from the oppression of man: So will I keep thy precepts.”), were the texts for the Plymouth Anniversary Sermon by Gad Hitchcock of Pembroke, which was preached at Plymouth, Massachusetts, on December 22, 1774; it is the principal source of the summary given in this and the following paragraph; reprinted in Verna M. Hall, ed., The Christian History of the American Revolution (San Francisco, 1976), 30–43.

[14. ]My discussion at this point relies on Teresa Toulouse, The Art of Prophesying: New England Sermons and the Shaping of Belief (Macon, Ga., 1987), chap. 1.

[15. ]Toulouse, The Art of Prophesying, 15–21, quoting William Perkins.

[16. ]Wilson H. Kimnach, “Jonathan Edwards’s Pursuit of Reality,” in Nathan O. Hatch and Harry S. Stout, eds., Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience (New York, 1988), 115.

[17. ]An idea of this can be gained from Josephine K. Piercy, Studies in Literary Types in Seventeenth Century America (1607-1710), 2d ed. (Hamden, Conn., 1969), 155–67; a more elaborate treatment is George W. Hervey, A System of Christian Rhetoric, For the use of Preachers and Other Speakers (New York, 1873); an "index" (or glossary) of rhetorical figures from accismus and addubitatio to votum and zeugma, is given on pp. 577–628; on the classics in America, see Richard M. Gummere, American Colonial Mind and the Classical Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1963) and the books of Meyer Reinhold, who characterizes the Revolutionary period as the Golden Age of the classics, in Classica Americana: The Greek and Roman Heritage of the United States, (Detroit, 1984), 95.

[18. ]For the text of some of these resolutions and analysis see Sandoz, A Government of Laws, chap. 5; for the jeremiad see Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad, (Madison, Wis., 1978), 176-210 and passim.

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