Hi, I'm David Bercot. Tonight we're going to be talking about what the founding fathers believed. This series of messages on the myth of Christian America actually began eight years ago. It was originally going to be a book.
And as part of the book, one of the things I wanted to do was to look at the 10 men who made the most significant contributions to the founding of the United States, either in the American Revolution or in the United States Constitution, and to look at what were the religious beliefs of these men. These 10 men were George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay, and Thomas Paine.
Now when I started this project, I knew nothing about their religious beliefs other than Thomas Jefferson. And I knew on Thomas Jefferson because I had purchased the Thomas Jefferson Bible several years before. I didn't know what it was when I bought it. I thought it was maybe a translation he did or something. I knew he had interest in a lot of areas.
I didn't realize until I got it that it was a New Testament, basically, that he had gone in and taken out all of the miracles, all of the statements where Jesus talks about his divinity and things like that, and ended up with Jesus as a good moral teacher. So I realized that he definitely was not a Christian. I had heard that many of the founding fathers were Deists, but I had never actually read their writings to know if that was actually correct or not, or who was and who wasn't.
Now, my idea for this part of the book, it wasn't gonna be the whole book, but the part about the founding fathers was to go to the primary sources as much as possible. That was to go to the writings of these 10 men to see what they themselves said, not what different books said about them. But I also read a number of scholarly secondary sources.
That is, books written by knowledgeable historians who didn't have any agenda as concerning the religious beliefs of these men, but who went into a lot of detail about their lives and the contribution they made to the United States. Well, one of the most important lessons that I saw in my research, and something that's very important that all of you remember, is that a person can proof text history just like you can proof text the Bible or any other subject.
That is, you can pick quotations here or there and make any of the Founding Fathers look like what you want them to be. If you want to paint them all as devout Christians, you can find a quote here and there that will fit that. On the other hand, if you want to make out that they were all atheists or agnostics, you can find statements here or there that would fit most of them to fit that agenda.
And to me, it was quite disgusting, the dishonesty on both sides of the issue, both with the Christian God and Country people and with the secular humanists who wanted religion out of society altogether. Now there are plenty of popular Christian books on American history and textbooks as well and a lot of websites where you can find quotations from the Founding Fathers. There's books like The Light and the Glory, things like that. And most of the quotations you will find there are accurate quotations.
I mean, the person actually did say that. But so often that quotation was not representative of all of the beliefs of that person about Christ and the Bible. Or sometimes it represented what that person believed at one time in their life, but their views changed years later. And this was true, like I say, both of the Christian websites and of the agnostic websites.
The agnostics, they'll take a quote here or there and say, " See, this person either was not a Christian or they wanted religion totally out of society, out of public life. " What I saw is that nobody seemed to be very interested in what the actual truth was. They had an agenda, and they were wanting to promote that agenda, and truth didn't matter to them. Of course, I've seen the same thing in dealing with Christian history, in dealing with the teachings of Jesus Christ. That same mentality over and over.
This is what I believe, and I'm going to shape the facts to fit what I believe, not what the truth necessarily is. Now, actually, these websites and popular books, put out by both sides on the issue, did serve as some help in my research, because I quickly realized that if any of the Founding Fathers said anything positive about religion, or about God, or about Jesus Christ, well, these God and Country websites, that quote's gonna be there, or it's gonna be in their books.
Now, I didn't just take those quotes and accept them at face value, but I checked the footnote. Okay, where is this quote? What does it come from? And then went and looked up the whole document and read the whole document to see if the context fits the way the quote is being used. So in a way, these websites and popular books are sort of like a concordance where you can find where a verse is in the Bible, and then you go and look up that verse and read it in its context.
And the same is true of the websites and books put out by the skeptics. If any of the Founding Fathers had anything negative to say about religion or expressed any sentiment of doubt about the Bible, or said anything about religion not being in public life, I could pretty well be sure that quote is gonna end up on their website or in their books. And again, I could look up the source of it and go read the actual document.
After years of research, what I found was that these Founding Fathers cover a wide spectrum of religious beliefs. Now, none of them were what would be known today as born again Christians. And none of these men were atheists. And you know, if you took the next 10 most influential men, you would find the same spectrum. So what we're gonna be looking at is not necessarily peculiar to these particular 10 men. They would represent a pretty good cross-section of all of the Founding Fathers.
Now, of these 10 most influential men, some of them would be what I would call conventional Christians. By this, I mean that they identified themselves publicly as Christians. They attended church regularly. And in their public and private writings, they make their Christian beliefs clear. Four of these founding fathers would fall into this category, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. Now, two of these 10 men were clearly Deists, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.
That is, they believed in God. They even believed in His involvement in the affairs of men. But they didn't believe that Jesus was the Son of God, or that He died for our salvation. They dismissed and ridiculed large portions of the Scriptures. Now John Adams and Benjamin Franklin lay somewhere between the conventional Christians and the Deists. John Adams believed in God, and he certainly viewed himself as a Christian. At the same time, he was a Unitarian not believing in the Trinity.
Benjamin Franklin had a firm faith in God and faith in the power of prayer. He had enormous respect for the teachings of Jesus. But as to whether or not Jesus was really the divine Son of God, he said he would wait to find out after he died. George Washington and James Madison are much harder to classify. George Washington never shared his religious beliefs with anyone.
Thomas Jefferson was certain that George Washington was a fellow deist, but George Washington's adopted granddaughter, Nellie Custis Lewis, was sure that he was a Christian. Today, both fundamentalists and secular humanists claim him as one of their own. Because of the significance of George Washington as the father of our country, and because he is so hard to pin down, we're going to spend all of tomorrow night just talking about him. James Madison is another one who's hard to pin down.
He attended the Episcopal Church, and he certainly let it be thought that he was a conventional Christian. On the other hand, his actions and his close partnership with Thomas Jefferson make me think he was actually a deist. Now we'll be looking at him and Thomas Jefferson and several of the other founding fathers on the night after tomorrow. Now please understand that when I classify these men, I'm not making a judgment as to their ultimate salvation.
God's grace can cover enormous sins and enormous theological errors. If in his grace he granted salvation to most or all of these men, I'll rejoice to know that. Now, as you no doubt realize, none of the Founding Fathers had any understanding of the two kingdoms, and none of them were what I call kingdom Christians. That is, none of them saw anything wrong with taking up arms and overthrowing the government, even though it meant killing thousands of professing Christians in the process.
With that introduction and explanation, let's now look at these men in a little bit more detail. I'm gonna start with Samuel Adams, the one who was the most conventional Christian of the group, and we'll end up with Thomas Paine, who would have been the furthest from Christianity. Now it's a shame that Samuel Adams is not better known among so many Americans today because he was easily the man most responsible for the American Revolution.
In fact, my history books always called him the father of the American Revolution and for good reason. He is the one who stirred it up more than any other person. I think I could safely say that there might have been an American revolution without Samuel Adams, but it would not have happened in the way, in the manner, and at the time that it did happen if it were not for him. His father was a deacon in the local congregationalist church there in Boston, and his father was also very strong into politics.
Massachusetts was a colony where church and state were to a large degree combined, and ministers were often very involved in politics as well. Their sermons were often very political in nature. Samuel Adams ' father helped to found what it was known as the Boston Caucus. It was a political group that pretty well controlled what went on in Boston in the political world. Nowadays we might call someone like Samuel Adams ' father a political boss.
Although in our history books, we learned a lot about the New England democracy, the town meetings and that as such an example of perfect or complete democracy. And I think at the beginning it was perhaps that way. But by the time of the revolution, at least in Boston, it was political groups who controlled things. And so when they had a town meeting, what was going to happen at that meeting had already been decided by the Boston Caucus.
If you weren't part of that group, your individual voice was not going to carry very much weight. They pretty well controlled things, pulled the strings, et cetera. Now, Samuel Adams ' father owned a local beer brewery there in Boston, and he became fairly wealthy. Now in this day and age, probably any evangelical would be kicked out of his church for having a brewery, but that was not something in that day and age that was unusual. The Puritans did not forbid alcoholic drinking in moderation.
And so there were many congregationalists or Puritans who owned breweries, who had distilleries, things like that. And Samuel Adams inherited the brewery from his father, inherited the place in Boston politics, and he pretty well picked up where his father left off. Now he did not have his father's gift for money management, and he pretty well bankrupted the business and his family through the years. But if his father was a good politician, Samuel Adams was a master.
One of his biographers, who is not critical of him, who, just looking at his life, made this comment, politics became his whole life, and nothing else mattered to him. He loved his wife and children, but took them for granted, and only a rare woman would have tolerated his neglect. Now, I would disagree with that statement that nothing else mattered to him.
Certainly, God and Christianity mattered very much to Samuel Adams, would have been a big place in his heart, but I would agree that politics held the dearest place in his heart. That's what consumed his life and his time. And when Jesus said that no man can serve two masters, I think Samuel Adams would be a good example of that. Somebody whose two masters were Christianity and politics. And there's no doubt that politics became the master, and Christianity was subrogated to his politics.
Because in many respects, of all 10 of these men, Samuel Adams was the least Christian in his conduct. Not morally. I mean, he lived an upright life. He had held a local office at one time, and there was a problem with missing money, which I'm going to guess was a problem of his mismanagement, probably not of deliberate theft. From what I can see of his life, it's hard for me to picture him either being a thief or being sexually immoral.
But when it came to Jesus ' other teachings, he completely threw them out the door. Turn the other cheek, not Samuel Adams. Have such a high regard for truth that your yes means yes and your no means no, not Samuel Adams. He was a master at propaganda. Blessed are the peacemakers? Well, Samuel Adams then certainly was not blessed because he was anything but a peacemaker. He was exactly the opposite.
Someone who constantly stirred up trouble, who wanted a war with Great Britain, who did everything he could to push to force England into a war against the colonies. And he had no hesitation to use violence to accomplish his means. He spent most of his time in the taverns of Boston along the waterfront and among the dock workers, among the prostitutes. I don't mean that he went and visited prostitutes, but these were the kind of people that he spent his time with because these were the people he could control.
And the Sons of Liberty there in Boston, that he was the head of or at least the chief figure. As I've mentioned before, today we would call them thugs. I mean, they use physical intimidation against people to make people do what they wanted them to do. The Christian right today would never approve of those kind of tactics.
I mean, Christians today, talking about evangelical Christians, they would view it wrong to go down and say, burn down the governor's mansion or the White House because of abortion, because of a law that says abortion is legal. I mean, they might say we should protest.
We should fight through the voting booth against it, send out tracts, maybe picket abortion clinics, but to go and kill someone or threaten someone with death or, like I say, burn down the governor's house because he enforced what the Supreme Court says is the law, would say, no, you can't do that. Well, that's exactly what Samuel Adams and many of the other so-called Christian patriots of his day did. And they weren't doing it over some moral issue over something as dear as the life of an unborn baby.
They were doing it over taxes. They were doing it over issues that at the most were a gray area. That, yeah, maybe parliament had the right, maybe they didn't. But in most of the areas, Parliament had the clear right. It was right there in their charter all along. After some of the riots and disturbances that Samuel Adams was actually behind, he wrote a letter to the Boston Gazette. He used the pen name Determinatus, which was, I mean, very common.
That's how most people wrote their letters in those days to the newspaper. He said, " I am no friend of riots, tumult, and unlawful assemblies. " Well, I mean, that's a direct lie. I mean, he was the one fomenting them. But when the people are oppressed, when their rights are infringed, when their property is invaded, when taskmasters are set over them, when unconstitutional acts are executed by a naval force before their eyes, in such circumstances, the people will be discontent and they are not to be blamed.
In other words, it was the government that was at fault for the riots. You can't blame the people for beating up other people, for burning down stores and houses and that kind of thing, because the government was so unfair to them and oppressed them. Well, what he was talking about were laws that had been there for over a century. And it was a matter of England trying to put a stop to smuggling and searching warehouses for smuggled goods.
What a strange thing for a professing Christian to write, where Jesus and his actions were just the opposite. He said, " Love your enemy, turn the other cheek. " If someone wants to force you to carry his load one mile, carry it two miles.
After that letter to the Boston Gazette, somebody else wrote back, " It is strange that men who are guarding against being subject to laws to which they never gave their consent in person or by their representative should at the same time themselves make laws and in the most effective manner execute them upon me and others to which laws I am sure I never gave my consent, either in person or by my representative.
I'd rather be a slave under one master, for I know who he is, and I may perhaps be able to please him, then a slave to a hundred or more who I don't know where to find nor what they will expect from me. " And that was exactly the case. The Sons of Liberty would make laws like you could not trade with the British, you could not sell this particular good. And the merchants didn't necessarily give their consent. They had no say in the matter.
But when the Sons of Liberty came by their place of business and demanded to inspect their books, boy, it better show that they weren't selling anything that the Sons of Liberty said were banned or conducting trade with people they weren't supposed to by the Sons of Liberty or else you know their business would be burned down. They would be beaten up or a boycott enforced against them. So it was the height of hypocrisy to say, yes, we want freedom. We want laws that we had a say in.
And yet they were forcing things on other people who had no say in the matter whatsoever. Now I want to share with you just some representative quotes from various letters and speeches of Samuel Adams. In one letter, he wrote, " Revelation assures us that righteousness exalted the nation. Communities are dealt with in this world by the wise and just ruler of the universe. He rewards or punishes them according to their general character.
The diminution of public virtue is usually attended with that of public happiness, and the public liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals. Adams was a strong believer in freedom of religion, but he also felt that the government should encourage and help religion, that it played a very important role in society, particularly that of Christianity. But his Christianity and his politics were just totally entwined. He never really could separate them.
He would be the ultimate god and country man that the two go hand in hand. For example, in one of his statements, he said, " I firmly believe that the benevolent creator designed the Republican form of government for man.
" In a letter to John Adams, he said this, " Let divines, meaning clergymen, and philosophers, statesmen, and patriots unite their endeavors to renovate the age by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, of inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the deity and universal philanthropy.
And in subordination to these great principles, the love of their country of instructing them in the art of self-government, without which they can never act a wise part in the government of societies great or small. In short, lead them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system. Now I could produce many more quotes along the same line. They're not taken out of context. That's what you'll find no matter how many speeches and letters of Samuel Adams you read.
Now, John Adams, in writing to a friend whose name was William Tudor, said this about Samuel Adams, and this was after Samuel Adams had died. He said, " You say Mr. Samuel Adams had too much sternness and pious bigotry. " A man in his situation and circumstances must possess a large fund of sternness of stuff, or he will soon be annihilated. His piety ought not to be objected to him or any other man.
His bigotry, if he had any, was a fault, but he certainly had not more than Governor Hutchinson and Secretary Oliver, who I know from personal conversation were as staunch Trinitarians and Calvinists as he was, and treated all Arians and Arminians with more contempt and scorn than he ever did. Mr. Adams lived and conversed freely with all sectarians in philosophy and divinity. He never imposed his creed on anyone or endeavored to make proselytes to his religious opinions.
He was as far from sentencing any man to perdition who differed from him as Mr. Hawley, Dr. Kirkland or Dr. Freeman. If he was a Calvinist, a Calvinist he had been educated and so had been all his ancestors for 200 years. He had been from his childhood too much devoted to politics to be a profound student in metaphysics and theology, or to make extensive researches or deep investigation into such subjects. That's the end of John Adams ' letter about Samuel Adams and John Adams knew him quite well.
They worked together in Boston and in the government of Massachusetts and in the Continental Congress. So even Samuel Adams, who was perhaps the most evangelical of the founding fathers, was not as dogmatic as so many of the people who would cite him are today. But he definitely was a firm believer in religion, as he put it, and government being entwined, but not in the sense of forcing everyone to believe the same thing, but just in the sense of promoting public religion as a good thing for society.
Now let's move on to Patrick Henry. He's most famous for his words, " Give me liberty or give me death " in one of his speeches against the British taxes. Patrick Henry was the first governor of Virginia after the American Revolution started, and he was a big supporter of the American Revolution, obviously, both at the state or colonial level and in the larger sphere as well. Now, he was not as involved as a founding father.
In fact, some would not consider him a founding father because he actually opposed the United States Constitution. He felt that it would endanger many of the freedoms the revolution had gained. Samuel Adams would have felt somewhat the same way, probably not quite as opposed as Patrick Henry was. And probably history has borne out that Patrick Henry was right, that essentially all of the things that the colonists complained about, we have a hundred times over in our government today.
They had far less taxation, far more freedom than we experienced in America in our day. And the federal government has pretty well become so dominant that state governments, other than dealing with fairly local laws, have relatively little power in comparison to the federal government. And that's what he was afraid of. I mean, we just threw off England, so are we going to turn right around and then have a new national government that's going to put us in the same situation?
Now, one thing very big he did for the nation as a whole, in addition to promoting the American Revolution, was in getting the Bill of Rights added to the Constitution. In one of his speeches, he says, " You have a Bill of Rights to defend you against the state government, which is bereaved of all power, and yet you have none against Congress, though in full and exclusive possession of all power.
What barriers have you to oppose this most strong, energetic government talking about the national government created by the Constitution. To that government, you have nothing to oppose. All your defense is given up. This is a real actual defect. And so his influence was enormous in getting the Bill of Rights immediately added to the Constitution. So Americans can thank him for that.
Interestingly, after the French Revolution, and he saw how democracy can go astray, in a sense, you can have too much freedom when there's not law and order. He actually became a supporter of George Washington and the Federalist Party in the later years of his life. Now it's fairly easy to find quotations from Patrick Henry on his Christian beliefs and also that he believed that the government should help promote Christianity. He once said the Bible is worth all other books which have ever been printed.
In his will, after leaving his property to his children, he says, " This is all the inheritance I can give my dear family. But the religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed. " And all of these quotes would very much fit the man. He was very strong in his Christian beliefs, and he lived from what I can see a very moral upright life. To me, he would be a much better example of a Christian than Samuel Adams. Yet at the same time, he was an Episcopalian.
And again, the God and country evangelicals who want to promote him as an example of Christians in office and what Christians did for this country don't normally view Episcopalians as Christians. Patrick Henry would certainly have believed that good works play a role in your salvation. He would not have had a born-again experience. He could not have pointed to a day and hour when he was saved. So I'm just saying, let's be honest. If that's what you say makes a Christian, then Patrick Henry wasn't a Christian.
Be honest to your own definitions. Now, I don't like definitions that are stingy. I'll let God decide who he wants ultimately to inherit his kingdom or not. Patrick Henry was definitely a devout professing Christian. He was certainly not a kingdom Christian, nor was he a fundamentalist or a modern day evangelical. Now, I want to read to you not an actual speech he made. This is from Williamsburg, Virginia.
And part of their recreation of American history there, they have a debate between Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson on the subject of whether Virginia should have a law that tax people and those taxes would go to support not a state church, but the church of a person's choice. Patrick Henry was in favor of that. Thomas Jefferson was against it.
Anyway, in this mock speech, Patrick Henry says this, which all of which is very true for my own study of history and also would very much fit what Patrick Henry would have said. In 1776, in this very city, birthplace of American liberty to me, we declared independence from the crown and the government of Great Britain. We clearly could no longer have the Church of England as our established church.
And furthermore, as we were embroiled in war, war being the most expensive business that a government may undertake, it was wisely determined by the legislature that we would suspend the tax upon religion until that time of the war was ended. It has now ended. It ended last year, 1783, with the Treaty of Paris. The time is now that we must address the matter of religion, and I believe we must strike while the iron is hot, because the country is in flames.
To my great disappointment, I have discovered that just in the seven or eight years since we have suspended the tax upon religion, we have seen a steady but very noticeable decay in morality in our society. It is true, Mr. Jefferson, you must face the reason of it. We are seeing but three-quarters of the parishes that were once are no longer. These are vacant, abandoned buildings, sheep and goats grazing within the churches themselves.
Vestry men, those most responsible men in the community for seeing to the well-being of all within their various parishes are resigning from their vestry positions, and no one is willing to take their place. Most of the clergy have given up that profession, gone to something else, or have even left Virginia. And most disturbingly, we are seeing increasing numbers, especially of dissenters who are most unwilling to contribute money to the care of the needy. The matter then must be addressed.
I have presented a plan which to me embraces the best of the old, that is, state-sponsored encouragement for virtue and morality, and the education of the same, and the best of the new. And it offers a complete religious freedom for those who dissent from the Church of England or any established church. My plan is known as the Assessment Bill of 1784. By my plan, all heads of household will once again pay an annual, very moderate, reasonable assessment towards religion.
However, they will be able to choose which church or meeting house or minister they wish those monies to be applied. Thus, I believe that all denominations will flourish around the countryside. And that was true. Patrick Henry sponsored a bill that would have had the state of Virginia help the maintenance of religion, particularly Christian religion, by there being a tax on everyone to help support churches and ministers and meeting houses.
But each person could designate to which church or minister they wanted that to go. Now, Thomas Jefferson fought vigorously against it, and he ended up winning. And it wasn't passed. But there's no question where Patrick Henry stood on the matter of Christianity and the matter of the state being involved in Christianity. And of course, I'm not saying I agree with his views as a kingdom Christian. Obviously, he and I are in two different worlds. I'm just saying these are what the facts are.
The next founding father we want to look at is John Jay. He's not as famous as Patrick Henry, but in many ways, he played a much more important role in the founding of America. He was president of the Continental Congress from December 1778 to September 1779. Then he served as the foreign minister to Spain and France during the Revolution, working to get their support and aid against England. And he was one of the negotiators of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War.
In fact, he was one of the signers on behalf of the United States. He was the second governor of New York after the Revolution. And along with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, he was one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, which were the documents that helped persuade the people to ratify the Constitution. Then during the time that George Washington was in office, John Jay drew up what is known as the Jay Treaty.
It basically aligned the United States with Great Britain during the years surrounding the French Revolution. And it set the pattern that has lasted until our day, this close cooperation and special relationship that England and the United States have had. John Jay also was the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Spiritually, he was a devout Episcopalian. He served as the second president of the American Bible Society.
And while he was governor of New York, he issued the first Thanksgiving Day proclamation for the State of New York. And in the address that he gave, he spoke of the need of the people of New York to render unto God their sincere and humble thanks for all these His great and unmerited mercies and blessings.
Similarly, in a speech he gave on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, he said, " The most effective means of securing the continuance of our civil and religious liberties is always to remember with gratitude the source, speaking about God, from which they flow.
" Again, he was not a born again evangelical, but he was a devout Christian, and he lived a life that was consistent with his Christianity, although like all of the other founding fathers, he was completely ignorant of Jesus ' teachings of the two kingdoms and how a Christian is to behave as a citizen of God's kingdom and being separate from this world. Moving down the list, we next come to Alexander Hamilton. He played a huge role in the founding of our country.
When he was only 20 years old, George Washington made him his primary aide-de-camp. And the aide-de-camp was a person who sent correspondence, answered letters, handled the business aspect of war, not in Congress, but out in the field with General Washington. Much of the correspondence that came from George Washington during the war was actually written by Alexander Hamilton. George Washington looked upon him somewhat as a son. They had a very close relationship.
And he got to know George Washington so well that he could write a letter that truly expressed George Washington's thinking, even though it was Alexander Hamilton writing it. Hamilton was also a very prominent member of the Constitutional Convention, and he was the author of 51 of the 85 Federalist Papers, which powerfully made the case for ratifying the Constitution. In addition to that, he was the Secretary of the Treasury during George Washington's administration.
And it was Alexander Hamilton that gave America a sound financial reputation that has been a blessing to this country ever since. One of the things that he insisted on was that the new nation would pay all of its debts. All the debts that were incurred during the American Revolution, when soldiers would come and maybe take your wagon, your horses, your grain, whatever, and write you a piece of paper saying, at the end of the war, Congress will pay you for this. Well, most people figured those would never get paid.
And so a lot of the people who had these instruments of debt ended up selling them for maybe 10 cents on the dollar, figuring they'd never see anything out of it. But Alexander Hamilton was a firm believer that if people were going to respect this nation, and if it was going to be able to raise capital in the future, it had to begin with the reputation that its debts were as good as gold.
And so all of the debts were paid, and Hamilton instituted other policies that got the new nation on a very firm foundation financially. And that's why his picture appears on the $10 bill. In addition to that, Alexander Hamilton was George Washington's most trusted advisor during the time that Washington was in office. He wrote the majority of George Washington's speeches, and much of the policy that George Washington implemented was advice from Alexander Hamilton.
Now he did have the fault of getting into arguments in contention with people. The most famous one is he and Thomas Jefferson were at opposite poles of the spectrum during Washington's administration and were always feuding with each other. And he feuded with other people, John Adams and people like that. And his stock fell pretty rapidly after Washington was out of office.
Alexander Hamilton never held an important office after that, but he did play a very big role in New York City, becoming the most prominent city in America and the financial capital of the entire world. Wall Street got started, became what it did because of Alexander Hamilton. And perhaps his final contribution is that he helped save America from Aaron Burr. Most people remember from their school days, the famous duel of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, and Alexander Hamilton was shot and died as a result.
But the result of the duel was that Alexander Hamilton's stock rose enormously in his death. People realized whom they had lost, what a contribution he had made to the nation. And so his reputation rose and became embedded in history and it was well deserved. Meanwhile, Aaron Burr was looked upon as a scoundrel, and it marked his decline. He was an extremely ambitious man who had served as vice president under Thomas Jefferson and was not a very principled person.
And Alexander Hamilton saw that and was willing actually to lay down his life in the end to undo the ambitions of Aaron Burr. It's important that you understand that in this duel with Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton had decided before he ever went to the dueling grounds that he would not shoot his opponent.
He would fire his gun up in the air, which is what he did, and then either trust God to affect Aaron Burr's heart that he would not shoot Alexander Hamilton standing there defenseless, or else he would die in order to put an end to the wickedness of Aaron Burr. He wrote his wife, Elizabeth, a letter before he went to the duel and says this: " The scruples of a Christian have determined me to expose my own life to any extent rather than subject myself to the guilt of taking the life of another.
This must increase my hazards and redoubles my pangs for you. But surely you would rather I should die innocent than live guilty. Heaven can preserve me, and I humbly hope will, but in the contrary event, I charge you to remember that you are a Christian. God's will be done. The will of a merciful God must be good. Once more adieu, my darling, darling wife. Well then, as you know, at the duel, Hamilton shot his gun in the air. And instead of Aaron Burr doing likewise and saying, " Okay, honor has been satisfied.
" He took careful aim and shot Alexander Hamilton mortally wounding him. Now, Alexander Hamilton didn't die immediately after he was shot, even though he was mortally wounded. He lived long enough to receive final communion from an Episcopal priest, and his last words as recorded were, " I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to him for mercy. Pray for me. " But Alexander Hamilton was not just a deathbed Christian.
There are numerous instances in the writings of Alexander Hamilton showing his deep faith in God and commitment to religion, as he usually calls it, or sometimes Christianity. In a letter to George Washington in 1796, he said, " To all those dispositions which promote political happiness, religion and morality are essential props.
" In vain, does that man claim the praise of patriotism who labors to subvert or undermine these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest foundations of the duties of men and citizens? Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation for life, if the sense of moral and religious obligation deserts the oaths which are administered in courts of justice, nor are we to flatter ourselves that morality can be separated from religion.
Concede as much as may be asked to the effect of refined education in minds of a peculiar structure. Can we believe, can we, in prudence, suppose that national morality can be maintained in exclusion of religious principles? Does it not require the aid of a generally received and divinely authoritative religion? Now, that letter was written shortly before George Washington retired from office, and there were comments that Hamilton was giving him on things he should take care of before he left office.
And one of them was the promotion of religion throughout the nation. A couple of years before that, during the French Revolution, Alexander Hamilton took a firm position that the United States should side with Britain and not with France because of what had happened in the French Revolution.
He wrote this: " It is not among the least perplexing phenomena of the present times that a people like that of the United States exemplary for humanity and moderation surpassed by no other in the love of order and a knowledge of the true principles of liberty, distinguish for purity of morals and a just reverence for religion. Should so long persevere in partiality for a state of things the most cruel, sanguinary, and violent that have ever stained the annals of mankind.
A state of things which annihilates the foundations of social order and true liberty confounds all moral distinctions and substitutes to the mild and beneficent religion of the gospel, a gloomy persecuting and desolating atheism. If there be anything solid in virtue, the time must come when it will have been a disgrace to have advocated the revolution of France in its late stages.
In 1796, he wrote this concerning again the French Revolution: " Facts numerous and unequivocal demonstrate that the present era is among the most extraordinary which have occurred in the history of human affairs. Opinions for a long time have been gradually gaining ground, which threatened the foundations of religion, morality, and society. An attack was first made upon the Christian revelation for which natural religion was offered as a substitute.
The gospel was to be discarded as a gross imposture, but the being and attributes of God, the obligations of piety, even the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments, were to be retained and cherished. In proportion, as success has appeared to attend the plan, a bolder project has been unfolded. The very existence of a deity has been questioned, and in some instances denied.
The duty of piety has been ridiculed, the perishable nature of man asserted, and his hopes bounded to the short span of his earthly state. Death has been proclaimed in eternal sleep. The dogma of the immortality of the soul, a cheat, invented to torment the living for the benefit of the dead. Religion and government have both been stigmatized as abuses, as unwarrantable restraints upon the freedom of man, as causes of the corruption of his nature.
As a corollary from these premises, it is a favorite tenet of the sect, he's talking about one of the factions of the French Revolution, that religious opinion of any sort is unnecessary to society, that the maxims of a genuine morality and the authority of the magistracy and the laws are sufficient and ought to be the only security for civil rights and private happiness. A person's religious beliefs played a huge role as to where he stood with regard to the French Revolution.
The men who were conventional Christians, men like John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, were against their French Revolution because of its attack on religion and its general attack on law and its bloody execution of so many people. And they steered the United States to side with Britain in the conflict that came between France and Britain. Men like Thomas Jefferson, who were not Christians, they sided with the French and the French Revolution and thought it was a good thing.
Before leaving the subject of Alexander Hamilton, there's one more quote I'd like to read you. Earlier in his life, he wrote, " I have carefully examined the evidences of the Christian religion. If I was sitting as a juror upon its authenticity, I would unhesitatingly give my verdict in its favor. I can prove its truth as clearly as any proposition ever submitted to the mind of man.
" So again, in conclusion on Alexander Hamilton, he was a conventional Christian, was a devout Episcopalian, and he felt that religion was good for society in general, and that the government should help to promote or encourage it. But as was true with John Jay and the others, Alexander Hamilton was not a born again evangelical. And though I said a lot of good things about Alexander Hamilton, I certainly don't want to portray him as a saint. He was involved in an extramarital affair during his life.
He repented of it thoroughly, but he did have that failing. He was very quarrelsome, which eventually led to his death. And again, he had no understanding of the two kingdoms at all. He was not one to turn the other cheek. Well, that wraps up the group that we've been discussing who were conventional Christians who attended church received communion. Most of them other than Samuel Adams were Episcopalians. Tomorrow night, we're going to be talking about George Washington, the father of the United States.
Evangelicals want to claim him as a conventional Christian, and liberal secularists want to claim him as a deist. And tomorrow night, I'll share with you the conclusions I've reached together with the reasons why.