America's Christian Heritage Daniel Webster

Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

Speech at Plymouth, Dec. 22, 1820. Vol. i. p. 44. 1

We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce in all minds a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and the parting day linger and play on its summit!

Address on laying the Corner-Stone of the Bunker Hill Monument, 1825. P. 62.

Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day.

Ibid. P. 64.

The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God.

Ibid. P. 102.

Thank God! I--I also--am an American!

Ibid. P. 107.

It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment,--Independence now and Independence forever. 3

Ibid. P. 136.

Washington is in the clear upper sky. 4

Ibid. P. 148.

I thank God, that if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down.

Ibid. P. 316.

I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston and Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever.

Ibid. P. 317.

The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. 8

Ibid. P. 321.

When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood.

Ibid. P. 342.

Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.

Ibid.

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.

Speech, June 3, 1834. Vol. iv. p. 47.

I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American. 11

Speech, July 17, 1850. P. 437.

A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us.

P. 105.

I shall defer my visit to Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty, until its doors shall fly open on golden hinges to lovers of Union as well as lovers of liberty. 13

Letter, April, 1851.