In his First Inaugural Address as the first President of the new United States, George Washington echoed the Puritan idea that America was a “city upon a hill.” He stated that, “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
Do not forget that the Americans were attempting something radically new in a world of monarchy, despotism, and tyranny ~ governing themselves by their own consent. They were attempting something that had failed in Greece . . . then in Rome . . . then in the Renaissance Italian city-states ~ self-government, democracy, republicanism. Americans had a great opportunity to attempt that great experiment and had a sacred obligation to preserve that liberty and govern themselves. If they succeeded, they would prove to the world that self-government were possible, and if they failed, it would definitively show that man was meant to be governed by another, meant to be dependent rather than independent and free.
As Alexander Hamilton said in Federalist Paper #1:
It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government by reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.
Most of the Founding Fathers thought it was doomed to failure for at some point in the future, human nature might again sink to its depths and the experiment would collapse. How would it thrive and endure? Upon what great pillars would be edifice be erected?
Let us allow the Founding Fathers to answer these questions in their own words.
George Washington said, “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”
John Adams said, “Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.”
His radical cousin, Samuel Adams, said: “Public liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals. Men will be free no longer than they remain virtuous.”
Even the more libertine Benjamin Franklin agreed: Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
James Madison mocked the idea that any other conclusion was reasonable: “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty and happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea.”
Indeed, Richard Henry Lee thought it axiomatic and self-evident: “It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.”
Patrick Henry said it too, though with his typical verve: Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed.”
But, what is virtue? Vir is the Latin for man, so it is how a man acts. Well, there are seven cardinal virtues in Christianity which present a juxtaposition to the seven deadly sins; there are classical virtues from ancient Greece. The republican virtues of the American Revolution were patriotism, self-sacrifice, serving the public good, morality, frugality, and simplicity.
Perhaps Madison is right, and the conclusion is inescapable ~ liberty without virtue is anarchy and a government without cannot endure. The common answer of these Founding Fathers was that a self-governing people must literally govern themselves, their passions, their desires. They were free and independent men but their liberty was not one of licentiousness; it was an ordered liberty. A liberty governed by virtue.
OK, so I think I’ve show that the Founders thought virtue was necessary in a self-governing people. But, there is a great unanswered question.
Exactly how was virtue to be inculcated in the republican American people?
Thomas Jefferson offered an answer that men would become virtuous when they were taught by the great minds and philosophers of the past. These appeared in his curriculum for the University of Virginia. He thought, “No government can continue but under the control of the people; and their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice.” Jefferson continues, “These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.”
Jefferson’s answer is at least partly satisfying, and would probably go a long way toward solving many of the ills in our society. First of all, I think that we all wish that schools and colleges were actually doing this. But, they have usually become the repositories of knowledge rather than wisdom, questioning whether there even is a right and wrong rather than teaching it. Secondly, the philosophers, particularly of Western Civilization, have wrestled with the human condition and questions of virtue and have important things to teach us. Thirdly, Jefferson specifically addresses Aristotle and his idea that we must practice virtue to let it become a habit ~ we would be wise to habituate our youth – not to mention ourselves – to virtue.
But, Jefferson’s answer is also partly unsatisfying. It is perhaps not the whole truth, particularly when we look at the Revolutionary generation and the Founding Fathers themselves. In his “Farewell Address,” Washington says that we must be cautious in simply believing that education in an Age of Enlightenment will make men virtuous. He says, “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in the exclusion of religious principle.”
Religion is the foundation upon which Washington and many others believed virtue and morality to be rooted upon. Indeed, as I point out in my book, Hurricane of Independence, it followed a very logical path: religion was the basis for virtue and virtue was the basis for a free people to govern themselves. Take any element out and the experiment in republican liberty would collapse and fail.
Washington continued, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” They were “great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.” He gave this warning: “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.”
General George Washington and Congress had done precisely that during the Revolutionary War. When Washington went to Boston and assumed command of the army in 1775, he found New Englanders “an exceeding dirty and nasty people” and disliked their licentiousness. He sought to unify these soldiers from all over the colonies and instill a common spirit of virtue. He prevented them from skinny-dipping in front of ladies and other offenses, but more seriously required them to attend religious services and allowed to appoint chaplains. His messages are filled with exhortations to religious practice and virtue.
The Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia went to pray and worried about their plurality. After all, there were Episcopalians, Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and in time a Catholic. The divisions among these groups were often deeply-rooted. Sam Adams rose and stated what would become a principle: “He was no bigot, and could hear a prayer from a gentleman of piety and virtue, who was at the same time a friend to his country.” Congress attended religious services and had chaplains pray from different denominations and faiths. And, they weren’t the milquetoast, almost meaningless prayers of today at graduation ceremonies that are routinely declared unconstitutional. Congress declared days of thanksgiving as well as days of fasting and prayer.
When he became president, George Washington firmly believed that he supported the idea that religion was the basis of virtue and virtue was the basis of good citizenship. Yet, he also had a firm belief in religious tolerance and religious liberty in a pluralist and free nation in his several letters to various religious groups who wished him well. While Thomas Jefferson is generally given the credit for religious tolerance, Washington did at least as much, if not more, for its cause.
He wrote to the General Assembly of Presbyterian Churches: “While all men within our territories are protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of their consciences, it is rationally to be expected of them in return . . . the innocence of their lives and the beneficence of their actions.” He praised them for their “laudable endeavors to render men sober, honest, and good citizens.”
He wrote to the Annual Meeting of Quakers: “The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshipping Almighty God agreeably to their consciences, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights.”
He wrote to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport: “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”
Washington’s wisdom resonated across the land and I think still resonates today. As a society, we have forgotten that freedom is not licentiousness, not an opportunity to let loose the mortal passions within. Patrick Henry warned that “Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom.”
Rather, it is an ordered liberty and self-government is rooted on virtue and morality which is rooted in religion. We need not tell a man how to worship God, for he has religious liberty, but we hope that he does worship God. Religious liberty and religious practice were essential pillars of the American Revolution. We shall hardly remain a “city upon a hill” should we forget that. As Patrick Henry also said, “No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”
We shall allow John Adams to have the last word: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net.” We should stop promoting “values” which are only what the individual values, they are soft and relative. Let us each embrace the virtue spoken of by Washington and our Founders and reclaim our republic!
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