The Founding Myth

by Andrew L Seidel

  27 The first time this appeared in print as attributed to Franklin was 50 years after his death in The Works of Benjamin Franklin; vol. 1, ed. Jared Sparks (Boston: Hillard, Gray, 1840), 408. Sparks doesn’t cite an original source, instead, it’s from Sparks’s “continuation” of Franklin’s Autobiography, in which he “endeavoured to follow [Franklin’s] plan, by confining himself strictly to a narrative of the principal events and incidents in his life.” xxii. Carl Van Doren didn’t think it likely that Franklin said it. Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiographical Writings (New York: Viking, 1945), 418–19.

  28 John Adams to H. Niles, Feb. 13, 1818, in Works of John Adams, vol. 10, 283.

  29 Jeremy Black, George III: America’s Last King (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2006), 186.

  30 Ibid.,195.

  31 Ibid.,195.

  32 Ibid., 207.

  33 King George III to Lord North, February 12, 1779.

  34 Black, George III, 190.

  35 Ibid., 187–88.

  36 Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions of the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, vol. 2, (Washington, DC: J. Elliot, 1827–30), 423.

  37 Becker, Declaration of Independence, 7.

  38 Rom. 13:1–2 (NIV).

  39 Rom. 13:4–5.

  40 Acts 5:29.

  41 Prov. 8:15–16.

  42 Jack Jenkins, “Trump’s ‘God Whisperer’ Says Resisting Him is an Affront to God,” ThinkProgress, August 23, 2017, https://thinkprogress.org/trump-spiritual-adviser-affront-god-d615c512bffc/.

  43 John Adams wrote the Declaration of Rights and it was altered very little by the constitutional convention in his state. See, e.g., Works of John Adams, vol. 10, 210–26.

  44 John Lind, An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress (London: T. Cadell, 1776), 120.

  45 Jonathan Boucher, A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution, with an Historical Preface (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1797), 534.

  46 Ibid., 507–8.

  47 Ibid., 508 (emph. in orig.).

  48 Ibid., 505.

  49 Philip Dray, Stealing God’s Thunder: Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Rod and the Invention of America (New York: Random House, 2005), xvi.

  50 Ibid., 66–67.

  51 Ibid., 68.

  52 Ibid., 96.

  53 Ibid., 99.

  54 Ibid., 102–4

  55 John Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 1, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard Univ. Press, 1962), 61–62.

  56 Eccles. 10:20.

  57 Harlow Giles Unger, John Quincy Adams (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2012), 298–99.

  58 Rom. 13:1 (NIV).

  59 Prov. 8:15–16.

  60 Matthew Stewart, Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014, advance review copy), 129.

  61 Ibid.

  62 Fascinatingly, this quote of Lincoln’s may not be Lincoln’s originally. Lincoln may have been borrowing from Wycliffe, or possibly from Theodore Parker, an abolitionist minister. See Daniel Hannan, “150 Years Ago Today, Abraham Lincoln Praised ‘Government of the People, by the People, for the People’—But the Words Were Not His,” Telegraph (blog), November 19, 2013; and William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Welk, Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, vol. 2 (New York: D. Appleton, 1892), 65.

  63 Becker, Declaration of Independence, 62.

  64 See, e.g., Ellis Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730–1805, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1878.

  65 Boucher, View of the Causes, 504–5.

  Chapter 4 • Referrals: The Declaration’s References to a Higher Power

  1 See the first comment on the top of p. 299 for sources.

  2 Becker, Declaration of Independence, 197–200.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Ibid., 197.

  5 Richard Henry Lee to Thomas Jefferson, July 21, 1776, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, 1760–1776, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1950), 471.

  6 Geoffrey R. Stone, “The World of the Framers: A Christian Nation?” UCLA Law Review 56, no. 1 (2008): 22.

  7 Wycliffe’s Bible (1380, 1388); Tyndale Bible (1526–30); Coverdale Bible (1535); Matthew’s Bible (1537); Great Bible (1539); Taverner’s Bible (1539); Geneva Bible (1557–60); Douay-Rheims Bible (1582, 1609–10); King James Version (1611); Douay-Rheims Bible (Challoner Rev.) (1752); Quaker Bible (1764).

  8 John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Thomas Hollis, chapter 3, “Of the State of War,” § 21 (London: A. Millar et al., 1764), 212.

  9 Eccles. 12:1, Isa. 40:28, Isa. 43:15, Rom. 1:25, 1 Pet. 4:19.

  10 Reconstruction of Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration before it was revised by the other members of the Committee of Five and by Congress, from Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, 243–47; see http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html (emph. in orig.).

  11 See, e.g., Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008); Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Thomas Jefferson and the Divinity of the Founding Fathers,” The Atlantic, December 10, 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/266099/.

  12 Reconstruction of Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration, from Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 186.

  13 Jeffry H. Morrison, “Political Theology in the Declaration of Independence,” presented at a conference on the Declaration of Independence, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions Dept. of Politics, Princeton Univ., April 5–6, 2002. Morrison argues the third and fourth references were “intentionally calibrated to the ears of American Calvinists, the largest religious constituency in the colonies, while the first two references were aimed at deistic (or Unitarian) readers.”

  14 See the Dunlap Broadside, this printer’s version of the Declaration, at: http://www.wdl.org/en/item/2716/.

  15 Becker, Declaration of Independence, 185.

  16 Michael Anthony Peroutka, “Evolution is Anti-American,” American View, November 4, 2011 http://www.theamericanview.com/evolution-is-anti-american/ (audio file).

  17 Black’s Law Dictionary, 9th ed. (St. Paul, MN: West, 2009), “positive law.”

  18 Ibid., “natural law.”

  19 Becker, Declaration of Independence, 133–34.

  20 Roscoe Pound, The Formative Era of America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1938), 29.

  21 Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire, vol. VI (Philosophical Dictionary, part 4), trans. William F. Fleming (New York: E. R. DuMont, 1901), http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/355#lf0060-06_head_020.

  22 Black’s Law Dictionary, “natural law.”

  23 Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1765), 42. The Christian nationalist claim here is not so clear. Blackstone did distinguish between divine and natural law to an extent: “The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures…. Yet undoubtedly the revealed law is (humanly speaking) of infinitely more authority than what we generally call the natural law. Because one is the law of nature, expressly declared so to be by God himself; the other is only what, by the assistance of human reason, we imagine to be that law.”

  24 Geoffrey Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime, from 1798 to the War on Terrorism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 42–43.

  25 Jefferson to Judge Tyler, June 17, 1812, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, 66.

  26 Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, 335.

  27 See, e.g., Morris R. Cohen, Reason and Law (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1950).

  28 Becker, Declaration of Independence, 277.

  29 Dershowitz, Blasphemy, 126.

  30 Jefferson, Opinion on French Treaties, April 28, 1793, in Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 7, 292. https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/804#Jefferson_0054-07_
619 (emph. added).

  31 Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), in Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 2, 87 (emph. added).

  32 Reconstruction of Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration, from Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, 243–47 (emph. in orig.).

  33 Section 1 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights adopted by the Virginia Constitutional Convention on June 12, 1776 (emph. added).

  34 Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, October 14, 1774, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/resolves.asp. Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States, ed. Charles C. Tansill (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1927), House doc. no. 398 (emph. added).

  35 Samuel Adams, “Massachusetts Circular Letter to the Colonial Legislatures, February 11, 1768,” http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/mass_circ_let_1768.asp (emph. added).

  36 See Stewart, Nature’s God, generally, and specifically 166–75.

  37 Ibid., 183.

  38 Thomas Paine, “Discourse,” delivered at the Society of Theophilanthropists, Paris, 1798, in The Theological Works of Thomas Paine (New York: George H. Evans, 1835), 198.

  39 Thomas Young, in Boston Evening Post, August 27, 1770; in Stewart, Nature’s God, 138.

  40 John Adams to Jefferson, September 13, 1813, in Works of John Adams, vol. 10, 66.

  41 Ibid., 67.

  42 Jefferson to John Adams, April 11, 1823, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 15, ed. Albert Ellery Bergh (Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Assoc., 1907), 428; see also https://perma.cc/5NN2-HM4E.

  43 Stewart, Nature’s God, 168, quoting François Garasse, La doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps (Paris: Sebastian Chappelet, 1623), 327, 675, 676.

  44 Stewart, Nature’s God, 168.

  45 Ibid., 172–73.

  46 Becker, Declaration of Independence, 51.

  47 See also Lambert, Founding Fathers, 167 (arguing that ‘Nature’s God’ is not the God of the New Testament); Allen Jayne, Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy, and Theology (Lexington, KY: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1998), 9–18 (arguing that natural law is based on enlightenment thinkers such as Locke and Bolingbroke whose ideas conflict with Judeo-Christian principles).

  48 See, e.g., Amy B. Wang, “Some Trump Supporters Thought NPR Tweeted ‘Propaganda.’ It was the Declaration of Independence,” Washington Post, July 5, 2017.

  49 Alan Keyes, interview by Sean Hannity: “It seems to me, either we’re going to believe Jefferson’s comments about we’re endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.” The Sean Hannity Show, August 27, 2003, on Fox News, http://www.keyesarchives.com/transcript.php?id=268.

  50 The Sean Hannity Show, April 8, 2009, on Fox News. Transcript by Christine Schwen, MediaMatters.org, “Fox News figures outraged over Obama’s ‘Christian nation’ comment,” April 9, 2009, https://perma.cc/9Y5E-5BXZ and https://perma.cc/CP8U-DJS6. See also The Sean Hannity Show, September 25, 2009, on Fox News, https://perma.cc/HLN9-N9Z9; and Hannity & Colmes, October 30, 2007, on Fox News, https://perma.cc/9LQJ-VA6V.

  51 On BillOreilly.com, his staff wrote a July 2, 2015, article, “Independence from God,” that ended: “The left’s utopia is a place Thomas Jefferson would find unrecognizable. A place where our Creator would be basically forgotten. On this Independence Day, keep in mind that our Founders truly believed independence is a gift to be cherished. A gift from our Creator. A gift from God” (emph. in orig.). See https://perma.cc/8LW9-PKKD.

  52 Mac Thornberry, of the Texas 13thh District, wrote: “‘Endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights’ – Our worth and our ‘rights’ come from our Creator – not from government, further establishing the foundational nature of the rights” (emph. in orig.) Mac Thornberry, “The Foundation: The Declaration of Independence,” on Thornberry’s House.gov website, http://thornberry.house.gov/biography/declarationofindependence.htm.

  53 Sen. Sam Brownback, remarks in the Congressional Record (Senate), 107th Congress, 2nd Sess., vol. 151, pt. 8 (June 26, 2002): 11550, “Our Declaration of Independence refers to God multiple times including saying that our certain unalienable rights are endowed by our Creator.”

  54 Lieberman repeatedly made this mistake during a 2008 address to Congress; see Congressional Record (Senate), vol. 154, pt. 10 (July 8, 2008): 14208–209; see also “Meet the Press with Tim Russert,” October 21, 2001, on NBC. Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman were guests along with Dr. Anthony Fauci; transcript at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/nbctext_102101.html.

  55 See, e.g., Ben Carson, who appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show and said, “Interestingly enough, if you look at our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, it talks about certain inalienable rights given to us by our Creator.” The O’Reilly Factor, “Impact Segment,” October 12, 2015, on Fox News, https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/the-far-left-attacking-ben-carsons-faith.

  56 See, e.g., Madison, “Memorial and Remonstrance,” ¶ 11.

  57 See, e.g., Mark Hulsether, Religion, Culture, and Politics in the Twentieth-Century United States (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2007), 41.

  58 See also Lambert, Founding Fathers, 282 (the nonsectarian nature of references leads to universal application).

  59 Marco Rubio, remarks, January 18, 2016, Waverly, Iowa. Video at https://youtu.be/gkP9RqPA2PQ.

  60 Rev. 2:26–28.

  61 Jefferson to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826, in Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 12, 477. (Original manuscript available at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/214.html. Capitalization and punctuation follow that original manuscript, not the letter in Works.)

  62 George Orwell, Animal Farm (London: Secker and Warburg, 1945).

  63 Jefferson to José Corrêa da Serra, April 11, 1820, FO-NA.

  64 Ibid.

  65 Madison, “Memorial and Remonstrance,” ¶ 8.

  66 Founders’ Constitution online, vol. 1, ch. 14, doc. 10, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch14s10.html (emph. added).

  67 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, query 18 (London: John Stockdale, 1787).

  68 John Jay, Federalist, no. 2.

  69 Founders’ Constitution, online, vol. 5, Bill of Rights, doc.2, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/bill_of_rightss2.html.

  70 Ibid., doc. 5.

  71 Ibid., doc. 6.

  72 For an excellent description of these documents and how they compare to the Declaration, see Pauline Maier American Scripture, Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 164–66.

  73 James Wilson, “Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament, 1774,” in Collected Works of James Wilson, vol. 1, ed. Kermit L. Hall and Mark David Hall, collected by Maynard Garrison (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007), 4, http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2072#Wilson_4140_84.

  74 The Constitutional Convention of 1787, vol. 1, 219. The top three speakers were: Gouverneur Morris (173 times), James Wilson (168 times), and James Madison (161 times).

  75 Wilson, Collected Works of James Wilson, 639.

  76 An earlier draft of this paragraph and some other ideas in this chapter became an op-ed for the Religion News Service. See, Seidel, “The Bill of Rights, Thomas Jefferson, and the Danger of ‘God-given Rights,’” Religion News Service, December 15, 2017, https://perma.cc/F5FX-U2GZ.

  77 Robert P. Jones and Daniel Cox, “Clinton Maintains Double-Digit Lead (51% vs. 36%) over Trump.” Public Religion Research Institute, October 19, 2016, https://perma.cc/J6H6-J55W.

  78 Robert P. Jones, “White Evangelical Support for Donald Trump at All-Time High,” Public Religion Research Institute onlinez, April 18, 2018, https://perma.cc/7GBG-PKDG.

  79 Jonathan Drew, “Franklin Graham Book Shares Lessons from ‘America’s Pastor,’” Associated Press, May 4, 2018, https://apnews.com/dbac992f2fab4266a4fc210416145200.
Graham said this in the video interview attached to the article but was not quoted in the text: https://youtu.be/F-oFJULEWxM.

  80 Franklin Graham, “Clinton’s Sins Aren’t Private,” Wall Street Journal, August 27, 1998.

  81 Thomas Paine, Common Sense, ed. Isaac Kramnick (London: Penguin Classics, 1976), 92.

  82 John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 132.

  83 Garry Wills, Inventing America, Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), xxiii.

  84 Steven Green, Inventing Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding (Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press, 2015), 169.

  85 Wilson Carey McWilliams, “The Bible in the American Political Tradition,” in Religion and Politics, ed. Myron J. Aronoff (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1984), 21.

  86 The original language that the House wanted included “so help me God” and another mention of a god. House Journal, 1st Congress, 1st Sess. (April 6, 1789): 7. But those two mentions did not make it into the final version. See final here: 1 Stat. 23 (1789), http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=001/llsl001.db&recNum=146.

  87 See Becker, Declaration of Independence, 197.

  88 Jefferson to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826, in Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 12, 477. (Original manuscript available at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/214.html. Capitalization and punctuation follow that manuscript, not the letter in Works.)

  89 William C. Kashatus, Historic Philadelphia: The City, Symbols & Patriots, 1681–1800 (Lanham, MD: Univ. Press of America, 1992), 98.

  Chapter 5 • Christian Settlements: Colonizing the Continent, not Building a Nation

  1 Ron Swanson, a character played by Nick Offerman on Parks & Recreation, in “London Part 1.” Directed by Dean Holland. Written by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur. NBC, September 26, 2013.