Noah Webster (1758-1843). famous as “America’s Schoolmaster” spoke on July 4th 1798. He said the following.
Twenty and two years are completed since the fathers of our empire – appealing to God and the impartial world for the purity of their motives — rent asunder the ands that connected the English colonies with their Mother Country and declared them an INDEPENDENT NATION…
To a man who believes in the superintendence of Divine Providence over the affairs of this globe, the settlement of American by a civilized people and the establishment of a free government unfold a most splendid and consoling prospect. Secluded as America has been from a knowledge of the Europeans till a late period of the world may we not consider it as reserved by Heaven for the theater of important events or as the asylum of persecuted freedom and religion?
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After Europe shall have been scourged with the despotism in every shape — the despotism of kings and of mobs, of hierarchies, of atheists, of visionary theorists, of armies by land and pirates by seas – after the half of her people have been sacrificed to the ambition of men under the different covers of crowns and liberty caps — the survivors, weary of eternal discord, of error, of faction, of the persecution of princes and private clubs, of war, assassination, and personal danger (the inevitable fruits of atheism and chimerical systems of government) will recover from their delusion and seek a shelter from their miseries under well tempered forms of government analogous to that of the United Stated, and under the benign influence of that rational system of religion which is the only sure basis of private happiness and public prosperity.
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May the illustrious example of the conductors of the American Revolution be sacred to imitation in every period of our history!
Never, my fellow citizens, let us exchange our civil and religious institution for the wild theories of crazy projectors — or the sober, industrious, moral habits of our country for experiments in atheism and lawless democracy…