American Enterprise Institute

Religion and the American Revolution

Founded in Revelation, and in Reason Too Notes

  1. National Archives, “Lee Resolution (1776),” https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/lee-resolution.
  2. John Adams, “[In Congress, May–July 1776],” Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/01-03-02-0016-0029.
  3. Abraham Lincoln, “Letter to Henry L. Pierce and Others,” April 6, 1859, https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/pierce.htm.
  4. Adams, “[In Congress, May–July 1776].”
  5. “Account of the Trumbull Gallery of Paintings in Yale College, City of New Haven,” The American Journal of Science and Arts 39, no. 2 (1840): 227, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/54155.
  6. John Adams to John Trumbull, Founders Online, March 18, 1817, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6730.
  7. Thomas Jefferson to John Trumbull, November 11, 1818, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. James P. McClure and J. Jefferson Looney, https://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-03-13-02-0350.
  8. Paul Staiti, Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution Through Painters’ Eyes (Bloomsbury, 2016), 210.
  9. David McCullough, “An Icon’s Secret,” The Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2007, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118315984315553633.
  10. Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (Vintage Books, 2002).
  11. Staiti, Of Arms and Artists.
  12. Richard A. Samuelson, “What Adams Saw over Jefferson’s Wall,” Commentary, August 1997, https://www.commentary.org/articles/richard-samuelson/what-adams-saw-over-jeffersons-wall/.
  13. John Adams to Massachusetts Militia, Founders Online, October 11, 1798, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102.
  14. Thomas Jefferson, “II. The Response, 12 February 1790,” Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-16-02-0094-0003.
  15. Thomas Jefferson to Charles Clay, Founders Online, January 29, 1815, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-08-02-0181.
  16. Gordon S. Wood, Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (Penguin Books, 2017), 16.
  17. Thomas Jefferson, “Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, [31 October] 1785,” Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-08-02-0206.
  18. Wood, Friends Divided, 376.
  19. Thomas Jefferson to William Short, August 4, 1820, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Albert Ellery Bergh (Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1907), 15:260–61, https://archive.org/stream/writingsofthomas1516jeff/.
  20. Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Founders Online, October 12, 1813, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0431.
  21. John Adams to François Adriaan Van der Kemp, Founders Online, February 16, 1809, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5302.
  22. John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, Founders Online, November 14, 1813, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6196.
  23. John Adams, “III. ‘A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law,’ No. 1, 12 August 1765,” Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-01-02-0052-0004.
  24. Adams, “III. ‘A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law.’”
  25. John Adams, “IV. ‘A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law,’ No. 2, 19 August 1765,” Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-01-02-0052-0005.
  26. John Adams, “V. ‘A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law,’ No. 3, 30 September 1765,” Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-01-02-0052-0006.
  27. John Adams, “[February 1765] [from the Diary of John Adams],” Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/01-01-02-0009-0002.
  28. John Adams to Abigail Adams, Founders Online, September 16, 1774, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0101.
  29. Michael Novak, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding (Encounter, 2002), 7.
  30. Novak, On Two Wings, 9, 12.
  31. Richard Niebuhr, “The Idea of Covenant and American Democracy,” Church History 23, no. 2 (1954): 126–35, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3161485.
  32. Jonathan Sacks, The Home We Build Together: Recreating Democracy (Continuum, 2008).
  33. Wood, Friends Divided, 92.
  34. Thomas Jefferson, “A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffsumm.asp.
  35. Wood, Friends Divided, 92.
  36. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (London, 1788), § 49, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7370/7370-h/7370-h.htm.
  37. Thomas Jefferson, “III. Jefferson’s ‘Original Rough Draught’ of the Declaration of Independence, 11 June–4 July 1776,” Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0176-0004.
  38. Thomas Jefferson, “A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress Assembled,” quoted in Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922), 183–84.
  39. Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (Vintage Books, 1998), 148–49.
  40. John Adams to Abigail Adams, Founders Online, July 3, 1776, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-02-02-0015.
  41. John Adams, Discourses on Davila; A Series of Papers on Political History, in The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), 6:281.
  42. Thomas Jefferson to William Short, Founders Online, January 3, 1793, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-25-02-0016.
  43. Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, Founders Online, May 5, 1793, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-25-02-0603.
  44. Jonathan Sacks, The Jonathan Sacks Haggadah (Maggid, 2013).
  45. Quoted in Staiti, Of Arms and Artists, 174.
  46. John Trumbull, Autobiography, Reminiscences and Letters of John Trumbull, from 1756 to 1841 (Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 169–70.
  47. Trumbull, Autobiography, 352.
  48. Trumbull, Autobiography, 170–71.
  49. Trumbull, Autobiography, 171.
  50. Trumbull, Autobiography, 172.
  51. Novak, On Two Wings, 10.
  52. Lincoln, “Letter to Henry L. Pierce and Others.”
  53. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Chicago, Illinois,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, July 10, 1858, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:526?rgn=div1;view=fulltext.
  54. Wood, Friends Divided, 433.
  55. Paul Johnson, “An Almost-Chosen People,” First Things, June 2006, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2006/06/an-almost-chosen-people.
  56. Edmund Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts (Ticknor and Fields, 1867), 371.
  57. Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” speech, Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC, August 28, 1963, https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety.
  58. Steven L. Carter, Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy (Harper Perennial, 1998), 30–31.