American Minute

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"Doctor Livingstone, I presume," was the greeting NOVEMBER 10, 1871, by New York Herald newspaper reporter Henry Stanley as he met David Livingstone on the banks of Lake Tanganyika. Livingstone, an internationally known missionary in Africa, had not been heard from in years and rumor was he had died. Stanley, a skeptic, set out to find him and write a story. He described Dr. Livingstone as: "A man who is manifestly sustained as well as guided by influences from Heaven... The...enthusiasm...of his life comes, beyond question, from Christ. There must, therefore, be a Christ." Trying to end slavery, and discovering the Zambezi River and Victoria Falls, Livingstone was so loved by Africans that when he died in 1873 by Lake Bangweulu, his followers buried his heart in Africa and sent his body, packed in salt, to England to be buried in Westminster Abbey. In his Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, 1857, Dr. David Livingstone wrote: "The perfect fullness with which the pardon of all our guilt is offered in God's Book, drew forth feelings of affectionate love to Him who bought us with His blood...A sense of deep obligation to Him for His mercy has influenced...my conduct ever since."

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The 11th hour of the 11TH DAY OF THE 11TH MONTH of 1918, World War I ended. Though the Armistice was signed at 5 a.m., fighting continued till 11 a.m., killing nearly 11,000 more men. In 1921, President Warren Harding had the remains of an unknown soldier killed in France buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery. Inscribed on the Tomb are the words: "Here lies in honored glory an American soldier know but to God." Armistice Day was changed to Veterans Day in 1954 to honor all U.S. Veterans. In 1958, President Eisenhower placed soldiers in the tomb from WWII and the Korean War. The soldier from Vietnam, buried by President Reagan in 1984, was identified by DNA tests as pilot Michael Blassie and was reburied in 1998 at Jefferson Memorial Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri. On NOVEMBER 11, 1921, President Harding stated: "On the threshold of eternity, many a soldier, I can well believe, wondered how his ebbing blood would color the stream of human life, flowing on after his sacrifice...I can sense the prayers of our people...Let me join in that prayer. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come..."

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Storms blew the Pilgrims too far north to be under Jamestown's government, so they created their own, the Mayflower Compact. It was the first constitution written in America. It began: "In ye name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyall subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord, King James, by ye grace of God, of Great Britaine, France, & Ireland king, defender of ye faith, etc., having undertaken, for ye glorie of God, and advancemente of ye Christian faith, and honour of our king & countrie, a voyage to plant ye first colonie in ye Northerne parts of Virginia," the Compact continued: "doe by these presents solemnly & mutually in ye presence of God, and one of another, covenant & combine our selves togeather into a civill body politick, for our better ordering & preservation & furtherance of ye ends aforesaid; and...to enacte...such just & equall lawes...as shall be thought most meete & convenient for ye generall good of ye Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience." The Mayflower Compact ended: "In witnes wherof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd ye 11 of NOVEMBER, Ano:Dom. 1620."

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The Vietnam War Memorial was dedicated NOVEMBER 13, 1982, honoring 58,000 American troops who died. U.S. forces inflicted over 1,000,000 enemy fatalities, yet politicians did not allow a victory. A former Communist North Vietnamese colonel, Bui Tin, called the American "peace movement" essential: "Every day our leadership would listen to the world news over the radio to follow the growth of the American anti-war movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses." In 1966, Marine Sergeant George Hutchings of 1 Battalion, 1 Marine Division, Charlie Company, had over two hundred men killed around him during an ambush by the Viet Cong. Months later, after numerous battles, he was shot three times, bayoneted and left for dead, for which he received the Purple Heart. Of the Vietnam Memorial, George Hutchings said: "On that wall is the name of Corporal Quinton Bice, who was hit in the chest with a rocket running a patrol in my place. A Christian, he had shared the Gospel with me, but I didn't understand it till he gave his life in my place."

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Born a slave, he taught himself to read, and attended school after working all day. At age 25 he founded Tuskegee Institute and recruited George Washington Carver. By his death, on NOVEMBER 14, 1915, Tuskegee had over 1,500 students. His name was Booker T. Washington, and he was the first African American to have his image on both a U.S. postage stamp and coin, and was elected to the Hall of Fame. In his book, Up From Slavery, 1901, Booker T. Washington wrote: "While a great deal of stress is laid upon the industrial side of the work at Tuskegee, we do not neglect or overlook in any degree the religious and spiritual side. The school is strictly undenominational, but it is thoroughly Christian, and the spiritual training of the students is not neglected. Our preaching service, prayer-meetings, Sunday-school, Christian Endeavour Society, Young Men's Christian Association, and various missionary organizations, testify to this." Booker T. Washington continued: "While the institution is in no sense denominational, we have a department known as the Phelps Hall Bible Training School, in which a number of students are prepared for the ministry and other forms of Christian work."

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He lost two sons in the Revolution, was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration and served on 120 Congressional Committees. His name was John Witherspoon, and he died NOVEMBER 15, 1794. Born in Scotland, a descendant of John Knox, he was President of Princeton, leader of a New Jersey committee to abolish slavery, and taught 9 of the writers of the U.S. Constitution, including James Madison. Other students became Vice-President, Supreme Court Justices, Cabinet Members, Governors, Senators and Congressmen. John Adams said Witherspoon was "A true son of liberty...but first, he was a son of the Cross." On May 17, 1776, the day Congress declared a Day of Fasting, Rev. Witherspoon told his Princeton students: "He is the best friend to American liberty, who is most...active in promoting true and undefiled religion...to bear down profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not to call him an enemy of his country. It is in the man of piety and inward principle that we may...find the uncorrupted patriot, the useful citizen, and the invincible soldier." John Witherspoon concluded: "God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable."

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"My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims' pride, From every mountainside, Let freedom ring!" This hymn was written by Samuel Francis Smith, who died NOVEMBER 16, 1895. A Harvard classmate of poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Smith went to Andover Theological Seminary and become a Baptist minister. A student in 1832, he admired a tune while translating a German Hymnal, the same tune used for British, Canadian, Russian, Danish, Swedish and Swiss National anthems. Smith stated: "I instantly felt the impulse to write a patriotic hymn of my own, adapted to the tune. Picking up a scrap of waste paper which lay near me, I wrote at once." In proclaiming "Let Freedom Ring Day," July 3, 1986, President Ronald Reagan recited the hymn's 4th stanza, stating: "As the golden glow of the Statue of Liberty's rekindled torch calls forth...throughout our land, let every American take it as a summons to rededication, recalling those words we sang as children: 'Our father's God, to Thee, Author of Liberty, To Thee we sing, Long may our land be bright With Freedom's Holy Light. Protect us by Thy might, Great God, Our King.'"

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"Bloody Mary," daughter of Henry VIII, sentenced 300 people to death during her 5 year reign. At her death, NOVEMBER 17, 1558, her half-sister Elizabeth became Queen. During Elizabeth's 45 year reign, Shakespeare wrote plays, Francis Bacon began the scientific revolution and Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to settle a colony in Virginia, which he named for the "Virgin Queen Elizabeth." When word came of a plot to assassinate her, Elizabeth executed dozens, including her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, who was mother of England's next monarch, King James I. Spain sent its Invincible Armada to conquer England, but Sir Francis Drake, aided by a hurricane, defeated them. The Anglican Church separated from Rome but retained many rituals, to which "Puritans" objected. At her Coronation in 1558, Queen Elizabeth stated: "Christ was the Word that spake it, He took the bread and brake it, And what that Word did make it, I do believe and take it." Of her epitaph, Elizabeth said: "I am no lover of pompous title, but only desire that my name may be recorded in a line or two, which shall express my name, my virginity, the years of my reign, and the reformation of religion under it."

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Julius Caesar Watts, Jr., better know as J.C., was born NOVEMBER 18, 1957. A college and pro football player, he was a youth minister and, in 1994, was elected to the U.S. Congress, where he was chosen House Conference Chairman. In response to the President's 1997 State of the Union Address, Congressman J.C. Watts stated: "I was taught to respect everyone for the simple reason that we're all God's children. I was taught, in the words of Martin Luther King, to judge a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. And I was taught that character is simply doing what's right when nobody's looking." Also on NOVEMBER 18, in the year 1886, President Chester Arthur died. The son of a Baptist minister from Ireland, Arthur became an abolitionist lawyer, defending the rights of African Americans, and, during the Civil War, was Inspector General. Upon the assassination of James Garfield, President Arthur wrote September 22, 1881: "The deep grief which fills all hearts should manifest itself with one accord toward the Throne of Infinite Grace...We should bow before the Almighty and seek from Him consolation in our affliction."

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NOVEMBER 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address where 50,000 soldiers were killed or wounded in a 3 day battle: "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." Lincoln went on: "We are met on a great battlefield...to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live...But...we cannot dedicate...this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it." Lincoln continued: "It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced...That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure." Lincoln ended: "That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

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On June 25, 1962, the Supreme Court stopped school prayer. Ronald Reagan said, March 6, 1984: "From the early days of the American colonies, prayer in schools was practiced and revered as an important tradition. Indeed, for nearly 2 centuries of our history it was considered a natural expression of our religious freedom. Then in 1962, the Supreme Court declared school prayer illegal." Reagan continued: "Well, I firmly believe the loving God who has blessed our land and made us a good caring people should never have been expelled from America's classrooms." Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, who was born NOVEMBER 20, 1917, agreed, stating: "In no other place in the United States are there so many...official evidences of...faith in God on the part of Government as there are in Washington...On the south banks of Washington's Tidal Basin, Jefferson still speaks: 'Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.'" Senator Byrd concluded: "Jefferson's words are a forceful and explicit warning that to remove God from this country will destroy it."

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French author Voltaire was born NOVEMBER 21, 1694. Yale president Timothy Dwight wrote of him in "Duty of Americans at the Present Crisis," July 4, 1798, published in Encyclopedia Britannica's Annals of America: "About the year 1728, Voltaire, so celebrated for his wit and brilliancy and not less distinguished for his hatred of Christianity and his abandonment of principle, formed a systematical design to destroy Christianity and to introduce in its stead a general diffusion of irreligion and atheism... The principal parts were...compilation of the Encyclopedia in which the doctrines Christian theology were rendered absurd... Overthrow religious orders...Fabrication of books against Christianity, such as excite doubt." Timothy Dwight continued: "Formation of a secret Academy of which Voltaire was the standing president and in which books were formed, altered, forged, imputed as posthumous to deceased writers of reputation." U.S. Congressman and New York advertising executive Bruce Barton wrote: "Voltaire spoke of the Bible as a short-lived book. He said that within a hundred years it would pass from common use. Not many people read Voltaire today, but his house has been packed with Bibles as a depot of a Bible society."

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Shots rang out as President John F. Kennedy was assassinated NOVEMBER 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. The youngest President ever elected, he was also the youngest to die, barely serving 1,000 days. The 46-year-old Kennedy was on his way to the Dallas Trade Mart to deliver a speech, in which he prepared to say: "We in this country, in this generation, are-by destiny rather than choice-the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of peace on earth, goodwill toward men." Kennedy continued: "That must always be our goal-and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago, 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.'" Just three weeks after his Inauguration, February 9, 1961, President Kennedy told a Breakfast for International Christian Leadership: "Every President of the United States has placed special reliance upon his faith in God...The guiding principle and prayer of this Nation has been, is now, and shall ever be 'In God We Trust.'"

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His only son, 11-year-old Bennie, was killed when their campaign train rolled off its tracks. This happened to 14th President Franklin Pierce, who was born NOVEMBER 23, 1804. Elected to Congress at age 29, he was a Senator at 33. He resigned, enlisted as an army private and was eventually promoted to brigadier general. His leg was crushed in the Battle of Churubusco in Mexico. He served under General Winfield Scott, whom he later ran against for President. Before he died, Franklin Pierce was baptized in St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Concord. He was friends with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was with him the night he died and wrote in a biography of Pierce: "Whether in sorrow or success he has learned...that religious faith is the most valuable...of human possessions... With this sense, there has come...a wide sympathy for the modes of Christian worship and a reverence for religious belief as a matter between the Deity and man's soul." President Frank Pierce said in his Inaugural, March 4, 1853: "It must be felt that there is no national security but in the nation's humble, acknowledged dependence upon God and His overruling providence."

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Sentenced as a galley slave on a French ship, he looked up as they passed St. Andrews, Scotland, and said: "I see the steeple of that place where God first in public opened my mouth to glory; and I am fully persuaded...I shall not depart this life till my tongue shall glorify his godly name in the same place." John Knox was released, met John Calvin, and returned to Scotland, where he confronted Mary, Queen of Scots, mother of England's King James I. In 1560, Knox led Scotland to establish the Presbyterian Church. Dying NOVEMBER 24, 1572, John Knox stated: "A man with God is always in the majority." A descendant, Rev. John Witherspoon, signed the Declaration and, as President of Princeton, taught James Madison. On May 26, 1789, Presbyterian Churches in the U.S. wrote to President Washington: "We...esteem it a peculiar happiness to behold in our Chief Magistrate, a steady, avowed friend of the Christian religion...who, in his private conduct, adorns the doctrines of the gospel of Christ." Washington replied, May 1789: "While I reiterate the professions of my dependence upon Heaven...I will observe that...no man who is profligate in his morals...can possibly be a true Christian."