American Minute

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Just 70 miles from Washington, DC, the Battle of Antietam took place on September 17, 1862, the single bloodiest day in the Civil War - the North and South each with over 10,000 men killed or wounded. This costly battle caused the British and French to not to recognize the Confederacy. A week later, President Lincoln announced he would issue an Emancipation Proclamation, effective January 1. Three weeks after the battle, OCTOBER 6, 1862, President Lincoln met with Eliza Gurney and three other Quakers, saying: "We are indeed going through a great trial...In the very responsible position in which I happen to be placed, being a humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly Father...as we all are, to work out His great purposes." Lincoln continued: "But if, after endeavoring to do my best in the light which He affords me, I find my efforts fail, I must believe that for some purpose unknown to me, He wills it otherwise...If I had been allowed my way, this war would have ended before this. But we find it still continues; and we must believe that He permits it for some wise purpose of His own, mysterious and unknown to us." Lincoln concluded: "We cannot but believe, that He who made the world still governs it."

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Henry Melchior Muhlenberg died OCTOBER 7, 1787. One of the founders of the Lutheran Church in America, his son John Peter was a pastor promoted to Major-General in the Continental Army, then elected to Congress. Another son, Frederick, was a pastor who became the first Speaker of the House. Both sons served in the first U.S. Congress and passed the First Amendment. Henry Muhlenberg pastored the German congregations near Valley Forge during the Revolution. In The Notebook of a Colonial Clergyman, Henry Muhlenberg wrote: "I heard a fine example today, namely that His Excellency General Washington rode around among his army yesterday and admonished each to fear God, to put away wickedness...and to practice Christian virtues." Rev. Muhlenberg continued: "From all appearances General Washington does not belong to the so-called world of society, for he respects God's Word, believes in the atonement through Christ, and bears himself in humility and gentleness. Therefore, the Lord God has also singularly, yea, marvelously preserved him from harm in the midst of countless perils, ambuscades, fatigues, etc., and has hitherto graciously held him in his hand as a chosen vessel."

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A race car driver, he served in France during World War I as chauffeur for General Pershing. With Germany's Red Baron dominating the skies, he transferred to the 94 Aero Squadron, which shot down 69 enemy aircraft and earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor. His name was "Eddie" Rickenbacker, born OCTOBER 8, 1890. After becoming owner of Indianapolis Speedway and Eastern Airlines, he was asked by the Secretary of War in 1942 to inspect bases in the Pacific. With inadequate navigational equipment, their pilot flew hundreds of miles off-course, ran out of fuel, and ditched in the ocean. The oldest among them, 52 years old, Rickenbacker encouraged the other six for 24 days as they drifted. He once caught a sea gull that landed on his head, which he caught for food and bait, using a bent key ring as a fishing hook. Fighting off sharks and ocean swells two-feet high, they drank water wrung from their clothes from infrequent drizzles. In his book, "The Flying Circus," Eddie Rickenbacker recounted: "I am not such an egotist as to believe that God has spared me because I am I. I believe there is work for me to do and that I am spared to do it, just as you are."

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Lewis Cass was born OCTOBER 9, 1782. A Brigadier-General in the War of 1812, he was Governor of the Michigan Territory where he made Indian treaties, organized townships and built roads. Appointed Secretary of War by President Andrew Jackson, he was a Senator, Secretary of State for President Buchanan and the 1848 Democrat Presidential Candidate. The State of Michigan placed his statue in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall. Lewis Cass stated: "Independent of its connection with human destiny hereafter, the fate of republican government is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the Christian religion, and a people who reject its holy faith will find themselves the slaves of their own evil passions and of arbitrary power." From Washington, D.C., 1846, Cass wrote: "God, in His providence, has given us a Book of His revealed will...to teach us what we ought to do here, and what we shall be hereafter." In a Eulogy for Daniel Webster, December 14, 1852, Lewis Cass stated: "He died in the faith of the Christian - humble, but hopeful - adding another to the long list of eminent men who have searched the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and have found it to be the word and the will of God."

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Marco Polo traveled in 1271 to meet Kublai Khan, grandson of Ghengis Khan, Emperor of China, Korea, North India, Persia, Russia and Hungary. The Emperor had requested Christian teachers, but the two preaching friars sent by Pope Gregory turned back in fear. Polo was employed by Kublai Khan as an envoy for 24 years. Returning to Italy, he was captured at Genoa, where he dictated his travels. In 1492, Genoa born Christopher Columbus wrote to the King and Queen of Spain: "Concerning the lands of India, and a Prince called Gran Khan...how many times he sent to Rome to seek doctors in our Holy Faith to instruct him and that never had the Holy Father provided them...Your Highnesses...devoted to the Holy Christian Faith...resolved to send me...to the said regions of India, to see the said princes...and the manner in which may be undertaken their conversion to our Holy Faith." On OCTOBER 10, 1492, Columbus wrote in his Journal: "Here the people could stand it no longer and complained of the long voyage...but the Admiral...added that it was useless to complain. He had come to the Indies, and so had to continue until he found them, with the help of Our Lord."

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On OCTOBER 11, 1798, President John Adams wrote to the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Division of the Militia of Massachusetts: "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." Adams continued: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." British Statesman Edmund Burke told the National Assembly, 1791: "What is liberty without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils...madness without restraint. Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites." Edmund Burke continued: "Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without." U.S. Speaker of the House Robert Winthrop stated on May 28, 1849: "Men, in a word, must be controlled either by a power within them, or a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet."

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When Muslim Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453, trade was cut with India and China, so Europeans tried other routes. During Portugal's golden age of sea power, Columbus sailed down the African coast and north to Iceland, hearing stories of Irish monk St. Brendan sailing in 530 AD to "The Land of the Promised Saints which God will give us on the last day," and Columbus heard of Leif Erickson's voyage in 1000 AD to Vinland. Columbus read 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy's Guide to Geography, where a spherical earth had one ocean connecting Europe and Asia. Columbus corresponded with Florentine physician Toscanelli, who suggested China was 5,000 miles west of Portugal. On OCTOBER 12, 1492, Columbus sighted what he thought was India. He imagined Haiti was Japan and Cuba the tip of China. Naming the first island "San Salvador" or "Holy Savior," he wrote of the inhabitants "So that they might be well-disposed towards us, for I knew that they were a people to be...converted to our Holy Faith rather by love than by force, I gave to some red caps and to others glass beads...They became so entirely our friends that...I believe that they would easily be made Christians."

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Margaret Thatcher was born OCTOBER 13, 1925. She was the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. While traveling through New York City in 1996, Margaret Thatcher had an interview with Joseph A. Cannon, which was printed in Human Events. She stated: "The Decalogue-Ten Commandments-are addressed to each and every person. This is the origin of our common humanity and of the sanctity of the individual. Each one has a duty to try to carry out those commandments. You don't get that in any other political creed...It is personal liberty with personal responsibility." Margaret Thatcher continued: "Responsibility to your parents, to your children, to your God. This really binds us together in a way that nothing else does. If you accept freedom, you've got to have principles about the responsibility. You can't do this without a biblical foundation." Margaret Thatcher concluded: "Your Founding Fathers came over with that. They came over with the doctrines of the New Testament as well as the Old. They looked after one another, not only as a matter of necessity, but as a matter of duty to their God. There is no other country in the world which started that way."

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He was the son of the British Navy Admiral who not only captured Jamaica in 1655, but established England as a global sea power during the First Dutch Wars. He was expelled from Oxford for having religious meetings in his dorm room rather than going to the Anglican chapel. At age 24, he converted to the Society of Friends, or Quakers, and wrote the "The Sandy Foundation Shaken," for which he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for 8 months. His name was William Penn, born OCTOBER 14, 1644. While in prison, William Penn wrote his classic book, "No Cross, No Crown," stating: "Christ's cross is Christ's way to Christ's crown...The unmortified Christian and the heathen are of the same religion, and the deity they truly worship is the god of this world." William Penn continued: "It is a false notion that they may be children of God while in a state of disobedience to his holy commandments, and disciples of Jesus though they revolt from his cross." King Charles II repaid a debt owed to his father by giving Penn a land grant in America, named Pennsylvania. Penn's "Frame of Government" for his Colony became a model, not only for most State governments, but also for the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

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The U.S. Senate confirmed Clarence Thomas as a Justice on the Supreme Court on OCTOBER 15, 1991. When questioned by Senator Thurmond on judicial activism during the hearings, Clarence Thomas stated: "The role of a judge is a limited one. It is to...interpret the Constitution, where called upon, but at no point to impose his or her will or...opinion in that process." On OCTOBER 15, 1788, James Madison wrote: "As the courts are generally the last in making the decision, it results to them, by refusing or not refusing to execute a law, to stamp it with its final character. This makes the Judiciary department paramount in fact to the Legislature, which was never intended and can never be proper." Jefferson wrote September 11, 1804: "The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional...not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature and executive...would make the judiciary a despotic branch." Abraham Lincoln stated March 4, 1861: "If the policy of the Government upon vital questions...is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers."

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In 1746, French Duke of d'Anville sailed for New England, commanding the most powerful fleet of its time-70 ships with 13,000 troops. He intended to recapture Louisburg, Nova Scotia, and destroy Boston and New York, down to Georgia. Massachusetts Governor William Shirley declared OCTOBER 16, 1746, a Day of Fasting to pray for deliverance. In Boston's Old South Meeting-house, Rev. Thomas Prince prayed "Send Thy tempest, Lord, upon the water...scatter the ships of our tormentors!" Historian Catherine Drinker Bowen related as he finished, the sky darkened, winds shrieked, and church bells rang "a wild, uneven sound...though no man was in the steeple." A hurricane sank and scattered the French ships. With 4,000 ill and 2,000 dead, including d'Anville, Vice-Admiral d'Estournelle threw himself on his sword. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a Ballad of the French Fleet: "Admiral d'Anville had sworn by cross and crown, to ravage with fire and steel our helpless Boston Town...From mouth to mouth spread tidings of dismay, I stood in the Old South saying humbly: 'Let us pray!'..Like a potter's vessel broke, the great ships of the line, were carried away as smoke or sank in the brine."

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Her beautiful, long hair was scalped off her head by Indians after she was shot. This was the fate of Jane McCrea, whose loyalist fiancé, David Jones, had joined "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne, the British General marching with five thousand troops from Canada to Albany, New York. Capturing Fort Ticonderoga, Burgoyne headed down the Hudson River Valley, making a treaty with the Mohawk Tribe to terrorize American settlements. When Indians returned with a scalp of long hair, David Jones recognized it as his fiancée's. The resulting outrage forced Burgoyne to tell the Indians to show restraint. Insulted, the Indians left Burgoyne stranded deep in the forest. Jane McCrea's death, later immortalized in James Fenimore Cooper's novel, "The Last of the Mohicans," rallied Americans and resulted in General Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga. News of his surrender on OCTOBER 17, 1777, convinced France to join the War. Considered one of the most important battles in world history, General George Washington wrote to his brother John Augustine the next day: "I most devoutly congratulate my country, and every well-wisher to the cause, on this signal stroke of Providence."

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The only Pilgrim to have a portrait, Edward Winslow was born OCTOBER 18, 1595. He joined the Separatists, a persecuted Christian group in Leyden, Holland. There, he and William Brewster printed illegal religious pamphlets which were smuggled back into England. After many hard years, at age 25, Winslow departed with 102 Pilgrims to the New World. In 1622, he cured Indian chief Massaoit of a sickness, resulting in a 50 year peace. Three times Governor of the Plymouth Colony, Edward Winslow kept the finances and often sailed to England for legal and business purposes, bringing back the colony's first cattle. For 17 weeks Anglican Bishop William Laud had him jailed. Edward Winslow served in Oliver Cromwell's army during the English Civil War and sailed with Admiral Sir William Penn, father of Pennsylvania's founder, to capture Hispaniola from Spain. After defeat at Santo Domingo, Winslow died of a fever on the way to Jamaica, which Penn captured. In Young's Chronicles, Edward Winslow wrote of the Pilgrims: "Drought and the like...moved not only every good man privately to enter into examination with his own estate between God...but also to humble ourselves together before the Lord by fasting."

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British General Henry Clinton ordered General Cornwallis to move 8,000 troops to a defensive position where the York River enters Chesapeake Bay. French General Rochambeau's 6,000 troops joined General Washington in a hurried march to trap Cornwallis. French Admiral de Grasse left off fighting the British in the West Indies and sailed 24 ships to the mouth of Chesapeake Bay where, in the Battle of the Capes, he drove off 19 British ships, ending Cornwallis escape. De Grasse's 3,000 French troops then combined with General Lafayette's division, which was joined by troops of Generals Benjamin Lincoln, Baron von Steuben, Modrecai Gist, Henry Knox and John Peter Muhlenberg. All combined, 17,000 French and American troops surrounded Cornwallis and he surrendered OCTOBER 19, 1781. General Washington wrote: "To diffuse the general Joy through every Breast the General orders...Divine Service to be performed tomorrow in the several Brigades...The Commander-in-Chief earnestly recommends troops not on duty should universally attend with that gratitude of heart which the recognition of such astonishing Interposition of Providence demands."

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He coordinated relief to millions when the Mississippi River levees broke during the 1927 floods, and organized feeding 300 million in 21 countries of Europe and Russia following World War I. His entire life he refused payment for public service. In 1928 he was elected 31st U.S. President by one of the largest margins. This was Herbert Hoover, who died OCTOBER 20, 1964. Born in 1874, his Quaker mother taught Sunday School and spoke at Friend's meetings before dying when he was ten. He lived on an Indian Reservation in Oklahoma before moving to Oregon. He worked his way through Stanford University doing laundry, delivering papers and working for the U.S. Geological Survey. He served under Presidents Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Truman and Eisenhower. During World War II, in a statement with the widows of Presidents Coolidge, T. Roosevelt, Taft, Harrison, Cleveland, Herbert Hoover stated: "We must seek revival of our strength in the spiritual foundations which are the bedrock of our republic. Democracy is the outgrowth of the religious conviction of the sacredness of every human life. On the religious side, its highest embodiment is The Bible; on the political side, the Constitution."