What They Said

"If we and our posterity shall be true to the Christian religion, if we and they shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect his commandments, if we and they shall maintain just moral sentiments, and such convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life, we have the highest hopes for the future of our country; and if we maintain those institutions of Government and political union, exceeding all praise, as much as it exceeds all former examples of political association, we may be sure of one thing, that while our country furnishes materials for a thousand masters of the Historic Art, it will afford no topic for a Gibbon. It will have no decline and fall; it will go on prospering and to prosper. But if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution, which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity. “

Daniel Webster

"Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion.  They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope.  They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political or literary.  Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely; in the full conviction, that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity."

Daniel Webster

"Let us never forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. Man may be civilized, in some degree, without great progress in manufactures and with little commerce with his distant neighbors. But without the cultivation of the earth, he is, in all countries, a savage. Until he gives up the chase, and fixes himself in some place and seeks a living from the earth, he is a roaming barbarian.When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization."

Daniel Webster