American Quotations by William J. Federer 2024

Edmund Jennings Randolph (August 10, 1753-September 13, 1813) was an American Revolutionary leader. He was a member of the Continental Congress and delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He was the Governor of Virginia, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Secretary of State. On June 28, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, following the historical address and appeal for prayer by Dr. Benjamin Franklin (which ended the heated debates over state representation), Edmund Jennings Randolph of Virginia proposed: <That a sermon be preached at the request of the convention on the 4th of July, the anniversary of Independence; & thenceforward prayers...

William Linn (1752-1808) was elected on May 1, 1789, as the first Chaplain of U.S. House of Representatives and given a salary of $500 from the Federal Treasury. In 1772, William Linn graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and was ordained by the Donegal Presbytery in 1775. Linn served as a chaplain during the American Revolutionary War and was pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Big Springs, Pennsylvania. William Linn moved to Maryland to be principal of the Washington Academy. In 1787, William Linn was appointed a trustee of Queen's College. He became the second President...

Liberty Bell (August 1752) was cast in England by an order of the Pennsylvania Assembly to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the colony's existence. Founded in 1701, when William Penn wrote the Charter of Privileges, the colony's Assembly declared a "Year of Jubilee" in 1751, and commissioned a bell to be put in the Philadelphia State House. The Liberty Bell got its name from being rung at the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, July 8, 1776, and it cracked as it was rung at the funeral for Chief Justice John Marshall, 1835. Isaac Norris, the Speaker of...

Timothy Dwight (May 14, 1752-January 11, 1817) was an American educator and author. He was the president of Yale, 1795-1817. He was the grandson of Princeton president Jonathan Edwards, who started the Great Awakening Revival, which helped unite the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War. Timothy Dwight could read at age 4 and entered Yale at 13. He was a chaplain in the Continental Army until his father died, when, as the eldest of 13, he worked the family farm to pay off debts. He served in Massachusetts' first State Legislature. Timothy Dwight was Yale's 4th president. In 22 years...

Gouverneur Morris (January 31, 1752-November 6, 1816) was an attorney, politician, soldier and diplomat. He penned the final draft of the Constitution of the United States, being the head of the Committee on Style, and was the originator of the phrase "We the people of the United States." He was 35 years old when he served as one of the members of the Continental Congress, and he spoke 173 times during the Constitutional debates (more than any other delegate). He was the first U.S. Minister to France, a U.S. Senator, and helped to write the New York Constitution. A graduate...