American Quotations by William J. Federer 2024

Benjamin Harrison (August 20, 1833-March 13, 1901) was the 23rd President of the United States, 1889-93. He married Mary Scott Lord Dimmick in 1896, after the death of his first wife. He was a U.S. Senator, 1881-87; Chairman of the Indiana delegations to the Republican National Conventions, 1880, 1884; member of the Mississippi River Commission, 1879, appointed by President Hayes. During the Civil War, he was a Brigadier General, 1865, during the Civil War; Colonel of the 70th Regiment of Indiana Volunteers, 1862, taking part in the Atlanta campaign with General Sherman; appointed elder of the Presbyterian Church, 1861; Indiana State...

John Marshall Harlan (June 1, 1833-October 14, 1911) was a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 1877-1911, and Union Colonel during the Civil War. He is distinguished for opposing Southern segregation laws, being the only dissenter in the infamous Civil Rights Cases (1883), and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Harlan was the first Supreme Court justice to have earned a modern law degree, and the only one to have a descendent sit on the Court. Justice John Marshall Harlan was a devoted member of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, serving as Elder or Trustee from 1900-1911. He founded and presided over the...

Nez Perces and Flathead Indians (1831) visited St. Louis, Missouri. Wyandot Indian chief, William Walker (1800-1874) wrote a letter, January 19, 1833, documenting the visit of the four Indians, identifying them as being one of the Flathead tribe and three of the Nez Perces tribe. They had traveled 3,000 miles to St. Louis, Missouri, and met with Territorial Governor William Clark (1770-1838) of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1805-1806, and Catholic Bishop Joseph Rosati (1789-1843), because they heard: <The white people away toward the rising sun had been put in possession of the true mode of worshiping the Great Spirit; they...

George Eugene Belknap (January 22, 1832-April 7, 1903) was a U.S. Navy Commodore, 1885; and Rear Admiral, 1889. He declared: <No nation can materially enlarge her borders and rise to great ascendancy except on the basis of Christianity and its revealed Word. In such ferment of unrest, such tumult of change, the old religions will surely give way to the power of the Cross. The Light of the World will irradiate those fair lands. The utterly indifferent temperature of the Chinese conduces to this ambition of Japan, and so surely as she accomplishes her lofty ambition, so surely will the Cross of...

Delaware Constitution (1831): <BILL OF RIGHTS, ARTICLE I, SECTION 1. Although it is the duty of all men frequently to assemble together for the public worship of Almighty God; and piety and morality, on which the prosperity of communities depends, are hereby promoted; yet no man shall or ought to be compelled to attend any religious worship, to contribute to the erection or support of any place of worship, or to the maintenance of any Ministry, against his own free will and consent; and no power shall or ought to be vested in or assumed by any magistrate that shall...