President George Washington stated in his First Annual Message, January 8, 1790: "To be prepared for War is the most effectual means of preserving peace."
Lucretia Mott stated: "The very first act of note that is mentioned when the disciples and apostles went forth ... Peter stood forth ... quoting the prophet Joel ... that 'the time is come, this day is fulfilled the prophecy, when it is said, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,' etc. -- the language of the Bible is beautiful in its repetition -- 'upon my servants and my handmaidens I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy.'Now can anything be clearer than that?"
Were the states that ratified the U.S. Constitution effectively "Christian" states?
The answer can be seen by examining the acknowledgements of religion in the state constitutions at the time those states debated and ratified the U.S. Constitution.
John F. Kennedy told Congress, April 20, 1961: "Introduced during the war when the income tax was extended to millions of new taxpayers, the wage-withholding system has been one of the most important and successful advances in our tax system in recent times ... Initial difficulties were quickly overcome, and the new system helped the taxpayer no less than the tax collector."
Democrat Senator Lyndon Johnson told Democrat Senator Richard Russell regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1957: "These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference."
