Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall prayed: "May freedom be seen not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to please to do what is right. May it be ever understood that our liberty is under God and can be found nowhere else. May our faith be something that is not merely stamped upon our coins, but expressed in our lives."
In 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War, Julia Ward Howe traveled to Washington, D.C., and saw the city teeming with military, horses galloping all around and innumerable campfires burning. She wrote: "I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind ... "In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea; With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free."
In 1851, Maryland's Constitution was amended to allow Jews to hold public office: "ARTICLE 34. That no other test or qualification ought to be required ... than such oath of office as may be prescribed by this Constitution ... and a declaration of belief in the CHRISTIAN RELIGION; and if the party shall profess to be a JEW, the declaration shall be of his belief in A FUTURE STATE OF REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS."
Kennedy was on his way to the Dallas Trade Mart to deliver a speech, in which he had prepared to say: "We in this country, in this generation, are - by destiny rather than choice - the watchmen on the walls of world freedom."
Sepúlveda argued that Indians were less than human and therefore it was justified to enslave them. Las Casas, on the other hand,defended the Indians, explaining that all lives matter, irregardless of race. That Indians were fully human, created in the image of God, and therefore should never be enslaved.
