"HISTORY SPEAKS" BLOG
Rome didn’t fall in a day. That’s a historical myth.
On September 4, A.D. 476, the Western Roman Empire came to an end. At least that’s the date historians eventually put on the tombstone.
The strange thing is that most Romans probably didn’t realize anything momentous had happened.
A Germanic military commander named Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus, the young man conventionally remembered as the last Western Roman emperor. But Rome didn’t disappear. Senators still met, laws still ruled, taxes still were due, merchants still sold their goods, and ordinary people still worried about tomorrow. Even the Roman Empire itself wasn’t entirely gone. Its eastern half, governed from Constantinople, would survive for nearly another thousand years.
That’s what makes the fall of Rome so fascinating—and unsettling. Rome didn’t collapse like a building demolished with dynamite.
It deteriorated over generations, slowly enough that people learned to live with each new crack in the foundation.
What shocked one generation became familiar to the next. Political instability was routine. Economic troubles were common. Violence happened every day. Government dysfunction became normal. Eventually, people could inhabit what was still called “Rome” without realizing how profoundly different it had become from the Rome their ancestors had known.
Edward Gibbon understood the paradox. His monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire began appearing in 1776, remarkably, the same year another civilization declared its independence across the Atlantic. Looking backward at Rome, Gibbon concluded that its spectacular success eventually contributed to its weakness: “Prosperity ripened the principle of decay.” As Rome expanded, he argued, “the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest” until “the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.”[1]
“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.” –Will Durant[2]
That doesn’t mean America is Rome. We aren’t. Two thousand years separate dramatically different civilizations, governments, economies, religions, and technologies. But Rome still matters because technology changes much faster than human nature. Ambition, greed, corruption, political hatred, fear, luxury, debt, demagoguery and the temptation to exchange liberty for security aren’t uniquely Roman problems. They belong to us too.
And America’s Founders knew it.
The Founders knew Rome’s warning.
The generation that created the United States was steeped in classical history. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and their contemporaries read the histories and political writings of Greece and Rome because the ancient world offered something extraordinarily valuable: centuries of evidence about how republics succeed—and how they fail.
That’s why America’s political vocabulary sounds surprisingly Roman. We have a Senate. Congress meets on Capitol Hill. The Founding generation spoke repeatedly about republican virtue, civic responsibility, and public character. George Washington was famously compared to Cincinnatus, the Roman statesman who accepted extraordinary power during a national emergency and then voluntarily surrendered it.
The Founders admired Rome’s achievements, but Rome’s failure interested them just as much.
The Roman Republic endured for centuries before descending into political violence, civil war, and, eventually, autocratic rule.
If that could happen to Rome, why couldn’t it happen here?
John Adams was asking that question before America officially existed. In January 1776, six months before the Declaration of Independence, he wrote Mercy Otis Warren that “Virtue and Simplicity of Manners, are indispensably necessary in a Republic.” Yet Adams was troubled by what he already observed among his fellow Americans: “Venality and Corruption,” “Avarice and Ambition,” and a “Rage for Profit.” His conclusion was startling: “I sometimes doubt whether there is public Virtue enough to Support a Republic.”[3]
America hadn’t even been born, and Adams was already worried about its old age.
Rome Fell Long Before We Think
If we want to understand Rome’s collapse, A.D. 476 is actually much too late to begin. We need to travel backward more than six centuries to 133 B.C., when a Roman politician named Tiberius Gracchus proposed sweeping land reforms intended to address growing economic inequality and the concentration of public land.
His proposals were controversial, and his methods were strange. Gracchus’s opponents grew furious. None of that was particularly unusual in Roman politics.
What happened next was.
During a political confrontation near the Capitol, Tiberius and many of his supporters were beaten to death. Ancient accounts say his body was thrown into the Tiber River. Roughly a decade later, his younger brother Gaius pursued another ambitious reform agenda, encountered equally fierce opposition, and also died amid political violence.
Something important had changed. Romans had always disagreed, argued, and fought politically, but increasingly their opponents weren’t merely wrong. They were becoming enemies.
Once political violence became an acceptable means of solving political problems, Rome discovered how difficult it was to put that weapon away.
When the unthinkable becomes possible.
Several decades later, the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla crossed another line. Roman armies traditionally served the Republic, but military loyalty was becoming increasingly personal. Soldiers depended upon successful generals for rewards, advancement, and sometimes land, giving ambitious commanders enormous political leverage.
Sulla exploited it.
In 88 B.C., he marched Roman soldiers across the Rubicon into Rome. Think about it. A Roman army entered the Roman capital to settle a Roman political dispute.
It was terrifying and breathtaking.
Sulla eventually seized power, destroyed political enemies, and ruled as dictator. His infamous proscriptions publicly identified men who could be killed while their property was confiscated. Then, remarkably, Sulla eventually relinquished power and retired.
But the precedent didn’t retire with him.
Once somebody demonstrates that the unthinkable can be done, it becomes considerably easier for someone else to do it again.
George Washington understood that danger. In his Farewell Address, he warned that even when an unconstitutional exercise of power appears temporarily useful, “the precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit.”[4]
Rome would prove his point.
And then came the Caesar
After Sulla came Pompey, Crassus and Julius Caesar. The Republic still looked healthy from a distance. The Senate still debated issues. Elections were still held. Judges continued to hold court. But the political culture underneath those institutions was deteriorating. Factions drew their lines. Personal ambition increasingly overrode constitutional restraint. Each side justified its extraordinary behavior by pointing to what the other side had already done. Sound familiar? Nothing really changes.
Then, in 49 B.C., Julius Caesar reached the Rubicon River.
Bringing his provincial army across that boundary into Italy was forbidden. Caesar crossed anyway, launching another civil war. After defeating his enemies, he accumulated extraordinary political authority. That is, until senators assassinated him on March 15, 44 B.C.
The assassins apparently believed they were saving the Republic. Instead, they accelerated its death.
More civil wars followed until Caesar’s adopted heir Octavian defeated his rivals and eventually became Augustus, Rome’s first emperor.
Yet Augustus didn’t abolish every republican institution. He kept the Senate. Magistrates also remained. Republican titles and ceremonies survived the transition.
Rome still looked like a republic, but in reality it wasn’t.
That’s an important distinction. A political system can retain its buildings, titles, elections, laws and traditions while something fundamental changes beneath them. The architecture survives even as the character of the government changes.
How Republics really die.
Will Durant observed that Roman patriotism had once been formed through “the home, the school, the temple, the army, the Assembly, and the Senate.” Rome wasn’t merely territory controlled by a government. It was a civilization that deliberately taught the Romans what it meant to be Roman.
Durant then summarized the transformation in one sentence: “Devotion to the state marked the zenith of the Republic, as unparalleled political corruption marked its fall.”[5]
Notice what initially destroyed Roman republicanism. It wasn’t invading barbarians standing at the gates.
It was Romans themselves—politicians hungry for power, factions increasingly unwilling to accept defeat, generals willing to violate political traditions, citizens tolerating abuses when those abuses benefited their side, and political leaders who increasingly regarded constitutional restraint as an obstacle rather than a safeguard.
That’s the danger every republic faces. Constitutional principles are easy to defend when they restrain your opponent.
The real test comes when they restrain you. Once political opponents become existential enemies, almost anything can be justified in the name of defeating them. Temporary exceptions become precedents. Precedents become accepted practices. Accepted practices become political culture.
And political culture eventually reshapes government.
That’s when everything starts breaking apart.
Rome’s political deterioration was only part of the story. Its spectacular success had created spectacular obligations. More territory required more borders; more borders required additional soldiers; more soldiers demanded greater revenue; and administering an empire stretching from Britain to North Africa and the Middle East called for enormous resources.
Then disease reduced the Empire to desperation.
The Antonine Plague swept through the Roman world beginning in the second century, followed decades later by another devastating epidemic traditionally known as the Plague of Cyprian. Historians continue debating the pathogens and precise death tolls, but their consequences were serious: population losses, labor shortages, economic disruption, reduced tax revenues and military recruitment problems.
During the third century, Rome also experienced extraordinary political instability.
Emperors were assassinated, overthrown and replaced with alarming frequency while civil wars, invasions, monetary instability and breakaway territories battered the Empire.
The problems began feeding one another.
Disease weakened the population and economy.
Economic weakness affected government revenue.
Fiscal problems impacted military strength.
Military weakness encouraged external enemies.
External threats increased political instability.
This is how civilizations become vulnerable. They rarely collapse because of a single thing going wrong. They become fragile when too many things go wrong at once.
James Madison understood what ultimately held everything together. During Virginia’s ratification debates in 1788 he asked, “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation.” Constitutional mechanisms alone could never guarantee republican government because, without sufficient virtue among the people, Madison warned that “no form of government can render us secure.”[6]
Rome possessed laws, elections, senators, courts, and centuries of republican tradition.
Yet Rome still lost its Republic, largely because enough Romans eventually became willing to sacrifice republican principles to win Roman political battles.
That is why Rome’s most important date may not be A.D. 476. Technically, Rome lost its Republic centuries before it lost its Empire.
And once the political virtues that sustained republican Rome began disappearing, another question emerged:
What happens when a civilization can no longer produce enough people committed to the values that built it?
That’s where Part Two begins.
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ENDNOTES
1. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 38, “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West.” Gibbon wrote: “The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.”
2. Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. 3, Caesar and Christ: A History of Roman Civilization and of Christianity from Their Beginnings to A.D. 325 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944), concluding analysis of Roman civilization and decline.
3. John Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, January 8, 1776, in Robert J. Taylor, ed., Papers of John Adams, vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 397–399; also Founders Online, National Archives.
4. George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796. Washington warned that although unconstitutional exercises of power might sometimes produce immediate benefits, “the precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield.”
5. Durant, Caesar and Christ, discussion of Roman republican government and political decline. Durant emphasized the role of “the home, the school, the temple, the army, the Assembly, and the Senate” in forming Roman patriotism.
6. James Madison, Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 20, 1788, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 11. Madison asked, “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation,” and warned that without virtue, “no theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure.”
Part Two: When Romans Stopped Being Roman
Imagine yourself living somewhere in the Roman Empire around A.D. 400.
Your grandfather keeps telling you Rome isn’t what it used to be. Taxes are burdensome, politicians appear corrupt, money doesn’t purchase what it once did, the borders are increasingly difficult to defend, and the government seems incapable of solving one problem without creating another. Foreign-born soldiers are increasingly important to Roman armies, spectacular entertainment remains abundant, enormous wealth exists alongside deep poverty, and nearly everyone has an opinion about who ruined Rome.
Does any of that sound familiar? Perhaps. But this is where historical comparisons can become silly if we’re not careful.
After all, there are many differences between the historic Roman Empire and the youthful United States of America.
Social Security isn’t the Roman grain dole. The National Football League isn’t the Colosseum. Modern immigrants aren’t Visigoths, and Congress isn’t the Roman Senate—however tempting that comparison occasionally becomes. History isn’t a collection of interchangeable pieces that can be rearranged until ancient Rome looks exactly like twenty-first-century America.
Still, sometimes the echoes are difficult to ignore.
The Roman satirist Juvenal gave history one of its most enduring political phrases: panem et circenses—bread and circuses.
Juvenal wasn’t simply complaining because Rome distributed grain or staged public entertainment. Feeding a huge urban population was a legitimate governmental concern, while public games had long performed religious, social and political functions in Roman society.
His criticism went deeper. Juvenal believed the relationship between citizen and government had changed. Romans who had once participated vigorously in public affairs seemed increasingly satisfied when political power provided material benefits and spectacular entertainment.
The issue wasn’t bread. The problem was what happened when citizenship became consumership.
What happens when citizens judge government primarily by what it gives them rather than what citizenship requires from them?
What happens when entertainment becomes so abundant that people spend more time watching their civilization than participating in it?
The historian Will Durant described later Romans with a memorable phrase: they had become increasingly “brave by proxy.”[1] They could watch other men fight, bleed, and demonstrate courage in the arena, then return home having experienced danger safely from the grandstands.
A prosperous civilization can fall prey to admiring virtues that it increasingly refuses to practice. It can celebrate sacrifice while avoiding sacrifice, praise greatness while rejecting the disciplines that produce greatness, and enjoy an inheritance without replenishing it.
Eventually citizens become spectators to their own civilization. Isn’t that what John F. Kennedy warned in his infamous question: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country?”
Rome was expensive to operate.
Its government supported armies, fortifications, roads, public works, bureaucracies, and an imperial administration stretching across three continents. As political and military pressures increased, the demand for revenue increased with them.
Durant observed that “The bureaucrats found their task too great for human integrity,” while taxation climbed to support Rome’s growing obligations.[2] Currency also deteriorated as successive emperors reduced the precious-metal content of Roman coins, particularly during the third-century crisis. Monetary instability and inflation followed.
Ancient Rome obviously possessed no Federal Reserve, Medicare, Social Security or modern bond market, so we shouldn’t force an exact comparison onto America.
But Rome learned an economic principle every government eventually encounters: somebody has to pay the bill.
George Washington understood that principle too. In his Farewell Address, he urged Americans to preserve public credit and avoid “the accumulation of debt.” Then he warned against “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.”[3]
Washington wasn’t merely giving economic advice. He was making a moral argument. One generation shouldn’t enjoy benefits and send the invoice to the next.
Some problems really are timeless.
Perpetuating the Roman Republic to the next generation.
Now we reach one of the most controversial Roman-American comparisons: immigration. The popular version says Rome opened its borders, barbarians poured in, and the Empire collapsed.
It makes political points, but it’s far too simple…and inaccurate.
Rome had been absorbing outsiders for centuries, and its ability to do so was actually one of its great strengths. Conquered peoples became allies, provincials became citizens, foreigners served in Roman armies, and men born hundreds or even thousands of miles from Rome eventually became senators, generals and emperors.
Rome grew partly because it knew how to make Romans.
But assimilation required something important: there had to be a recognizable Roman civilization into which newcomers could assimilate.
By the fourth century, enormous population movements were occurring while Roman political, military and economic institutions were already under severe pressure. In A.D. 376, large numbers of Goths fleeing the Huns were permitted to cross the Danube into Roman territory. Corrupt officials exploited them, food became scarce, resentment intensified, and rebellion followed.
Two years later, at Adrianople, Rome paid dearly for the failure. A major Roman army was destroyed, and Emperor Valens was killed.
Durant later wondered whether Rome might sometimes have benefited by slowing migration sufficiently “to let assimilation catch up with infiltration.”[4] His terminology belongs to the 1940s, but Durant’s larger point remains relevant: immigration and assimilation aren’t the same thing.
America has repeatedly demonstrated that immigrants can strengthen a nation economically, intellectually, and culturally.
Successful immigration, however, involves more than crossing a geographic boundary. It requires a nation confident enough in its identity to invite newcomers into a shared language, constitutional order, historical memory, civic culture, responsibilities and future.
Rome’s eventual problem wasn’t simply that foreigners entered Roman territory. Outsiders had entered Rome for centuries and often strengthened it.
The deeper problem was that Rome became increasingly less capable of making newcomers “Roman” because Rome itself was becoming less certain of what “being Roman” meant.
And eventually Rome struggled to make even its own people “Roman.” And that’s when the wheels really came off this historic Republic. When patriotism and pride in being “Roman” were no longer in fashion, Rome, as a distinct and superior culture in its time, began to decline.
When virtue goes out of style, stick a fork in it.
Roman writers were often their civilization’s harshest critics. Sallust attacked greed and ambition. Juvenal mocked decadence and hypocrisy. Tacitus lamented corruption and lost liberty. Christian writers later condemned avarice, cruelty, injustice, and sexual immorality.
We shouldn’t romanticize early Rome. Slavery, political corruption, prostitution, violence and immorality existed during periods of Roman expansion as well as decline. Ancient moralists could exaggerate, just as moral critics still do today.
But beneath their complaints was a serious question:
Can a civilization remain strong after the virtues that created it weaken?
America’s Founders repeatedly asked the same thing…and repeatedly stated their conviction:
John Hancock: “Sensible of the importance of Christian piety and virtue to the order and happiness of a state, I cannot but earnestly commend to you every measure for their support and encouragement.”
Patrick Henry: “The great pillars of all government and of social life [are] virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone, that renders us invincible.”
Thomas Jefferson: “The practice of morality being necessary for the well being of society, He [God] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain. We all agree in the obligation of the moral principles of Jesus and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in His discourses.“
Gouverneur Morris: “Your good morals in the army give me sincere pleasure as it hath long been my fixed opinion that virtue and religion are the great sources of human happiness.“
Jedidiah Morris: “To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom and political and social happiness[virtue] which mankind now enjoys. All efforts made to destroy the foundations of our Holy Religion ultimately tend to the subversion also of our political freedom and happiness [virtue].”
Joseph Story: “I verily believe that Christianity is necessary to support a civil society and shall ever attend to its institutions and acknowledge its precepts as the pure and natural sources of private and social happiness.”
George Washington: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle…Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? …Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?[5]
Daniel Webster: “[T]he Christian religion – its general principles – must ever be regarded among us as the foundation of civil society…Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.”
Noah Webster: “[T]he Christian religion… is the basis, or rather the source, of all genuine freedom in government… I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of Christianity have not a controlling influence.“
John Witherspoon: “[H]e is the best friend to American liberty who is the most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion, and who sets himself with the greatest firmness to bear down profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not to call him an enemy to his country.“
Their reasoning rested upon an idea that modern Americans sometimes overlook: self-government requires self-governed people.
A free society cannot place a police officer in every home, a regulator inside every business, a judge inside every relationship or a government monitor inside every conscience. Something has to happen within the citizen.
Honesty, responsibility, restraint, courage, duty and integrity reduce the amount of external coercion necessary to keep society functioning.
Government can punish theft, but it cannot create honesty. It can prohibit violence, but it cannot create self-control. It can enforce contracts, but it cannot create trust. Government can write a Constitution, establish courts and pass laws, but it cannot manufacture character.
When people become less capable of governing themselves, somebody eventually has to do more governing for them.
Then something extraordinary happened during Rome’s long decline. Rome eventually fell in the West, but Christianity survived
This is particularly interesting because Edward Gibbon famously assigned Christianity some responsibility for weakening traditional Roman civic and military culture. Historians have debated that interpretation for more than two centuries, but Gibbon’s own assessment was more complicated than is sometimes remembered. He also described Christianity as “a pure, benevolent, and universal system of ethics.”[6]
Will Durant was more direct in rejecting the idea that Christianity destroyed Rome: “Rome was not destroyed by Christianity, any more than by barbarian invasion; it was an empty shell when Christianity rose to influence and invasion came.”[7]
Then Durant offered one of the most memorable sentences in his eleven-volume Story of Civilization:
“Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.”[8]
Consider the irony. Emperors who persecuted Christians died and were eventually forgotten. The Western Empire declined and disappeared. The Colosseum eventually fell into ruin, but Christianity remained.
Churches, bishops, monasteries, scholars and Christian communities helped preserve manuscripts, education, charity and important elements of classical civilization after Roman political authority fragmented. Even Gibbon conceded that Christianity eventually “broke the violence of the fall” and softened the peoples who inherited Rome’s western territories.[9]
For Christians, there is an important distinction here. Christianity’s future doesn’t depend upon America’s future. The Kingdom of God survived Rome and can certainly survive any decline, fall, or rise in these United States.
America, however, may not be equally indifferent to the disappearance of the moral virtues required to sustain republican liberty.
I pledge allegiance to…the republic…
In September 1787, after months of debate behind closed doors in Philadelphia, the Constitutional Convention finished its work. James McHenry of Maryland attended the sessions. He was a physician, Revolutionary War veteran, and Convention delegate who would later serve as United States Secretary of War.
McHenry recorded a wonderful exchange between Benjamin Franklin and a prominent Philadelphia resident, Elizabeth Willing Powel. Mrs. Powel asked Franklin what kind of government the delegates had produced: “a republic or a monarchy?”
Franklin answered: “A republic … if you can keep it.”[10]
Those six words contain the entire problem. The Constitution could create offices, divide powers, establish courts and restrain government. It couldn’t guarantee that future Americans would preserve what the Founders had created.
Every generation inherits something it hadn’t built. And every generation decides what to do with it.
That’s why Rome matters. Not because Washington is ancient Rome with electricity, not because every modern American controversy has a convenient Roman counterpart, and certainly not because history guarantees that America will suffer Rome’s fate.
Rome matters because it demonstrates something prosperous civilizations easily forget:
Nothing guarantees that what one generation builds another generation will preserve.
Rome possessed armies, wealth, laws, engineers, roads, aqueducts, magnificent cities and centuries of history. What it eventually lacked was sufficient political and social capacity to sustain everything earlier Romans had created.
And the deterioration didn’t happen overnight.
A precedent was abandoned here, another responsibility surrendered there. Another debt was postponed, another institution weakened, another political restraint ignored. Another generation became accustomed to conditions an earlier generation might have considered unacceptable.
Eventually people still called their civilization Rome.
But the Rome they inhabited was fundamentally different from the Rome their ancestors had built.
So perhaps “Is America just another ancient Rome?” isn’t the most important question. Franklin’s question is better: Can we keep the Republic?
Rome eventually couldn’t. America still can. History isn’t prophecy, and Rome’s ruins aren’t America’s destiny. However, they do offer something far more useful: a warning.
And, thankfully, “we the people” still have time to listen and correct our course.
ENDNOTES
1. Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. 3, Caesar and Christ: A History of Roman Civilization and of Christianity from Their Beginnings to A.D. 325 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944), discussion of Roman spectacle and changing civic and martial character.
2. Durant, Caesar and Christ, discussion of later imperial administration, bureaucracy, taxation and monetary instability.
3. George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796. Washington urged Americans to preserve public credit, avoid “the accumulation of debt,” and refrain from “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.”
4. Durant, Caesar and Christ, 366. Durant suggested that Rome might occasionally have slowed migration sufficiently “to let assimilation catch up with infiltration.”
5. Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796. Washington wrote: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” adding that “virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”
6. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 20. Gibbon described Christianity as “a pure, benevolent, and universal system of ethics.”
7. Durant, Caesar and Christ, 667–68. Durant wrote: “Rome was not destroyed by Christianity, any more than by barbarian invasion; it was an empty shell when Christianity rose to influence and invasion came.”
8. Durant, Caesar and Christ, 652: “Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.”
9. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. 38. Gibbon acknowledged that Christianity eventually “broke the violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors.”
10. James McHenry, diary entry, September 18, 1787, James McHenry Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. McHenry recorded: “a lady asked Dr. Franklin well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy—A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” McHenry then identified the woman: “The lady here aluded to was Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia.”
Abraham Lincoln knew there was only one way to correct the grievous, sinful injustice of slavery.
Furthermore, he knew it would likely require either a miracle from God or a war between brothers.
Perfecting the Union by Amending the Constitution
To “perfect the union” demanded first dealing with the issue, then healing the nation afterward. And that would require “we the people” to do something common in the 19th century: amend the U.S. Constitution. Ultimately, no law by Republicans would change things. After all, Democrats could easily write and pass new laws once they controlled the House and Senate.
The Supreme Court, similarly, could only give an opinion on the laws of the land. Unlike today, where most Americans view the S.C.O.T.U.S. as a “ruling” body that decides on law, in Lincoln’s day it was more Constitutional in nature. The Supreme Court had limiting powers, primarily to “check” the Executive and Legislative branches from unconstitutional laws and orders.
But the Supreme Court only gave its “opinion.” It did not “rule” or provide a “ruling.” In fact, until the 1960s, the term “ruling” was never used in relation to S.C.O.T.U.S. decisions. It was always “the opinion of the Court.”
“We the People”
It’s why in 1860, Lincoln and his Republicans knew (legally) the only way to fix the slavery issue was through amending the U.S. Constitution. “We the people” were the final say. However, amendments required passage by two-thirds of the states. That was an uphill challenge, which would demand Democratic support.
And that wouldn’t be easy in a Reconstructionist America.
The story did not end with the Thirteenth Amendment. Reconstructionist Republicans then pressed forward with several legislative moves that forever transformed America:
- The Fourteenth Amendment established birthright citizenship and equal protection under the law.
- The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited denying the vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
- Pro-Black Rights Republicans supported the Freedman’s Bureau, passed civil rights legislation, and empowered President Ulysses S. Grant to move against emerging Ku Klux Klan political intimidation and terrorism.
That last point matters. The Klan was not some vague ghost floating through American life. During Reconstruction, it functioned as a violent terrorist movement aimed at Black citizens and white Republicans who supported Reconstruction.
Yes, you read that right. The Ku Klux Klan and other pro-slavery advocates in the South and North alike didn’t just target Blacks.
They attacked, persecuted, captured, and lynched White Republicans too. And they did it under “hoods” that masked their true identities (as many were political rival Democrats).
Paying the Ultimate Price to Free Black America
This is also not taught in history classes, documentaries, or displays regarding the final liberation of Black America in post-Civil War culture.
According to the Tuskegee Institute’s thorough accounting of lynchings in the U.S., there were 4,743 LYNCHINGS between 1882-1968. Of that number, over a quarter (1,297) were White people (and likely Republicans). Between 1882 and 1903, an average of 52 Whites were lynched annually. But there’s something deeper behind thos statistics.
During the first decade, Tuskegee Institute compiled its record of lynchings (1882-1891), White lynchings outpaced BLACK, 751-732. It’s true. In the first four years (1882-1884), Whites were lynched at a nearly two-to-one pace (411-227).
Nobody talks about this reality.
Fear Factor: The Ku Klux Klan
The purpose of the Ku Klux Klan was intimidation. The terror group wanted to stop Black voting, destroy Republican governments, and restore White Democratic control. President Grant and congressional Republicans ultimately responded with “Enforcement Acts” to shut them down, most notably, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
This does not mean every Republican in every era was heroic, nor does it mean every Democrat in every era opposed civil rights. History is never that tidy. However, the racial issues in America for the next century were largely partisan.
By the mid-twentieth century, a few important Democrats helped pass major civil-rights legislation, including President Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 Civil Rights Act.
But what is also true, and not widely reported, is that many of the fiercest opponents to Civil Rights, regardless of race or gender, were Democrats from the segregationist South and prejudiced North. Furthermore, Republicans were indispensable to the final passage of key civil-rights bills.
Even if they don’t get credit for it today.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was dead in the water without Republicans’ support.
In the Senate, 27 Republicans and 46 Democrats voted for final passage, while 6 Republicans and 21 Democrats voted against it. The six Republicans, led by presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, were not against the bill, as much as playing politics. They knew the bill would pass without their support, but preferred not to associate with Lyndon B. Johnson’s legislation during an election year.
In percentage terms, Republican support was stronger. More importantly, Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL)–a tireless champion for Black civil rights–helped break the filibuster and deliver the votes needed to pass the bill.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
Similarly, the Voting Rights Act (1965) also demanded broad bipartisan support, with heavy Republican support. In the Senate, Republicans voted 30–2 in favor, while Democrats voted 47–17. The bill was introduced with the support of Democratic Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL).
That is the real story: not a cartoon of one perfect party and one wicked party, but a long record in which Republican Civil Rights Support was central, decisive, and too often forgotten.
Nor was the Republican civil-rights tradition limited to Black Americans. Republicans played major roles in women’s suffrage, Indian citizenship, anti-Klan enforcement, and Reconstruction-Era equal rights legislation.
The Indian Citizenship Act (1924)
Signed by Republican President Calvin Coolidge, this act granted U.S. citizenship to all Indians born in the United States, although some states continued to restrict Indian voting rights for decades. This allowed Coolidge’s successor, Herbert Hoover (Republican), to tap a Kaw Indian named Charles “Indian Charlie” Curtis to be his Vice President (1929-1933). Curtis is the first non-White to serve as Vice President. Kamala Harris would be the second, almost a century later.
The Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote, also passed through a political landscape in which Republican-controlled states and Republican lawmakers were crucial to ratification.
That wider record does not erase later failures, compromises, or hypocrisies in either party. But it does challenge the lazy modern myth that American civil-rights history can be reduced to today’s political stereotypes. It cannot. The record is deeper, stranger, and more interesting than that.
Which brings us back to June 19 and the Juneteenth holiday.
Juneteenth: American Freedom Day
While some disgruntled race-baiters wish to reduce Juneteenth to grievance, race politics, and partisan amnesia, it should be remembered as a “Freedom Day” rooted in these truths:
SLAVERY was evil.
ABOLITION was righteous.
CITIZENSHIP mattered.
EQUAL PROTECTION mattered.
VOTING RIGHTS mattered.
And FREEDOM had to be declared, defended, enforced, and written into law.
June 19 is a celebration of America at its best: ordered liberty, equal citizenship, constitutional government, moral courage, and the conviction that no person has the right to own another.
Yes, Juneteenth belongs to Black Americans who faithfully preserved its memory, but it also belongs to Union soldiers who enforced emancipation. It belongs to abolitionists who preached, wrote, organized, and prayed. It belongs to Lincoln’s Republican Party, which pushed slavery toward extinction. And it belongs to every American who still believes the Declaration of Independence was telling the truth.
On June 19, 1865, the truth finally reached Galveston, TX.
“ALL SLAVES ARE FREE.”
That is not merely Black history. That is American history.
And it is worth telling uncancelled.
..
Let’s be honest: the Civil War was far from “civil.”
And this social conflict composes more than a North-South geography, despite the narrative of the Mason-Dixon line. Neither was it about Federalism versus states’ rights, even though this initially had some merit. It’s also more than just “rebels” vs. “Unionists” fighting to keep America as “one nation.”
Only a few things can divide families to bleed for a cause. And force entire states to secede to keep their convictions. This is the nuance of the Civil War (1860-1865). At its heart, it was a purely political battle between two competing worldviews over America’s present and future. What began as a “culture war” eventually ended in nearly three-quarters of a million lives lost. It’s the most in any American war, wiping out an entire American generation.
The Rise of the Democratic Party (1828)
In 1828, with Andrew Jackson’s election to president by a new populist movement, the old Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican party evolved into the new Democratic Party. At the heart of Democratic ideology were several convictions, most notably the institution of slavery. This was particularly true in the South, where cotton was the economic engine of the region. Thanks to Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, the South was able to compete modestly with Northern industries.
Jackson’s populist presidency set the tone for a new political Democratic party that believed in the political and economic interests of the “common man,” advocated for expanded voting rights, limited federal government, and rugged individualism. Core tenets of the party under Jackson also included strict opposition to economic elites, aggressive territorial expansion, and the preservation of white male supremacy.
In general, Jacksonian Democrats believed in:
1. Empowering the “Common Man”
Universal White Male Suffrage: Democrats worked hard to remove property ownership and taxpaying requirements for voting, believing that all white adult males should have equal political rights, no matter their wealth or social class.
The Spoils System: Jackson believed in rotating officeholders to help prevent the rise of entrenched elites. He gladly rewarded his political supporters with government jobs, trusting that ordinary citizens were capable of managing government responsibilities effectively.
2. Limited Government & Laissez-Faire Economics
Anti-Monopoly & Anti-Bank: Jackson was very critical of the Second Bank of the United States. He saw it as an unjust and exclusive institution that held too much power with wealthy eastern financiers, often leaving ordinary farmers and workers at a disadvantage.
Fiscal Restraint: Reflecting the ideas of Thomas Jefferson, Jacksonian Democrats preferred a straightforward, modest, and unobtrusive federal government. They were against federally funded internal improvements such as roads and canals, believing these projects could increase centralized authority and benefit the well-connected.
3. Agrarianism & Westward Expansion
Manifest Destiny: Jackson was a firm supporter of the United States’ westward expansion, believing it was essential for providing more land for white, farming communities. He passionately believed in the importance of expanding westward to create more opportunities for white, agrarian farmers.
Indian Removal: His administration passed and enforced the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which the U.S. Supreme Court later viewed as unconstitutional. They also authorized the forced relocation of Native American tribes in the Southeast to territories west of the Mississippi River, all to make way for white settlement.
4. National Unity and States’ Rights
Preserving the Union: Jackson was a passionate nationalist who strongly opposed nullification and secession. He firmly believed that the federal Union was lasting and inseparable.
States’ Rights on Slavery: Jackson strongly opposed the abolitionist movement. He and his party saw abolitionism as a disruptive force that could jeopardize the union, and they actively supported “gag rules” in Congress to block the discussion of antislavery petitions.
The Emergence of the Republican Party (1854)
Lincoln’s “Grand Old Party” (Republicans) proved more than a debating society. Created in the 1850s as an Anti-Slavery party, the Republican Party attracted abolitionists, Free Soilers, former Whigs, and Christian reformers. It specifically drew those who believed slavery violated the Declaration’s promise that “all men are created equal.”
That principle was more than just political talk; it was the heart and soul of the movement. At first, Republicans dedicated themselves to ending slavery, but by 1860, Lincoln Republicans sought more middle ground:
Free Soil & Free Labor: Republicans believed that the “normal condition” for all U.S. territories should be “freedom,” and they rejected the idea that Congress or local legislatures had the authority to legalize slavery in these territories.
Economic Growth: The party supported protective tariffs to help Northern industry and manufacturing thrive, pushed for a Homestead Act to offer free land in the West to settlers, and championed federal funding for a transcontinental railroad.
Preservation of the Union: Republicans passionately opposed any moves to dissolve the Union and wholeheartedly supported the right of each state to manage its own internal affairs.
Anti-Slavery Extension: Although Republicans worked to prevent the spread of slavery and abolish it, they didn’t argue that the federal government had the power to abolish it in states where it was already legal. The final decision came down to the states. Lincoln would later change this approach. Some “American” issues are bigger than the rights of any particular state or collection of a few states.
The Lincoln Effect: Not My President
In 1860, a contentious election in a fractured nation resulted in Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency.
Within three months of his win, Lincoln watched Southern states, one by one, secede from the Union. They chose to form a “Confederate” nation under a new constitution and president named Jefferson Davis. First it was South Carolina (December 20, 1860), then Mississippi (January 9, 1861), Florida (January 10, 1861), Alabama (January 11, 1861), Georgia (January 19, 1861), Louisiana (January 26, 1861), and Texas (February 1, 1861). Between April 17 and June 8, four more states would join in late spring 1861: Virginia (April 17), Arkansas (May 6), North Carolina (May 20) and Tennessee (June 8). This confederacy of states was constituted in the same way the original 13 colonies were organized beneath the “Articles of Confederation.”
Then came the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.
Perfecting the Union
In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the Dred Scott opinion.
Dred Scott was a slave who sued his owner for his freedom. Scott argued that because his master had taken him to reside in Illinois (a free state) and the Wisconsin Territory (a free federal territory where slavery was prohibited by the Missouri Compromise), he was legally a free man.
In a 7-2 decision, the Court ruled against Scott. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the majority opinion.
The Court stated that Black people—whether enslaved or free—were not citizens of the United States and therefore could not enjoy the rights and protections the Constitution granted to citizens. The Court also declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820 unconstitutional. It established that Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories.
The Court ruled that enslaved people were property under the Fifth Amendment, and that any law depriving an enslaver of their “property” without due process was unconstitutional.
By de facto nationalizing slavery and stripping African Americans of constitutional rights, the ruling outraged abolitionists and Northerners. It deepened the political divide and is widely regarded as a major precursor to the American Civil War.
The ruling is universally considered the worst decision in Supreme Court history. The decision was ultimately voided by the 13th Amendment (which abolished slavery) and the 14th Amendment (which granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States) following the Civil War.
The Dred Scott opinion revealed the political divide between Democrats and Republicans.
A divide that eventually erupted in war within three years.
And America would never be the same again
June 19. Also known as “Juneteenth.” Since June 17, 2021, it’s been a federally-recognized national holiday, signed into law by President Joe Biden. It’s been a “Black American Holiday” for far longer, especially in Texas (since 1980).
And well it should. This tale just isn’t for Texans, where Juneteenth celebrations began in the wake of their 1865 proclamation, but to all Blacks.
Let’s start with the story. What really happened? How much is censored, forgotten, or ignored?
And why it shouldn’t be just be Black Americans celebrating this day.
The Story: What is “Juneteenth?”
On June 19, 1865, the last group of slaves in Galveston, Texas, finally learned if their liberation. That is true, powerful, and worth celebrating.
But it is not the whole story. The story beyond the story is bigger, bolder, and more uncomfortable.
Juneteenth, after all, did not appear out of thin air. It was the fruit of a long American fight over slavery, citizenship, equality, and the meaning of the Declaration of Independence.
A variety of Americans, including abolitionists, Black and white reformers, and Union soldiers, used their Christian moral conviction, Republican political muscle, and a president named Abraham Lincoln who finally placed the nation’s founding promise where it belonged: at the center of the war.
Lincoln’s assassination occurred shortly after the Civil War ended because of his decision. And for a hundred years, Black America never forgot Lincoln’s sacrifice.
Juneteenth: The Real Story
But this event is not only Black American history. It’s also American history.
It is a day for all Americans to celebrate, because it also liberated the nation from the shackles of history’s darkest sin. Lincoln’s proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated the United States from being a slave nation…forever. It exorcised the dark demons of slavery–owning another human–to create “a more perfect union.”
On June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and issued General Order No. 3. The order announced that, “in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”
Granger also issued additional actions for the Texans. He declared all Confederate laws were null and void. Granger paroled all Confederate soldiers, confiscated any “public property” cotton for the U.S. Army, and appropriated all privately-owned cotton as compensation for his Army. Granger counseled newly freed Blacks not to congregate near towns and military posts looking for work or expecting welfare. Instead, he advised them to stay on their plantations to sign labor agreements.
A Texas Tornado that’s still a Twister Today
For these Lone Star slaves–men, women, and children–freedom had finally moved from rumor to reality. But it was a Truth and Reality that had marched toward Galveston for years.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect on January 1, 1863, declaring enslaved people in rebellious territories free. It did not instantly free every slave everywhere, and critics often pounce on that fact as though it weakens Lincoln’s action.
It does not.
The proclamation transformed the Civil War from a war merely to preserve the Union into a war that openly aimed at the destruction of slavery.
Lincoln and the Republican abolitionists recognized slavery is not a misunderstanding, but a moral evil. The answer was not to wink at it, regulate it, excuse it, or leave it alone in the name of political comfort. The only solution was ABOLITION.
Why “Juneteenth” Matters to All Americans
That is why the Thirteenth Amendment mattered. A proclamation could declare freedom in wartime, but a constitutional amendment could bury slavery in law.
And that’s exactly what happened.
On January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed the Thirteenth Amendment by a vote of 119–56. Every Republican supported the legislation. The Democratic vote, in contrast, ran heavily against it. In the Senate, the amendment had already passed 38–6.
When ratified on December 6, 1865, the amendment made the institution of slavery unconstitutional in the United States. Ratification confirmed the will of the people. All Americans–not just a political party–wanted slavery outlawed.
The legal road to “Juneteenth.”
This is where “Juneteenth” becomes an American story. Without the Thirteenth Amendment, there would be no permanent abolition. But without Lincoln’s Republican abolitionist movement, there would be no successful amendment. The Black slaves were incapable of liberating themselves. They had neither the political clout nor the military power. Many, perhaps most, Black Americans overlook how Lincoln’s post-Civil War Union Army marched under “Republican orders.” Their job included “reconstructing” the South, and honoring the Thirteenth Amendment.
Slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment. It was illegal to practice. And Texas was the last holdout state. As the largest state, its spacious size allowed slavery to continue in isolated pockets.
It’s why it took a complete Union victory to fix the problem. If the Union hadn’t broken the back of the South and won the war, there would be no call for federal enforcement in Texas. Nor would sddd General Granger to travel to Galveston and produce this glorious “Juneteenth” moment.
Essentially, slavery was abolished by a White Union army (fighting their White brothers in a bloody Civil War) to politically have the power to emancipate the slaves and abolish an institution that’s existed since time began. Then this White Union Army traveled to every dark corner in the South to shine the light of freedom, to inform both slaves and their owners that the war was over and so was slavery.
Forgotten and Canceled History
This is the history many Americans, especially in Black America, are never taught. For Black people, “Juneteenth” isn’t just their “Independence Day” but also their “Thanksgiving.” It’s a day to honor Union soldiers who were wounded and killed for their liberty, to show gratitude for the sacrifice of Republicans, and to celebrate as a whole community the joy of emancipation.
Unfortunately, since the late 1960s, Black America has allowed the voices of anger, hate, and bitterness to control their social narratives, many of which contradict actual historical accounts (like this one). We now have three generations of Blacks who’ve never learned the truth behind their emancipation and liberation from slavery. Instead, they’ve heard only partial truths through Black Lives Matter and The 1619 Project.
A Story of Two Political Parties
Like most things in life, there are two sides to everything. That’s the case in 1860.
One party viewed the Black as another form of farm animal, non-human chattel for use and abuse (if necessary). Slavery, therefore, of the Black was morally acceptable, a historical institution since the dawn of time, and important to the Southern economy.
The other party viewed Black people as human beings capable of “life, liberty, and happiness.” Slavery was evil and needed to be abolished, not just in the North but in the South. All Blacks needed to be fully emancipated and liberated from the chains of this ancient institution that had never been morally right.
Over time, these competing worldviews and political convictions shifted from dialogue to confrontation, leading to a ‘civil war.’ It was mainly a political battle between Republican Abolitionist Federalists and Democratic Pro-Slavery States Rights Advocates. When Lincoln, the first Abolitionist Republican President, was elected, the South—mainly Pro-Slavery Democrats—declared his election ‘null and void’ and seceded to form their own nation.
What happens next is the topic of Part 2: “Juneteenth: Perfecting the Republic”
It did not begin with a gymnasium.
There were no basketballs, no locker rooms, no swimming pools echoing with whistles and laughter. Long before the letters Y–M–C–A became synonymous with fitness and recreation, they stood for something far more urgent—something born not out of leisure, but out of crisis.
The story begins with a young man who, by his own admission, was headed in the wrong direction.
Born to be Wild
George Williams was born in 1821 on a quiet farm in Somerset, England. Baptized Anglican, he later described his early life with disarming honesty as “a careless, thoughtless, godless, swearing young fellow.” Concerned for his future, his family sent him away to apprentice in a draper’s shop in Bridgwater. It was meant to correct him.
Instead, it transformed him.
In 1837, Williams experienced a genuine spiritual awakening, leaving behind the nominal faith of his youth to pursue a committed Christian life within the Congregational Church.
When he moved to London at nineteen to work for Hitchcock & Rogers, a large drapery business, his faith was no longer theoretical—it was active, growing, and searching for purpose.
London Calling
London gave the young Williams something to do with it.
The city was bursting at the seams, reshaped by the Industrial Revolution into a magnet for young laborers pouring in from rural farms. These were not established men with families and support systems. They were young, alone, and vulnerable, working ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week, sleeping in cramped quarters above shops or in crowded tenements.
Outside their doors was a world that could devour them.
The streets were filled with open sewers, drunkenness, gangs, and vice. Taverns promised escape but delivered ruin. The scenes described in Oliver Twist were not exaggerations—they were everyday life. Williams watched as young men, far from home and unanchored, were slowly pulled under.
He later wrote that these men were treated as though they existed only “to labor and sleep,” with no space for spiritual life.
That reality unsettled him deeply. It raised a question he could not ignore: what if someone intervened? What if there were a place—a refuge—where young men could find strength, guidance, and faith before the city consumed them?
Around this time, Williams encountered the writings of Charles G. Finney, who argued that revival was not accidental but intentional. Christianity was not passive. It was active, urgent, and missional. Williams realized faith demanded action.
Twelve Young Men
On June 6, 1844, in a modest room above his workplace near St. Paul’s Churchyard, Williams gathered twelve young men. There was nothing remarkable about the setting—no banners, no ceremony, no sense that history was about to be made. They simply met to pray, to study Scripture, and to encourage one another to live differently. Williams described it as a refuge, a place of Bible study and prayer for young men seeking escape from the hazards of the streets.
It was simple. It was practical. And it was exactly what was needed.
That small gathering became the Young Men’s Christian Association, and what followed was not merely growth—it was momentum.
Within seven years, the YMCA had spread across Britain, establishing twenty-four chapters and reaching over 2,700 members. Its appeal crossed denominational and social boundaries, speaking to a universal need among young men navigating a rapidly changing world.
A Movement Grows
In 1851, the movement crossed the Atlantic when Thomas Valentine Sullivan brought it to Boston, creating a haven for sailors and laborers far from home. Within a year, chapters appeared in Montreal, Baltimore, Paris, and Geneva.
The idea was now portable.
Two years later, in Washington, D.C., Anthony Bowen—a former slave—founded a YMCA for Black young men. At a time of limited opportunity and rigid segregation, it became one of the first non-church institutions in America devoted to their development and well-being. By 1855, just eleven years after that first meeting in London, there were 329 YMCA chapters in nine countries with more than 30,000 members. That same year, delegates met in Paris to form an international organization united around a shared commitment to Jesus Christ.
The story is best seen in lives changed. Dwight Moody arrived in Chicago as a poor shoe salesman with little education and less direction. He began attending YMCA meetings, where volunteers urged him—not toward success, but toward Christ. One Sunday school teacher refused to give up on him and personally led him to faith.
That moment changed everything.
Moody would go on to become one of the most influential evangelists of the nineteenth century, preaching to millions, but he never forgot where it began. The YMCA was not just a place he attended—it was the environment that shaped him, challenged him, and pointed him toward a life he could not yet see.
Muscle Christianity
By the late 1800s, the YMCA expanded its vision through what became known as “Muscular Christianity”—the belief that faith should shape the whole person: spirit, mind, and body.
Gymnasiums became tools, not ends.
In 1891, YMCA instructor James Naismith invented basketball to channel the restless energy of young men, and a few years later, William Morgan developed volleyball. These were not merely games—they were instruments for discipline, teamwork, and character.
The YMCA also pioneered swimming instruction, built some of the first indoor gyms, and provided safe housing for young men navigating city life. Educational programs followed, including English classes for immigrants and evening institutes that grew into universities. The model expanded to women through the YWCA.
The influence of the YMCA reached every corner of society.
Booker T. Washington promoted YMCA work among Black communities. George Washington Carver encouraged its spiritual mission. Robert Baden-Powell drew from the model to develop the Boy Scouts. Even movements like Toastmasters and the teaching career of Dale Carnegie began within YMCA walls.
Its impact extended into humanitarian work as well.
Henri Dunant, influenced by YMCA ideals, helped found the International Red Cross. During the Civil War, YMCA volunteers served as chaplains and medics. In World War II, the organization distributed New Testaments to soldiers.
By the early twentieth century, the YMCA had become one of the largest youth movements in the world, spanning continents, cultures, and languages.
Today, it still reaches tens of millions across more than a hundred countries.
Get the Drift?
But the mission that once defined it has largely been forgotten.
In the past seventy-five years, the YMCA drifted from a movement of prayer to a network of programs, from a call to Christ to a calendar of activities. It is known for its gyms, not its Gospel. Recognized for what it offers, but not for what it once stood for.
Many who pass through its doors no longer know what the “C” even means.
In 1978, the Village People released “Y.M.C.A.”—a global anthem about belonging, direction, and a second chance. Decades later, that same song would echo through political rallies, recast as a symbol of energy, nostalgia, and culture. And somewhere in between, the mission was lost.
Would George Williams recognize what he launched?
He didn’t set out to build a brand, a building, or a business. He built a refuge—not for recreation, but for redemption. If you want to understand the YMCA, don’t start in the gym. Go back to that small room above a shop in London, where a handful of young men chose Scripture over the streets, prayer over pleasure, and Christ over everything.
That decision sparked a movement that circled the globe. It also offers a warning. Movements don’t lose their mission all at once. They drift—quietly, gradually, almost imperceptibly—until the mission is reduced to initials.
And when that happens, what remains is not what was built…but what was forgotten.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Selected Bibliography:
⸻
Binfield, Clyde. George Williams and the YMCA: A Study in Victorian Social Attitudes. London: Heinemann, 1973.
Findlay, J. F. Dwight L. Moody: American Evangelist, 1837–1899. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969, pp. 38–47.
Gumpert, Martin. Dunant: The Story of the Red Cross. New York: Oxford University Press, 1938, pp. 19–36, 101–122.
Hodder-Williams, J. E. The Life of Sir George Williams: Founder of the Young Men’s Christian Association. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1906, pp. 12–29, 78–102, 185–210.
Macleod, Hugh. Religion and the Working Class in Nineteenth-Century Britain. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984.
Mangan, J. A., and James Walvin, eds. Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987, pp. 52–74.
Naismith, James. Basketball: Its Origin and Development. New York: Association Press, 1941, pp. 7–16.
Putney, Clifford. Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001, pp. 11–39, 73–104.
Williams, George. Personal Papers and Addresses of Sir George Williams. London: YMCA Archive Collection, various dates.
YMCA International. “Sir George Williams – Founder of the YMCA.” YMCA International Website. Accessed May 14, 2026. YMCA International History Page
. 
On February 25, 1870, the United States Senate chamber witnessed a moment so symbolically powerful that it almost feels fictional. It was the day a Black man from Mississippi stood to take the oath of office as a United States senator.
His name was Hiram Rhodes Revels.
And the seat he filled had once belonged to Jefferson Davis.
Yes—that Jefferson Davis. The former Mississippi senator who left Washington in 1861 to become president of the Confederacy. The same Confederacy that fought a war to preserve slavery. Nine years later, a Black man would complete his unexpired Senate term. If you were writing a screenplay, critics would say it was too obvious.
But history wrote it first.
Born Free Before Freedom
Hiram Revels was born in 1827 in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Unlike millions of Black Americans of his generation, he was born free. His family had been free for decades, part of a small but significant class of educated, property-owning free Black citizens in the Upper South.
That detail matters.
Revels was not a sudden product of emancipation. He grew up in a culture of literacy, discipline, entrepreneurship, and civic engagement. His father was a minister. Revels’ extended family included abolitionists and activists. His cousin died at Harpers Ferry fighting alongside John Brown. Revels apprenticed as a barber, one of the few trades open to free Black men that offered economic independence. Revels was ambitious. He pursued formal education in northern schools, studied theology, and was ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Revels began to travel.
⸻
Dangerous Education
Before the Civil War, literacy was power. Education was influential. And influence was a threat. Revels preached and taught in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Maryland. In Missouri, preaching to enslaved people landed him in jail. Slave states understood something clearly: educated Black leadership was destabilizing.
Revels was not a revolutionary in the violent sense. Nevertheless, the preacher became someone more enduring. He proved disciplined, articulate, and respected. When the Civil War erupted, he recruited Black soldiers for the Union Army and served as chaplain to one of the first Black regiments raised from Mississippi. He ministered at Vicksburg after its fall in 1863, standing in a city that symbolized the turning point of the war.
He was watching the nation reshape itself.
Reconstructing the South
After the war, America was legally reconstructing itself. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment established birthright citizenship. The Fifteenth Amendment protected Black male voting rights. But amendments on parchment are one thing. Seating a Black man in the United States Senate is another.
In 1869, Mississippi elected Revels to its state senate. Soon after, the state legislature needed to fill its vacant U.S. Senate seats as part of readmission to the Union.
They selected Hiram Revels. Opposition exploded in Washington.
The Constitutional Crisis
Democratic senators argued that the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision had ruled Black Americans non-citizens. The Constitution required nine years of citizenship to serve in the Senate. If Black Americans were not citizens prior to the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, Revels did not qualify.
It was a last stand for Dred Scott.
Republicans countered that the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments had rendered that decision obsolete. The nation had been reborn legally. Citizenship was no longer racial. After days of debate, the Senate voted.
48–8.
The chamber galleries reportedly erupted in applause. Hiram Rhodes Revels became the first Black United States senator in American history. And he did so by defeating Dred Scott in the very chamber where the law defined citizenship.
⸻
Not a Radical. Not a Puppet.
Here’s where the modern narrative gets uncomfortable.
Revels was a Republican—but not a party puppet. He supported civil rights, opposed segregated education, and advocated equal treatment under the law. Revels nominated qualified Black candidates to military academies. He believed Black leadership was not symbolic but capable. But he also supported amnesty for former Confederates who pledged loyalty to the Union. He opposed vindictive punishment. He believed reconciliation was necessary for stability.
That doesn’t fit today’s partisan expectations.
He was not interested in perpetual grievance politics. Nor was he interested in appeasement. He believed the Republic needed order, law, and civic maturity.
He governed with restraint.
⸻
The Letter That Shocked Washington
Revels served only one year in the Senate. Rather than pursue extended power in Washington, he returned to Mississippi and became president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College—now Alcorn State University. He believed education was the long-term strategy for Black advancement.
Then in 1875, he detonated a political grenade.
In a public letter to President Ulysses S. Grant, Revels criticized corruption within Mississippi’s Republican Party. He accused certain “carpetbaggers” of manipulating Black voters for personal gain. This was explosive. A Black Republican publicly condemning his own party. Revels believed political integrity mattered more than partisan loyalty. Corruption, he argued, would destroy Reconstruction from within.
He was right.
Within two years, federal support for Reconstruction collapsed, and Southern “Redeemer” governments regained control. The era of Black political representation in the South would not re-emerge at scale until nearly a century later.
⸻
Why History Went Quiet
So why don’t we hear more about Hiram Revels? It’s because he doesn’t fit neatly into modern racial narratives.
Revels wasn’t a radical revolutionary, nor a passive symbol. He wasn’t an ideological extremist, nor a victim caricature.
He was disciplined. Educated. Strategic. Moderate. Principled.
Revels believed in civil rights and constitutional order. And supported equality and reconciliation. He criticized corruption even when it came from his own side.
You can’t weaponize that easily.
And figures who cannot be weaponized often get sidelined. But his story is foundational to understanding Reconstruction. Before the civil rights movement of the 20th century, before Brown v. Board, before Martin Luther King Jr., there was a Black man standing in the U.S. Senate chamber, defeating Dred Scott with a roll-call vote.
48–8.
That number is not just arithmetic. It is a constitutional turning point.
⸻
The Legacy
Hiram Rhodes Revels died in 1901 while attending a church conference in Mississippi. He never saw the long arc of civil rights unfold in the 20th century. But he helped bend it. He took a seat once held by the president of the Confederacy and proved that the Reconstruction Amendments were not theoretical. He demonstrated that Black leadership in America was not a novelty—it was a constitutional reality.
History tried to forget him.
But the Senate record still holds the vote.
48–8.
It’s time to uncancel Hiram Rhodes Revels.
++++++++++++++++
SOURCES CITED:
For those who want the documentation behind this UnCancelled History post:
1️⃣ Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the U.S. Senate, 41st Congress, 2nd Session (Feb. 25, 1870).
Official record of the Senate vote confirming Revels — 48–8.
2️⃣ Congressional Globe, 41st Congress (February 1870 debates).
Primary source record of the Senate’s constitutional debate over Revels’ eligibility and the impact of Dred Scott v. Sandford.
3️⃣ U.S. Constitution
Article I, Section 3 (Senate qualifications)
13th Amendment (1865)
14th Amendment (1868)
15th Amendment (1870)
4️⃣ Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857).
The Supreme Court decision cited by opponents attempting to block Revels’ seating.
5️⃣ Hiram R. Revels to President Ulysses S. Grant, November 6, 1875.
Published in the Vicksburg Times (Nov. 1875). Revels’ public letter condemning corruption within Mississippi’s Republican Party.
6️⃣ Hollandsworth, James G. Jr.
Preacher in Politics: Hiram Rhodes Revels, 1827–1901 (LSU Press, 1970).
Definitive scholarly biography of Revels.
—
This isn’t fabricated history.
It’s documented.
It’s constitutional.
It happened.
#UnCancelledBlackHistory
The Real History of Valentine’s Day
Every February 14, Americans spend billions on roses, chocolate, jewelry, and dinner reservations. Kids pass out cards. Couples exchange gifts. Social media fills with hearts.
But here’s the question:
Who was Valentine?
Behind the candy and candlelight stands a 3rd-century Christian bishop who lived during one of the most unstable seasons in Roman history.
His name was Valentine of Terni.
A story that began in crisis.
The Roman Empire in the 200s A.D. was unraveling. Assassinations of emperors escalated. Plagues swept through cities. Borders were collapsing under invasion. Loyalty to Rome mattered more than ever—and religion was not merely personal. It was political.
Christians refused to sacrifice to Roman gods or declare the emperor divine. This refusal cast Christians as rebels against both emperor and empire.
Valentine was a bishop in Interamna (modern Terni, Italy). As a Christian leader, he preached faith in Christ, shepherded believers, and—according to long-standing tradition—defended marriage.
Here’s where the story gets interesting.
During the reign of Emperor Claudius II (A.D. 268–270), tradition says that soldiers were discouraged or possibly forbidden from marrying. Whether or not a formal written decree survives, Christian memory preserved Valentine as a defender of holy matrimony in a culture that increasingly valued military strength over family covenant.
So he married couples. Quietly. Courageously. Roman soldiers in love. Christian men and women seeking covenant. Valentine united them.
Valentine’s defiance drew imperial attention.
He was arrested and brought before Claudius II himself. According to early Christian accounts, Valentine didn’t shrink back. He spoke boldly about Christ.
Some stories say the emperor was impressed. Others say officials pushed for swift punishment. What remains consistent in the tradition is this:
Valentine refused to renounce his faith.
He was imprisoned.
While in jail, the story turns tender. Valentine met the jailer’s daughter, described in tradition as blind. He prayed for her—and she received her sight.
Can modern historians independently verify the miracle? No.
But the story endured for centuries because it reflected how the early Church remembered him: as a shepherd who loved not just with doctrine, but with compassion.
A Valentine from Valentine
Before his execution, tradition says Valentine wrote the young woman a note encouraging her faith. He signed it:
“From your Valentine.”
Whether those exact words were written in A.D. 269 cannot be proven. But the phrase stuck—and centuries later, it would appear on millions of greeting cards.
A Martyr’s Death
Valentine was led outside Rome along the Via Flaminia. After a severe beating, Rome beheaded the rebel bishop on February 14, around A.D. 269 or 270.
The early Church did not celebrate romance on that date.
It honored a martyr.
By the 4th century, February 14 was recognized as Saint Valentine’s Day. By the 5th century, the feast was firmly embedded in the Christian calendar.
For hundreds of years, it remained a day of remembrance—not roses.
The Middle Ages: Valentine Becomes a Lover’s Legend
In the 1300s, English poet Geoffrey Chaucer connected February 14 with birds choosing their mates. The imagery captured imaginations. In time, Valentine’s Day became associated with courtly love.
By the 1400s, lovers were exchanging notes. Printed cards made the holiday widely popular by the 1800s. In the next century, it was commercialized.
But commerce didn’t invent Valentine’s Day. It inherited it.
At its core, Valentine’s Day remembers a man who believed love was sacred—love for God, love for marriage, love for people under pressure.
Remembering Valentine on Valentine’s Day
The Roman Empire that executed Valentine eventually fell, but the bishop’s name and fame did not. Nearly eighteen centuries later, billions still speak it.
So this February 14, enjoy the chocolate. Buy the flowers. Write the card.
But remember the bishop behind the holiday, not just a symbol of romance. Valentine of Terni was a man who believed love was worth defending—even when it cost him his life.
And maybe, just maybe, that kind of love is exactly what our world still needs.
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PRIMARY SOURCES
1. Chronography of 354 (Depositio Martyrum)
– Earliest surviving Roman list of martyrs.
– Lists February 14 as the feast of Valentinus on the Via Flaminia.
2. Passio Sancti Valentini (The Passion of Saint Valentine)
– Likely 5th–6th century hagiographical account.
– Source for:
• Arrest under Claudius II
• Healing of the jailer’s daughter
• Imprisonment
• Execution on Via Flaminia
• “From your Valentine” tradition
3. Martyrologium Romanum (Roman Martyrology)
– Official Church listing of saints.
– Identifies Valentine of Terni and associates martyrdom with Claudius II.
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ROMAN HISTORICAL CONTEXT
4. Eutropius, Breviarium ab Urbe Condita
– Confirms reign of Claudius II (268–270).
5. Aurelius Victor, De Caesaribus
– Confirms Claudius II Gothicus and 3rd-century instability.
6. Historia Augusta
– Imperial biographies providing background on the era (used cautiously).
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MEDIEVAL ROMANTIC DEVELOPMENT
7. Geoffrey Chaucer, Parlement of Foules (c. 1382)
– First literary association of St. Valentine’s Day with mating birds and romantic pairing.
8. Charles, Duke of Orleans (1415 Valentine poem/letter)
– One of the earliest surviving Valentine love messages.
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MODERN HISTORICAL ANALYSIS
9. Jack B. Oruch,
“St. Valentine, Chaucer, and Spring in February,” Speculum 56, no. 3 (1981).
– Examines the development of romantic association.
10. Henry Ansgar Kelly,
Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine (1986).
– Detailed historical study of the feast’s evolution.
Henry W. Longfellow
The bells should not have mattered.
Yes, it was Christmas morning.
But the nation was at war. Cannons thundered across battlefields. Homes mourned sons who would never return. And in a quiet house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a broken man sat alone—his wife dead, his son nearly killed, his confidence in God badly shaken.
And yet, on December 25, 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow heard the bells.
Not bells of sentiment. Not symbols. Real church bells, pealing across frozen rooftops, daring to announce peace on earth while America bled itself nearly to death.
Longfellow listened.
And from that sound came one of the most honest Christian poems ever written on American soil.
Raised on Faith—and Questions
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in 1807 into a New England world steeped in Christian moral tradition. Scripture, church attendance, and reverence for God were assumed parts of life. Faith was not flashy—it was foundational.
Yet Longfellow’s Christianity was reflective rather than triumphant. He believed deeply, but quietly. His journals reveal a thoughtful, emotionally sensitive soul—one more inclined toward contemplation than certainty.
“I am not sure that I enjoy happiness,” he wrote as a young man. “There is always something wanting.”¹
That sense of something missing—rest, assurance, peace—would shadow him for the rest of his life.
Faith Under the Weight of Loss
Longfellow’s faith was not shaken by philosophy; it was tested by grief.
In 1829, his beloved sister Elizabeth died of tuberculosis at age twenty. She had been his closest confidant, his emotional anchor. Longfellow wrote in anguish, “I feel as if the beautiful world were suddenly shut to me.”²
Soon after came a deeper wound.
In 1831, he married Mary Potter. Their marriage was tender and hopeful. But tragedy struck when Mary miscarried at six months and died shortly thereafter. She was only twenty-two.
“I am weary of the world,” Longfellow confessed in his journal. “I am weary of life.”³ This was not rebellion against God—it was the lament of a believer struggling to reconcile loss with providence. At one point, he wrote words almost painful in their honesty:
“I hate the sight of pen, ink, and paper… I do not believe that I was born for such a lot.”⁴
The poet who would give America its most cherished verses nearly abandoned his calling altogether.
Success Without Comfort
Ironically, Longfellow’s darkest years coincided with rising fame. By the 1840s and 1850s, he was the most widely read poet in America. His works were read aloud in homes, quoted in sermons, cited by politicians, and memorized by schoolchildren.
Yet success did not soothe sorrow.
Longfellow discovered a hard biblical truth: achievement cannot heal grief, and applause cannot replace hope. His faith remained—but it grew quieter, more wounded, less confident.
Frances Appleton: Grace, Then Ashes
For a time, grace returned through Frances “Fanny” Appleton.
After a long and emotionally difficult courtship, Frances married Longfellow in 1843. Their marriage was joyful and affectionate. They raised six children in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a home filled with warmth, hospitality, and shared learning.
For nearly twenty years, Longfellow knew peace.
Then, on July 9, 1861, everything burned.
While sealing envelopes with hot wax, Frances’s dress caught fire. Longfellow rushed to extinguish the flames with his own hands and body, suffering burns himself. Frances died the next morning.
“My dear wife is dead,” he wrote. “I shall never be able to forget her.”⁵
After her death, Longfellow withdrew from public worship. His journals suggest not unbelief, but exhaustion. God had not vanished—but He felt painfully distant.
This was faith under ashes.
War, Slavery, and a Christian Conscience
Longfellow despised slavery and supported abolition as a moral necessity rooted in Christian conviction. Yet he dreaded war. He feared it would tear the nation’s soul beyond repair.
The Civil War proved him tragically correct.
Then his eldest son, Charles, ran away and joined the Union Army—without his father’s consent. In November 1863, Charles was grievously wounded, a bullet narrowly missing his spine. Longfellow rushed to Washington to nurse him.
“I feel as if I were walking in a dream,” he penned.⁶ The Christian poet now lived in a world where peace felt impossible.
And then Christmas came.
Christmas Morning, 1863
On December 25, 1863, Longfellow sat alone in his Cambridge home.
His wife was gone. His son lay wounded. His nation was drowning in blood.
And then he heard the bells.
Church bells rang across the frozen air, proclaiming the birth of Christ—God entering a broken world. The sound stirred something deeper than despair.
Longfellow picked up his pen.
“I heard the bells on Christmas Day,
Their old, familiar carols play…”
The poem does not deny suffering. It names it.
“And in despair I bowed my head:
‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said;
‘For hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.’”
This is not shallow faith. It is biblical faith—lament before hope, honesty before praise.
Then comes the turn.
“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.’”
Longfellow did not rediscover certainty that morning.
He rediscovered trust.
From Forgotten Poem to Beloved Carol
For years, Longfellow’s Christmas poem remained largely unknown outside literary circles. Its Civil War references felt too raw, too somber for seasonal celebration.
Bing Crosby: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Then, nearly a century later, the bells rang again.
In 1956, Bing Crosby, America’s most recognizable voice, recorded “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Crosby, whose own life carried private sorrow, understood the poem instinctively. America, still shaped by World War II and the Korean conflict, understood it too.
Crosby’s recording transformed Longfellow’s private lament into a national Christmas carol. The Civil War poem became a twentieth-century prayer—sung not because the world was peaceful, but because it was not.
The bells rang again—this time on radios, in schools, on city sidewalks, inside shops and stores, and in living rooms across the nation.
A Quiet Legacy of Faith
Longfellow never became a preacher. He never claimed a dramatic conversion. His Christianity remained thoughtful, restrained, and hard-won.
But “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” stands as one of the most authentically Christian poems in American history—not because it ignores suffering, but because it insists God is still present within it.
Longfellow’s faith did not shout.
lass=”yoast-text-mark” />>It listened.
lass=”yoast-text-mark” />>It waited.
>It endured.
The bells still ring.
God is not dead.
Nor doth He sleep.
The wrong shall fail.
The right prevail.
With peace on earth, and goodwill to men.
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ENDNOTES:
1. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Journal, 1829, in Samuel Longfellow, ed., Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 1 (Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1886), 79.
2. Longfellow, Journal, 1835, in Life, vol. 1, 169.
3. Longfellow, Journal, December 1835, in Life, vol. 1, 175.
4. Longfellow, Journal, 1838, in Life, vol. 2 (Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1886), 11.
5. Longfellow, letter, July 1861, in Life, vol. 2, 305.
6. Longfellow, Journal, November 1863, in Life, vol. 2, 344.
The winter of 1777 should’ve been the end of the Great American Revolution.
Everything was going wrong for our patriot forefathers. Throughout the fall of 1777, the British tightened their grip on the colonies. When Philadelphia fell, the war looked finished. It usually is when a capital city is occupied. Our Continental Congress suddenly became fugitives—“wanted men”—forced to flee for their lives.
Fear raced through the colonies as thousands of Americans were captured and thrown onto British “starving ships,” where most died.
It was a dark, desperate season in early America.
On December 12, 1777, the fugitive Congress granted Gen. George Washington “full power” to direct the war. A week later, Washington retreated with 11,000 soldiers to a small Pennsylvania encampment called Valley Forge—to wait for spring, and hopefully, for better days.
Washington’s army included men from ages 12 to 60. Most were Europeans, but free Black people and American Indians also served. By Christmas, the weather turned vicious. Bitter cold and heavy snow proved deadly to man and beast. Horses died by the hundreds. More than 2,500 troops froze, starved, or succumbed to typhoid, pneumonia, or dysentery.
Over 500 women—and countless children—also perished. Families often fought together, and wives kept the army fed, clothed, and nursed. Now they were dying too.
Washington recorded that nearly 2,900 of his men were “unfit for duty.” Many had no shoes; some had barely a shirt. Their footprints literally bled into the snow. Washington confessed that without “some great and capital change,” his army would “starve, dissolve, or disperse.”
If Washington’s army did not survive the winter, the Revolution would be lost.
It became so bleak that Congress even debated replacing Washington as commander-in-chief. Many politicians had lost faith in him. But his men hadn’t. One patriot soldier said Washington’s army was held together by a “spirit of liberty.” They believed in their general. They believed in their cause. “Give me liberty or give me death!” wasn’t just a slogan—it was the heartbeat of Valley Forge.
Washington needed a Christmas miracle.
And once again, this man of devout Christian faith turned to God. In the bitter cold of Valley Forge, Washington walked into the trees, knelt in the snow, and prayed.
This prayer became one of America’s most iconic images.
For nearly 200 years, American children learned how Washington’s prayers at Valley Forge turned the war. Presidents spoke of his prayer. Artists painted it. Sculptors carved it in marble. For generations, it was more recognized than his crossing of the Delaware. You could find Washington praying at Valley Forge in homes, classrooms, churches, courthouses, and public buildings across America.
Washington recalled that terrible winter:
“No history can furnish an instance of an army’s suffering such uncommon hardships…to see men without clothes to cover their nakedness, without blankets to lay on, without shoes—by which their marches might be traced by the blood from their feet—and almost as often without provisions…is a mark of patience and obedience which can scarce be paralleled.”
Washington’s desperate prayers worked.
When Virginia’s fiery governor, Patrick Henry, heard of the suffering, he was outraged and demanded that Congress act. And suddenly, they did. A new quartermaster was appointed, and within days, Washington’s men received clothing, food, blankets, ammunition, and critically needed supplies. In February, a Prussian drillmaster—Baron von Steuben—arrived and transformed Washington’s volunteers into disciplined soldiers. Morale surged.
Throughout that winter—especially at Christmas—a particular carol echoed through the camp. Its opening line proclaimed:
“God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.”
That song reminded weary patriots that God was still in control. He alone brought the “rest.” If God was with them, what did they have to fear?
So they marched beside General Washington—a leader who had already escaped death five times. Horses had been shot from underneath him. Bullets ripped through his clothing. His hat was blown off. Yet not a single shot ever struck his body.
Still, a Lutheran pastor named Henry Muhlenberg was even more impressed by Washington’s spiritual leadership. He wrote:
“General Washington rode around among his army and admonished each to fear God, to put away wickedness…From all appearances General Washington…respects God’s Word, believes in the atonement through Christ, and bears himself in humility and gentleness.”
Muhlenberg concluded:
“Therefore, the Lord God has marvelously preserved [Washington] from harm…and has held him in His hand as a chosen vessel.”
Washington’s steady leadership—and God’s Providence—turned that winter into a turning point.
Valley Forge united, strengthened, and refined the patriot cause. It inspired new enlistments and breathed fresh resolve into the American people.
Washington’s response to God’s provision was powerful. He ordered a “religious day” of fasting, humiliation, and prayer on April 22, 1778. All work was to cease. Every soldier was to attend worship. Washington declared:
“To the distinguished character of patriot, it should be our highest glory to laud the more distinguished Character of Christian.”
America has endured many hard Christmases since Valley Forge—war, depression, crisis, disease, and national uncertainty.
And yet, through it all, Americans still pause to remember the Reason for the Season. We still gather. We still hope. And many still pray.
You don’t need snow, muskets, or a military camp to experience a Valley Forge moment. Every one of us will endure winters of trial and trouble. But Washington showed us a powerful pattern: when the night is coldest, kneel…because dawn is coming.
And maybe that old carol that lifted weary soldiers in 1777 should become our song today:
“God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.
For Jesus Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day;
To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray.
O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy,
O tidings of comfort and joy.”