James Madison, the author of our Constitution said in his proclamation of a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1815, “No people ought to feel greater obligations to celebrate the goodness of the Great Disposer of Events and the Destiny of Nations than the people of the United States of America.”

Abraham Lincoln was presented with the gift of a Bible by a group of African-Americans then said, “I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to a man. All the good from the Savior of the world is communicated through this Book; but for the Book we could not know right from wrong. All the things desirable to man are contained in it.

He further stated, “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched us, and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too proud to pray to the God that made us.”

Daniel Webster said, “If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity. Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor can any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.”

Webster further stated in his address to the New York Historical Society in 1852, “ if we and our posterity…live always in the fear of God and shall respect His Commandments… we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country…But if we… neglect religious instructions and authority; violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality and recklessly destroy the Constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe my overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote, “God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their own firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath! Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever. Yes we did produce a near perfect Republic. But will they keep it or will they in the enjoyment of plenty lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.”

Jefferson also stated, “ I shall need too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His Providence and our riper years with His wisdom and power, and to whose goodness I ask you to join in supplications with me that He will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures that whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbations of all nations.”

The Reverend Fredrick Douglas, a great and noble man of God once said, “I have one great political idea… The best expression of it I have found in the Bible. It is in substance, “Righteousness exalteth a nation: sin is a reproach to any people.” (Proverbs 14:34) This constitutes my politics, the negative and the positive and the whole of my politics… I feel it my duty to do all in my power to infuse this idea into the public mind.”