I do not claim that Lincoln Winthrop and Bradford were crypto-Jews. They were not. The point is that classical Israel?’s (and classical Zionism?’s) contribution to Americanism is incalculable. No modern historian or thinker I am aware of?—not Huntington or Morison or Perry or Mead or Perry Miller or even Martin Marty or Sydney Ahlstrom?—has done justice to this extraordinary fact. They seem to have forgotten what the eminent 19th-century Irish historian William Lecky recognized: that ?“Hebraic mortar cemented the foundations of American democracy.?” And even Lecky, I suspect, did not grasp the full extent of this truth. Unless we do grasp it, we can never fully understand Americanism?—or anti-Americanism.---VII
There have been at least four crucial turning points?—?“climacterics,?” Churchill would have called them?—at which Americans spoke explicitly and simultaneously about the religious content and the world mission of Americanism. The first was when the colonies declared their independence. Here is Dr. Banfield, in 1783:
?’Twas [God] who raised a Joshua to lead the tribes of Israel in the field of battle; raised and formed a Washington to lead on the troops of his chosen States. ?’Twas He who in Barak?’s day spread the spirit of war in every breast to shake off the Canaanitish yoke, and inspired thy inhabitants, O America!
In 1799, with the Great Republic safely established, Abiel Abbot delivered a Thanksgiving sermon:
It has been often remarked that the people of the United States come nearer to a parallel with Ancient Israel, than any other nation upon the globe. Hence OUR AMERICAN ISRAEL is a term frequently used; and our common consent allows it apt and proper.
Washington?’s early biographer Jared Sparks quotes him to the effect that ?“there never was a people who had more reason to acknowledge a divine interposition in their affairs than those of the United States.?”
The second climacteric was the Civil War. Lincoln?’s understanding of that conflict, writes Edmund Wilson, ?“grew out of the religious tradition of the New England theology of Puritanism.?” In 1862, Lincoln made ?“a solemn vow before God?” to free the South?’s slaves. William Wolf notes that this vow was ?“more in conformance with Old Testament than with New Testament religion,?” was ?“imbedded in Lincoln?’s biblical piety,?” and ?“came to him as part of the religious heritage of the nation.?” The ?“climactic expression of his biblical faith,?” according to Wolf, was the Second Inaugural address:
It reads like a supplement to the Bible. In it there are fourteen references to God, four direct quotations from Genesis, Psalms, and Matthew, and other allusions to scriptural teaching.
?“We can appreciate even in these few words,?” writes Sidney Ahlstrom of the Second Inaugural, ?“the astounding profundity of this self-educated child of the frontier, this son of a Hard-shell Baptist who never lost hold of the proposition that nations and men are instruments of the Almighty.?” If Americanism is a religion, this is its holiest document after the Bible and the Declaration; and Lincoln is its greatest prophet.
By Sam Adams of Braintree
