America’s Godly Heritage Part 6 by David Barton

One early textbook of great influence was The New England Primer. First introduced in Boston in 1690, it was a schoolbook from which Americans learned to read until 1930; it is what would today be described as a first grade textbook. Not only were many of the Founding Fathers raised on this textbook but they even reprinted it to make sure that it was available for children in their generation. (For example, Samuel Adams reprinted the Primer for students in Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin for students in Pennsylvania, and Noah Webster for students in Connecticut.

After introducing students to the alphabet, the Primer presented a special section to be memorized – a section in which each letter of the alphabet was accompanied by a Bible verse:  

A – A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother [Proverbs 10:1]. 

B – Better is little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith [Proverbs 15:16].  

C – Come unto Christ all ye that labor and are heavy laden and He will give you rest [Matthew 11:28].

In the back of this first grade book were over a hundred questions, including: 

samuel adams (left), benjamin franklin (middle), and noah webster (right)

each reprinted THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER for students in their states. Which is the fifth commandment? What is forbidden in the fifth commandment? What is required in the sixth commandment? What is forbidden in the sixth commandment?

There were dozens of similar Bible-oriented questions. Students educated under this system were frequently characterized by what many today would consider exceptional achievements at a very young age. For example, when John Quincy Adams was only eleven years old, he was assigned to be the official secretary to his father, John Adams, America’s Ambassador to the British Court of Saint James;  and at the still tender age of fourteen, he was appointed as the official diplomatic secretary to Francis Dana, America’s Ambassador to Russia. (For many similar examples of achievement, see Four Centuries of American Education, available at www.wallbuilders.com.)

John Quincy Adams’ distinguished political career spanned seven decades. Following his service in the American Revolution, he was a foreign ambassador under Presidents George Washington, John Adams, and James Madison. In fact, Washington said that he was “the most valuable public character we have abroad, and will prove himself to be the ablest of all our Diplomatic Corps.” Adams was also a U. S. Senator under President Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State under President James Monroe, and then was elected the nation’s sixth President before finishing his career with an additional seventeen years in the U. S. House of Representatives. 

On July 4, 1837 (sixty-one years after the Declaration had been signed), a very elderly John Quincy Adams delivered a patriotic oration to a large gathering in Massachusetts. Having been an eye-witness and a participant in the birth of America, he had been selected as the keynote speaker at the celebration. Adams began by asking the assembled crowd a rhetorical question – and then answering it: 

Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day [i.e., on the Fourth of July]? Is it not that in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?

According to John Quincy Adams, on the Fourth of July, 1776, the Founders had taken the principles that came into the world through the birth of Christ and used those principles to birth a nation, thus joining together Christian principles and civil government in an “indissoluble” bond.  

Ironically, today’s ivory tower elites assert just the opposite – they wrongly claim that the Founders did not want an indissoluble bond  but rather that they wanted a so-called “separation” in order to keep Biblical principles out of civil government. Fortunately, however, the Founding Fathers’ own records document their steadfast conviction that Christian principles were to be preserved in the civil arena. John Jay provides a clear example.