Jonathan Edwards: 3/22/1758

On MARCH 22, 1758, Princeton University President Jonathan Edwards died from a smallpox inoculation. Valedictorian of his class at Yale, Jonathan Edwards' preaching began the Great Awakening, a revival so widespread history credits it with uniting the colonies prior to the Revolution.

Of the awakening, Ben Franklin wrote: "It was wonderful to see...From being thoughtless or indifferent...it seemed as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk thro' the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in..every street."

Jonathan Edwards' grandson was Yale President Timothy Dwight. On July 4, 1798, Timothy Dwight explained how Voltaire's atheism inspired the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, 1793-1794, where 40,000 people were beheaded: "The...ends proposed by the Illuminati...are the overthrow of religion, government and human society...Murder, butchery and war...are declared by them to be completely justifiable...No villainy...can be named which was not vindicated...Satanic lips polluted the pages of God...inundated the country with...immorality...Where religion prevails, Illumination cannot make disciples, a French Directory cannot govern, a nation cannot be made slaves" Timothy Dwight concluded: "To destroy us therefore...our enemies must first...seduce us from the house of God."

American Minute with Bill Federer

Charles Sumner: 3/11/1874

Ben Franklin was the first president of the first anti-slavery society in the United States. Richard Bassett, a Signer of the Constitution, converted to Methodism, freed all his slaves and paid them as hired labor. John Quincy Adams fought to end slavery by removing Congress' Gag Rule. It was Senator Charles Sumner's vehement stand against slavery that resulted in Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina violently beating Sumner on the head with a cane while he was seated at his desk on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Charles Sumner died MARCH 11, 1874, having never fully recovered from those injuries. A founder of the Republican Party, Charles Sumner served as a Senator from Massachusetts for 23 years. He stated: "Familiarity with that great story of redemption, when God raised up the slave-born Moses to deliver His chosen people from bondage, and with that sublimer story where our Saviour died a cruel death that all men, without distinction of race, might be saved, makes slavery impossible." Charles Sumner continued: "There is no reason for renouncing Christianity, or for surrendering to the false religions; nor do I doubt that Christianity will yet prevail over the earth as the waters cover the sea."

American Minute with Bill Federer