The First Week of July

By Bill Federer

Publisher’s Note…

With Independence Day approaching, I thought it would be interesting to review some of the important events in our nation’s history which reflected God’s hand on our nation and what some of our national leaders had to say about God’s involvement in those events. The following notes are from Bill Federer’s book American Minute that can be purchased on his web site at www.amercianminute.com, which I highly recommend readers visit.

July 1st

Teddy Roosevelt and Rough Riders charged up Cuba’s San Juan Hill and captured it this day, July 1, 1898. After eight hours of heavy fighting over fifteen hundred Americans lay dead or wounded. Just four months prior, the U.S. ship Maine was blown up in Havana’s Harbor. Roosevelt resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and organized the first volunteer cavalry, made up of polo riders, cowboys and even Indians. After the battle, President McKinley wrote in July of 1898: “At a time...of the...glorious achievements of the naval and military arms of our beloved country at Santiago de Cuba, it is fitting that we should pause and... reverently bow before the throne of divine grace and give devout praise to God, who holdeth the nations in the hollow of His Hands.”

July 2nd

One bullet grazed his elbow, but a second lodged in the back of President James Garfield, who was shot this day, July 2, 1881, as he waited in the Washington train station. He had been in office four months. Though not wounded seriously, un-sterile medical practices caused him to die two months later. A distinguished Civil War major general, James Garfield was also a college president and a preacher for the Disciples of Christ. As a Congressman, Chairing the Committee on Appropriations, James Garfield stated in July of 1876: “If the next century does not find us a great nation...it will be because those who represent the...morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.”

July 3rd

Washington, D.C., was in a panic as 70,000 Confederate troops were marching toward it just sixty miles away. The furious fighting lasted three days. As General Lee found his ammunition running low, he ordered General Pickett to make a direct attack. After an hour of murderous fire and bloody hand-to-hand combat, the Confederates were pushed back and the Battle of Gettysburg ended this day, July 3, 1863, with over 50,000 casualties. President Lincoln confided: “When everyone seemed panic-stricken...I went to my room...and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed.”

July 4th

The Declaration of Independence was approved this day, July 4, 1776. John Hancock, the first to sign, said: “the price on my head has just doubled.” Benjamin Franklin signed saying, “We must hang together or most assuredly we shall hang separately.” Of the 56 signers: 17 lost their fortunes, 12 had their homes destroyed, 9 fought and died, 5 were arrested as traitors, and 2 lost sons in the War. As Samuel Adams signed, he said: “We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.” At the 150th anniversary of the Declaration, 1926, President Calvin Coolidge stated: “It is but natural that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence should open with a reference to Nature’s God and should close in the final paragraphs with an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world and an assertion of reliance on Divine Providence...No one can examine this record and escape the conclusion that in the great outline of its principles the Declaration was the result of the religious teachings of the preceding period...The Declaration is a great spiritual document.”

July 5th

Once political enemies they became close friends, and died yesterday, July 4th in the year 1826. An awe swept America as these two men, at distance of 700 hundred miles from each other, died on the same day exactly 50 years since they both signed the Declaration of Independence. Their names: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. President John Quincy Adams, in an Executive Order, stated: “A coincidence...so wonderful gives confidence...that the patriotic efforts of these...men were Heaven directed, and furnishes a new...hope that the prosperity of these States is under the special protection of a kind Providence.” In his Second Annual Message to Congress, 1826, President John Quincy Adams stated: “Since your last meeting at this place, the fiftieth anniversary of the day when our independence was declared...two of the principal actors in that solemn scene - the hand that penned the ever-memorable Declaration and the voice that sustained it in debate - were by one summons, at the distance of 700 miles from each other, called before the Judge of All to account for their deeds done upon earth.”

July 6th

Prior to the Civil War there were two major political parties in the United States: the Democrats, who believed Americans should have the freedom of choice to own slaves; and the Whigs, who wanted to be the big tent party embracing free and slave states. The Whigs diminished in power and in Ripon, Wisconsin, an anti-slavery group met in February of 1854 to discuss a new party. Later that year, on this day, July 6, 1854, anti-slavery activists came from all over the North to a State Convention in Jackson, Michigan, where they named their new party the Republican Party. They demanded the Fugitive Slave Law be repealed, and that polygamy, the having of more than one wife, which was growing in western territories, be stopped by supporting the traditional definition of marriage as one man and one woman. The chief plank in the Republican Party’s original National Platform, 1856, was “to prohibit...those twin relics of barbarism: polygamy and slavery.”

July 7th

Hawaii became a U.S. Territory this day, July 7, 1898, as President McKinley signed the Treaty of Annexation. Discovered by Captain James Cook in 1778, the islands were soon united by King Kamehamaha. After his death in 1819, his son, with his mother as prime minister, abolished their pagan religion which included human sacrifice. The next year the first missionaries, led by Hiram Bingham, arrived from New England, creating a written language and translating the Bible. Hawaii’s Motto, “The Life of the Land is Perpetuated in Righteousness,” was first uttered by Queen Ke’opuolani in 1825 as she was baptized into the Christian faith.