Jeffry H. Morrison - John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic

AND THE FOUNDING OF THE

AMERICAN REPUBLIC

AND THE FOUNDING OF THE

AMERICAN REPUBLIC

JEFFRY H. MORRISON

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

All Rights Reserved

undpress.nd.edu

Copyright 2005 by University of Notre Dame

Paperback edition printed in 2007

Reprinted in 2015

Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Morrison, Jeffry H., 1961

John Witherspoon and the founding of the American republic / Jeffry H. Morrison

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-268-03485-6 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-268-03485-0 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-268-03508-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-268-03508-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Witherspoon, John, 17231794. 2. Witherspoon, John, 17231794Political and social views. 3. StatesmenUnited StatesBiography. 4. United States. Declaration of IndependenceSignersBiography. 5. Presbyterian ChurchUnited StatesClergyBiography. 6. United StatesPolitics and government17751783. I. Title.

E302.6.W7M677 2005

973.3'092dc22

2005004931

ISBN 9780268087227

This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at .

If we could go right back to the elements of societies and examine the very first records of their histories, I have no doubt that we should there find the first cause of their prejudices, habits, dominating passions, and all that comes to be called the national character. America is the only country in which we can watch the natural quiet growth of society and where it is possible to be exact about the influence of the point of departure on the future of a state.

Alexis de Tocqueville

William Wilberforce once remarked that a man he had just met was sadly in need of the chastening hand of a sound classical education. The same can be said of me; but fortunately I had the benefit of many chastening hands (and brains) along the way to writing this book. To begin with, there were my teachers at Georgetown University: Walter Berns, George Carey, and Joshua Mitchell. Carey, that most enlightened person, made especially trenchant suggestions. There were also these colleagues and mentors who helped me in innumerable ways: Daniel Dreisbach of the American University; my former colleagues in the Department of Political Science at the United States Air Force Academy, particularly Paul Carrese and Stephen Knott (now at the University of Virginia); John Witte, Jr., of Emory University Law School; Mark Hall of George Fox University; Garrett Ward Sheldon of the University of Virginias College at Wise; Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute; Barry Ryan of Regent University; and Robert George of Princeton University. I owe a special debt to my editor (now friend) at the University of Notre Dame Press, its associate director, Jeffrey Gainey. Of course, as academic authors are compelled to say, none of these people is to be held accountable for the books shortcomings and errors, though I do recall Publius saying something like I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man.

I received help from a number of archivists and librarians while researching. Among these I am especially grateful to: Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., of the American Philosophical Society, for making available to me his files on Witherspoon; Marvin W. Kranz of the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; Ben Primer and Margaret Sherry at the Princeton University Library; and Dr. Elizabeth Stone, archivist of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.

Last, I wish to acknowledge the extraordinary generosity of the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; the Earhart Foundation of Ann Arbor, Michigan; the Intercollegiate Studies Institute of Wilmington, Delaware; and the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, New Jersey, all of whom under - wrote my efforts; and the faculty and staff of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, which hosted me and provided a visiting professorship during the academic year 20032004.

In the northwest quadrant of that monumental city, Washington, D.C., a bronze statue of John Witherspoon towers over traffic between Connecticut Avenue and N Street: stately, imposing, and altogether ignored. Most people who work or live in Washington, even residents of fashionable Northwest, are equally ignorant of its existence (it is a stones throw from a well-known statue of Longfellow) and the man it memorializes.

That monumental statue, now one of three in the U.S. to Witherspoonanother, equally ignored, is in Philadelphias Fairmount Parkwas erected in the early twentieth century in front of the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, whose members wished to commemorate one of their own denomination who had signed the Declaration of Independence and had earned, they thought, a distinguished place in American history.1 Those Presbyterians wished to memorialize Witherspoon both as a churchman and as a statesman. A Witherspoon Memorial Association was formed; private donations were solicited from Andrew Carnegie and others; the sculptor William Couper, creator of the Longfellow statue in Washington and the heroic likeness of John Smith at Jamestown, was commissioned; and in 1909 the statue was unveiled and dedicated. At the dedication ceremony addresses were given by Lord James Bryce, the English ambassador, and by President Woodrow Wilson, a son of Witherspoons Princeton, whose address was titled a Review of the Life and Services of Witherspoon.2 Around that time the statue became, as so many things eventually do become, the property of the federal government.3 Years passed, the Church of the Covenant was torn down, and in 1976, during the bicentennial of the Declaration, a committee of Presbyterians was formed to have the Witherspoon statue moved to the National Presbyterian Church on Nebraska Avenue. In the event, the statue remained where it had always been, and Witherspoon himself continued to fade from memory.

I began this project in 1994, the bicentennial of Witherspoons death. In the decade I have been studying Witherspoon I have conceived a fondness for that statue, partly because I like underdogs, but mostly because it teaches two telling object lessons. First, it illustrates how thoroughly Witherspoon has been ignored in the century since its commissioning; second, it shows up the confusion that sometimes exists in modern America over the proper degree of separation between church and state. Apparently the proposed transfer of the statue in 1976 occasioned some hand-wringing over the constitutionality of the federal government honoring a minister with a statue in the first place. Two bills (H. R.12778 and S.2996)4 were introduced in Congress that year authorizing the relocation of the Witherspoon monument, but the project died a quiet death, lost in the welter of bicentennial activities and what a contemporary wag called tons of red-white-and-blue junk. Nevertheless, because he was a preeminent churchman and statesman, Witherspoon still affords an ideal point of departure, to appropriate Alexis de Tocquevilles language, for addressing questions about religion and politics and, more broadly, about the American founding.