But perhaps most remarkable was not his description of what our nation should look like, but why it should be a nation at all. For the purpose of government, he insisted, is the happiness of its people; and the source of that happiness, he wrote, “consists in virtue.” Government governs best, Adams argued, when it makes its citizens virtuous.
The first Catholic Bishop of these United States reiterated Adam’s view in his Prayer for the New Government some fifteen years later. Archbishop John Carroll (whose brother signed the Declaration of Independence) prayed that President Washington conduct the nation’s business with “righteousness,” and this, he went on, was how he was to do it: “by encouraging due respect for virtue and religion; by a faithful execution of the laws in justice and mercy; and by restraining vice and immorality.”
Indeed, in the farewell address of the first President of the United States in 1797, he too declared that “of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are the indispensable supports.”
So it is that many of our founding fathers saw the pursuit of virtue as the foundation of the American experiment in self government. For as Adams elsewhere reflects: fear is the foundation of the governments of kings and despots, but this new American nation has been founded for the pursuit of happiness, and the virtue which makes it possible.
So what is this virtue on which we have been founded? The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines it as "a habitual and firm disposition to do the good,” a disposition best lived out in faith, hope, love, prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude.
Likewise, Saint Paul defines virtue today in his spiritual testament, written from a jail cell in Rome, shortly before he was martyred for the faith. In this remarkable letter to the Phillipians, our patron defines virtue as imitation of Christ, counseling his readers to “do nothing out of selfishness or vainglory; but rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others.”
He calls us to imitate Christ, who the night before he died for us “lays aside his garments and girds himself with a towel, who bends down to wash the Apostles’ feet and asks them: ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.’”
And then he opens his arms on a Cross, out of love for us in our sinfulness, empties himself and takes on the form of a slave, obedient unto death
Saint Eusebius of Caesarea put it another way: “[Christ] took upon himself the labors of the suffering members, and made our sicknesses his and suffered on our account all our woes and labors by the laws of love, in conformity with his great love for humanity.”3
So if Adams and Washington and Archbishop Carroll are right, and the foundation of American government and the American way of life is virtue, then the foundation of the American way of life and of this nation is to be like Christ. And our greatness may be found not in how many towers of Babel we might build to show how great we are, nor in how many nations or empires we can conquer to show how powerful we are. No...our greatness lies in our goodness and in our capacity to be the shining city on the hill, the nation who is good and true, with liberty and justice for all.
They understood that in the House of Representatives that night when they gathered in the presence of President and Mrs. Lincoln to honor the Christian Commission, a voluntary association of religious organizations which provided medical and chaplaincy services to Union troops. Preachers spoke, and so did Congressmen and other important representatives of the Federal Government. The talks went on and on.
But when the twenty-seven year old Chaplain Charles C. McCabe came to the lectern something happened.
Only the year before, McCabe explained, he has been captured by Confederate forces and was imprisoned with other Union troops in Richmond. He told of the night in Libby Prison when they heard of the Union Victory at Gettysburg, and how he led the Union soldiers in singing a song he had ripped out of the Atlantic Monthly, written by the poet and anti-slavery activist Julia Ward Howe three years earlier. And so he sang it for all these big and important people.
According to one paper: “Applause greeted the ending of nearly every stanza,” and the President asked that he sing it again. The papers told of tears running down Lincoln’s face, especially as the young McCabe sang the last verse:
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave, He is wisdom to the mighty,
He is succor to the brave,
So the world shall be his footstool,
and the soul of time his slave, Our God is marching on.
One last story:
In 1783, following the end of the Revolutionary War and the birth of this republic, George Washington gave up command of the Continental Army. Yet despite the victory, it was a time of great uncertainty and dissension, and it would be five years until Washington would become our first President.
And so it was from Newburgh, New York, where a few months before he had put down a mutiny by some of his former soldiers, the former commander-in-chief wrote to the Governors of the fledgling states with advice on the road ahead. He concluded his letter with a prayer, which should be hours as well:
“that God would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without which, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.”
