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Our national charter...
Calvin Coolidge on the Declaration of Independence: "In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man -- these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles... (Read more)

What's so great about George Washington?
By Carson Holloway --I don't mean this as a rhetorical question, implying that Washington really was not great-- as such a question might be intended by many modern scholarly debunkers of great men. I intend it, rather, as a real question from which we can gain some valuable insight: what exactly made George Washington great? What was it about him that makes him one of the greatest American presidents and perhaps even the... (Read more)

Booker T. Washington -- Educator
Born in 1858 the son of a slave and himself a slave, Booker T. Washington gained his freedom through emancipation. Some of his greatest accomplishments are hardly ever mentioned. He grew up as he describes "in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings". With nothing more than desire burning in his heart, the young Booker T. was able to learn how to read and eventually start a school for former slaves and children of former... (Read more)

Benjamin Franklin
Few men have exhibited a more worthy conduct than Dr. Franklin, through his long life. Through every vicissitude of fortune, he seems to have been distinguished for his sobriety and temperance, for his extraordinary perseverance and resolution. He was not less distinguished for his veracity, for the constancy of his friendship, for his candour, and his fidelity to his moral and civil obligations. In the early part of his life, he acknowledged himself to have been sceptical in religion, but he became in maturer years, according to the testimony of his intimate friend, Dr. William Smith, a believer in divine... (Read more)

James Armistead Lafayette
It was the year 1781, a critical point in the Revolutionary war. Benedict Arnold, the American turncoat who was now a general in the British army, needed a spy. And there stood James, a runaway slave. Arnold trusted James. So did Lord Cornwallis. After all, hadn't James guided the British troops over unfamiliar roads? James was so trusted that when he traveled between camps, British officers would speak openly about their strategies in front of him. But what Arnold and Cornwallis didn't know... (Read more)