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Yours are some of the most perceptive questions posed recently on these pages; however, they are the ones each of us should be exploring and sharing with others.

Several years ago, I came across an amazing 1872 history of the principles and ideas which gave birth to America's founding.

By his notes in the Preface, the writer had a long history of writing and publishing on America's historical events, but the work was, in his own words, his attempt "to form in my mind a picture of the many streams that met and united in the current which terminated in the broad expanse of a nation." The historian is Richard Frothingham, and his outstanding volume is entitled, "Rise of the Republic of the United States," and it can be read on line.

This 600+-page history traces the ideas which gave birth to the American founding. Throughout, Richard Frothingham, the historian, develops the idea that it is "the Christian idea of man" which allowed the philosophy underlying the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to become a reality--an idea which recognizes the individual and the Source of his/her "Creator"-endowed life, liberty and law.

A more recent "find" was more surprising and can be read online also. the "Library of Congress - Historical Collections" -

"African-American Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection," 1820-1920; American Memory, Library of Congress

Washington, DC,

CENTENNIAL Thanksgiving Sermon, DELIVERED BY REV. B. W. ARNETT, B. D., AT ST. PAUL A. M. E. CHURCH, URBANA, OHIO 1876

In this remarkable Sermon on the anniversary of Independence, Rev. Benjamin W. Arnett traces the histories of various forms of government throughout history, as well as that of the ideas underlying that of America's founding and subsequent development.

Any who read that work today will discover a document worth studying, including his analysis in the portion beginning on P. 47 of what must surely have been the beginnings of what has, today, become the so-called "progressive" movement to "change" America.