That kingdom of the just, which had floated in the virtuous visions of John Adams, while he was toiling for his country’s independence, – that kingdom of our Father in Heaven, for which his son taught us to approach him in daily prayer, – has it yet come; and if not, have our advances towards it been as pure, as virtuous, as self-denying, as were those of our fathers in the days of their trial of adversity? … The highest, the transcendent glory of the American Revolution was this – it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the precepts of Christianity.
– John Quincy Adams, U.S. Representative for Massachusetts,
April 1837
