(February 16, 1812–November 22, 1875), was a U.S. Senator, 1855–72; and Vice-President under Ulysses S. Grant, 1873–75. He took a strong stand against slavery, and in 1848 he helped found the Free Soil Party. Henry Wilson declared:
Men who see not God in our history have surely lost sight of the fact that, from the landing of the Mayflower to this hour, the great men whose names are indissolubly associated with the colonization, rise, and progress of the Republic have borne testimony to the vital truths of Christianity.2451
On December 23, 1866, in speaking at Natick, Massachusetts, to the Young Men’s Christian Association, Henry Wilson said:
God has given us an existence in this Christian republic, founded by men who proclaim as their living faith, amid persecution and exile: “We give ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ and the Word of His Grace, for the teaching, ruling and sanctifying of us in matters of worship and conversation.”
Privileged to live in an age when the selectest influences of the religion of our fathers seem to be visibly descending upon our land, we too often hear the Providence of God, the religion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the inspiration of the Holy Bible doubted, questioned, denied with an air of gracious condescension.
Remember ever, and always, that your country was founded, not by the “most superficial, the lightest, the most irreflective of all European races,” but by the stern old Puritans who made the deck of the Mayflower an altar of the living God, and whose first act on touching the soil of the new world was to offer on bended knees thanksgiving to Almighty God.2452