"All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible."
~ Noah Webster, The History of the United States (1832)
Noah Webster...wasn't he the dictionary guy? Yes, he was the dictionary guy, but that is near to: Thomas Edison, wasn't he the light bulb guy.
Noah was born the son of a weaver/farmer. His love for learning persuaded his parents to send him off to Yale, when he was 16, in 1774. His thoughts and opinions were shaped by the American Revolution that was occurring at that time. Upon graduation in 1778, he wished to be a lawyer but that was not to be. He became a teacher in several towns in Connecticut, and proceeded to change American education. Dissatisfaction with overcrowding, unacceptable books, and colleagues who were unprepared inspired him to make repairs. Sounds a bit like today.
Noah felt that the books that came from England were not appropriate for American children. So he created a text specifically for these children: A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. This was an immensely popular book, it was used for over 100 years to teach reading spelling and pronunciation. The Noah Webster House, Museum of West Hartsford History notes that Benjamin Franklin used the book to teach his granddaughter.
Mr Webster created the first American dictionary when he realized the various areas of these United States were speaking, spelling and using words differently. His thinking was Americans should speak and spell as Americans and not as Englishmen, nor as tribes. In 1828 his dictionary was completed after 27 years, and contained 70,000 words. It changed the spellings of such words as colour and musick, and added words such as skunk and squash. He has been called the "Father of American Scholarship and Education"
In 1784 Noah did go on to be a lawyer. He graduated from America's first law school, in Connecticut. He wrote textbooks, laws for copyrights and edited newspapers magazines.
From the quotes I have seen, it strikes me that he was a Christian man of faith. He saw the central need for God in our decisions and practices of governance.
"When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, "just men who will rule in the fear of God." The preservation of [our] government depends on the faithful discharge of this Duty; if the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded. If [our] government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine Commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the Laws." -History of United States by Noah Webster.
Words for then and now.
Noah's early history was as a free thinker and a follower of Rosseau (according to Rollins, "The Long Journey of Noah Webster"). He was a strong Federalist, and an opponent of the Jeffersonians and the Republicanism.
Around the age of 50 he became a devout Congregationalist, and preached that the nation needed to be Christianized (Snyder, K. Alan. Defining Noah Webster: Mind and Morals in the Early Republic. (1990)). He was a founder of the Connecticut Society for Abolition of Slavery, but did not support the legality of the view that the North should interfere with the South. A swing and a miss on the slavery issue to my line of thinking.
