America's Prophet

Excerpt

On a trip to visit my in-laws on Cape Cod, we stopped off in Plymouth and I took a tour of the Mayflower II. A reenactor was reading from the Bible. "Exodus fourteen," he explained. "The Israelites are trapped in front of the Red Sea, and the Egyptians are about to catch them. The people complain, and Moses declares, 'Hold your peace! The Lord shall fight for you.' Our leader read us that passage during our crossing." Moses, on board the Mayflower.
On a trip to visit my parents in Savannah, I stopped off at my childhood synagogue. A letter from George Washington hangs in the lobby, sent after his election to the presidency: "May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivered the Hebrews from their Egyptian oppressors, planted them in the promised land, whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these
United States as an independent nation, still continue to water them with the dews of Heaven." Exodus, on Washington's pen in the first weeks of the presidency.
On a trip to visit my sister in Philadelphia, we went to see the Liberty Bell. The quotation on its face is from Leviticus 25, which God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai: proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. The law of Sinai, in the bell tower where the Declaration of Independence was signed.
In coming weeks, I found a similar story over and over again. Columbus comparing himself to Moses when he sailed in 1492. George Whitefield quoting Moses as he traveled the colonies in the 1730s forging the Great Awakening. Thomas Paine, in Common Sense, comparing King George to the pharaoh. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, in the summer of 1776, proposing that Moses be on the seal of the United States. And the references didn't stop. Harriet Tubman adopting Moses' name on the Underground Railroad. Abraham Lincoln being eulogized as Moses' incarnation. The Statue of Liberty being molded in Moses' honor. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson tapping into Moses during wartime. Cecil B. DeMille recasting Moses as a hero for the Cold War. Martin Luther King, Jr., likening himself to Moses on the night before he was killed. The sheer ubiquity was staggering and, for me, had been completely unknown.
For four hundred years, one figure stands out as the surprising symbol of America. One person has inspired more Americans than any other. One man is America's true founding father. His name is Moses.

From the book AMERICA'S PROPHET: Moses and the American Story by Bruce Feiler. Copyright (c) 2009 by Bruce Feiler. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.