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“The City upon a Hill” by John Winthrop: what is it about?

The “City upon a Hill” section of the essay called “A Model of Christian Charity” was written in 1630 by the Puritan leader John Winthrop while the first group of Puritan emigrants was still onboard their ship, the Arbella , waiting to disembark and create their first settlement in what would become New England. The “City” section of this essay was pulled out by later readers–in the 19th century–as a crystallization of the Puritan mission in the New World.

Of course, as with any topic touching on the Puritans, there’s some myth-busting to be done. By now, the “City upon a Hill” excerpt has come to represent irritating Puritan pridefulness—they thought they were perfect, a city on a hill that everyone else would admire and want to emulate. In reality, the excerpt is far from a back-patting exercise. It is a gauntlet laid down to the already weary would-be settlers. Let’s go through it:

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck and to provide for our posterity is to follow the Counsel of Micah, to do Justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God :

The “shipwreck” Winthrop refers to is the wrath of God that falls on peoples or nations who fail to do God’s will. Earlier in the essay, Winthrop has been at once warning the people that they must not fail in their efforts to set up a godly state in the new World and reassuring them that this does not mean they can never make a mistake. God is with them, and will suffer small failings. But if, like the government and church of England, the Puritans forsake their mission to create a truly godly society, they will suffer the wrath of God. This is the shipwreck to be avoided.

…for this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man, we must entertain each other in brotherly Affection, we must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities, we must uphold a familiar Commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality, we must delight in each other, make others Conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labour, and suffer together, always having before our eyes our Commission and Community in the work, our Community as members of the same body, so shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, the Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, as his own people and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways…:

This is a beautiful passage, reminiscent of the Sermon on the Mount in its focus on mercy, kindness, sharing, and other selfless qualities. The Puritans will not succeed by harrying out the sinner or otherwise smiting evil, but by loving each other, caring for each other, and “abridging our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities” (that is, there will be equality of wealth, with no one living in luxury while others starve). They will delight in each other,  making others’ conditions their own, and they will do all this to create a natural community of faith. The point here is that religious faith will not be mandated or policed or forced on anyone. It will be generated naturally by the hope and love and faith of the people themselves. It will be an effect, not a cause. The Quakers would try to live out this same philosophy decades later.

…so that we shall see much more of his wisdom power goodness and truth than formerly we have been acquainted with :

And how. That’s an understatement. The projected society would be almost unequalled anywhere in the known world.

…we shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: the lord make it like that of New England:

Here comes the crux of the excerpt. Why will later settlers hope their societies will be like New England? Because of the love and comradeship, care and goodwill in New England. Notice that so far Winthrop has been urging his people to be caring and loving and selfless. He isn’t saying they already are all those things. He isn’t boasting about a pre-existing condition. He is urging them to become caring and loving and selfless, in the name of their godly mission, so that they will truly succeed. If—and it’s a big if—they succeed in becoming all those good things, their society will be admired. It’s not really that the Puritans will be admired so much as their society will be admired. There’s no self in this for Winthrop; it’s all about serving God as a society, and not about individuals becoming famous for their virtue. To him, there’s a difference. Fame may come as a result of serving God, but it’s the serving of God that matters.

…for we must Consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world, we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the way of God and all professors for God’s sake; we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into Curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whether wee are going:

First, we see what “city on a hill” really means: it doesn’t mean perfect, it means visible. They will be under a microscope, unable to hide their failures from all the eyes trained on them. No one wants to live in a city on a hill, because all of your faults and failings are in plain view.

Second, Winthrop wasn’t just speculating. This fate of becoming a byword for failure had already befallen every English colony in North America by 1630. Roanoake had disappeared , and Jamestown was so well-known in England for the horrors its unprepared settlers suffered that by the time the Puritans sailed their main goal was to avoid Jamestown’s very well-publicized failures. Among the many reasons the Puritans did not want to settle in Virginia was to avoid contamination with Jamestown’s perpetual bad luck (which the Puritans put down in large part to the colony’s lack of a commission from God). Even Plimoth Plantation, founded by Separatists just 10 years earlier, wasn’t exactly thriving. The Puritans settled far from the Pilgrims. So there was evidence, to Winthrop, that God had already withdrawn his support from all previous English settlements. The stakes were high.

…And to shut up this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord in his last farewell to Israel [in] Deut. 30. Beloved there is now set before us life, and good, death and evil in that we are Commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandements and his Ordinance, and his laws, and the Articles of our Covenant with him that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it:

In closing (“to shut up this discourse”), Winthrop dramatically positions his group on the very edge of life and death, good and evil; they have never been more free to choose which way they will go. It’s all up for grabs. If Winthrop was sure that it would be easy for the Puritan to make the right choice, because they were so much better than everyone else in the world, he wouldn’t have hammered this point home. He wouldn’t have had to show them how high the stakes were, and he wouldn’t have supposed there was even a choice to be made. Since he was a realist, albeit a compassionate one, Winthrop reiterated the fact that the Puritans too, like everyone else, had to choose good over evil.

… But if our hearts shall turn away so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced and worship other Gods, our pleasures, and profits, and serve them, it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good Land whither we pass over this vast Sea to possess it :

Again, high stakes. The important thing to note here is what Winthrop considers to be the threat: “our pleasures and profits”. Colonies were founded to make money. Everyone knew that. And even the Puritans would have to repay their investors. They were business people, many of them London merchants, and they would set about creating industry in New England. They were also normal people who loved dancing, music, alcohol, sex, and love, and they would enjoy all those things in their new land. Being a Puritan was not about denial. It was about balance. Enjoy without attachment, enjoy without letting pleasure become your master—this was the Puritan ideal (it’s also very Buddhist—see The Bhagavad Gita ).

Therefore let us choose life, that we, and our Seed, may live; by obeying his voice, and cleaving to him, for he is our life, and our prosperity:

Let us choose life: it’s a very positive, very idealistic, beatific closing to the excerpt and the sermon. Winthrop even wrote it out in verse (I didn’t do that here for space reasons). Choose life that we may live, choose God for God is life. This sermon must have truly inspired the Puritans who heard it, in part because it did not confirm their virtue but challenged it. It is an exhortation to do better than they normally would, to try harder, to aim higher. It is not a smug confirmation that they are the best people in the world and that whatever they do will be better than what anyone else does. It is a call to virtue and effort, love and compassion, sharing and helping that does Winthrop and his group credit. In that sense, it is the first of many other great American calls to idealism and justice, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Emancipation Proclamation.

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20 thoughts on “ “The City upon a Hill” by John Winthrop: what is it about? ”

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thanks great stuff here. Will bookmark so I can find it easy another time

Thank you Lord Jesus Christ for my life

I am a Christian the son of Christians born of the Puritans descendent

How do you know for sure you’re from the Puritans lineage?

Hello Danilo; what do you mean?

Short and informative. I liked.

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Reblogged this on HillCities Blog and commented: The Covenant People of God should hold in their hearts and efforts this vision of ” a city on a hill.”

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what is the the hook of this book

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A City Upon a Hill: JFK Cribs From John Winthrop

He worried the speech was too good.

John Winthrop was not a minister, but he preached a sermon to his Puritan followers on July 2, 1630 that went down in history as the City Upon a Hill speech.

John Winthrop. American Antiquarian Society

Winthrop delivered his sermon on July 2, 1630. He was 43 years old and he had been in the New World 18 days . His second son, Henry, had just drowned, and another Puritan ship, the Talbot , had arrived after 14 passengers died during the voyage.

Winthrop hadn’t left the Arbella when he delivered his sermon. In it, he listed the qualities he hoped the Puritan colonists would show to the world: communal charity, affection and unity.

He called it ‘ A Model of Christian Charity .’ He had no idea that another 43-year-old – a U.S. senator about to become president of the United States — would repeat his  words. From on top of a hill.

City Upon a Hill

“For we must consider that we shall be as a City Upon a Hill,” Winthrop said. “The eyes of all people are upon us.”

Kennedy delivers the City Upon a Hill speech

Three hundred thirty one years would pass before President-elect John F. Kennedy climbed the Massachusetts Statehouse steps on top of Beacon Hill to deliver his farewell speech to the General Court.

He had flown into Boston the day before and spent the night in the small Beacon Hill apartment that had served as his official home since 1946.

In 11 days he would take the oath of office as president of the United States. He had already orchestrated the ceremony: Robert Frost would read a poem and Marian Anderson would sing the Star-Spangled Banner. He chose formalwear for men and the Fitzgerald family Bible for swearing the oath.

On January 9, 1961, Kennedy met with the Harvard Board of Overseers to banter with students. He then drove back to Boston to deliver his first speech since the election.

He entered the Massachusetts House of Representatives chamber to thunderous applause. And then he delivered his famous City Upon a Hill speech.

Kennedy said Massachusetts had always been his home, whether he’d been in Washington, London or the South Pacific (carefully omitting the years his family lived in New York). It wasn’t provincial pride, he said, that caused him to hope his grandchildren would be born in the commonwealth. It was the contribution Massachusetts made to the nation’s greatness.

“The enduring qualities of Massachusetts—the common threads woven by the Pilgrim and the Puritan, the fisherman and the farmer, the Yankee and the immigrant—will not be and could not be forgotten in this nation’s executive mansion,” he said.

“They are an indelible part of my life, my convictions, my view of the past, and my hopes for the future.”

Kennedy reminded his audience that history would judge public servants on their courage, judgment, integrity and dedication.

“We must always consider,” he said, “that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us.”

Afterward, people compared the speech to Abraham Lincoln’s farewell to the citizens of Springfield, Ill. Kennedy fretted that it was too good , that it would overshadow his inaugural address.

JFK inauguration

The inaugural speech included the famous line that every Baby Boomer knows by heart:

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

To read the whole City on a Hill speech, click here . To hear the speech, click here . And to watch part of the speech on youtube, click here .

The Remittance Men: John Dudley Sargent and Robert Ray Hamilton

John adams outlaws fake news in 1798 – and dooms his presidency.

[…] witch trials happened in part because of the Puritan practice of ‘mutual watch.’ The ideal city on a hill required vigilance by pastors and by laypeople to prevent one sinner from infecting the whole […]

[…] believed in the common good. As a minister, he often preached about the common good. In his famous City Upon a Hill sermon, Winthrop tried to equate inequality with the common good. God made people of different […]

[…] shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us,” he said in his famous […]

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Presidential Speeches

January 9, 1961: "city upon a hill" speech, about this speech.

John F. Kennedy

January 09, 1961

In Boston, Massachusetts, Kennedy gives his last formal address before assuming the presidency. He articulates the characteristics of leadership that he will try to model in his administration.

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I have welcomed this opportunity to address this historic body, and, through you, the people of Massachusetts to whom I am so deeply indebted for a lifetime of friendship and trust. For fourteen years I have placed my confidence in the citizens of Massachusetts—and they have generously responded by placing their confidence in me. Now, on the Friday after next, I am to assume new and broader responsibilities. But I am not here to bid farewell to Massachusetts. For forty-three years—whether I was in London, Washington, the South Pacific, or elsewhere—this has been my home; and, God willing, wherever I serve this shall remain my home. It was here my grandparents were born—it is here I hope my grandchildren will be born. I speak neither from false provincial pride nor artful political flattery. For no man about to enter high office in this country can ever be unmindful of the contribution this state has made to our national greatness. Its leaders have shaped our destiny long before the great republic was born. Its principles have guided our footsteps in times of crisis as well as in times of calm. Its democratic institutions—including this historic body—have served as beacon lights for other nations as well as our sister states. For what Pericles said to the Athenians has long been true of this commonwealth: "We do not imitate—for we are a model to others." And so it is that I carry with me from this state to that high and lonely office to which I now succeed more than fond memories of firm friendships. The enduring qualities of Massachusetts—the common threads woven by the Pilgrim and the Puritan, the fisherman and the farmer, the Yankee and the immigrant—will not be and could not be forgotten in this nation's executive mansion. They are an indelible part of my life, my convictions, my view of the past, and my hopes for the future. Allow me to illustrate: During the last sixty days, I have been at the task of constructing an administration. It has been a long and deliberate process. Some have counseled greater speed. Others have counseled more expedient tests. But I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. "We must always consider," he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us." Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us—and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill—constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities. For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arabella in 1630. We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less awesome than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and disorder within. History will not judge our endeavors—and a government cannot be selected—merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these. For of those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each one of us—recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state—our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions: First, were we truly men of courage—with the courage to stand up to one's enemies—and the courage to stand up, when necessary, to one's associates—the courage to resist public pressure, as well as private greed? Secondly, were we truly men of judgment—with perceptive judgment of the future as well as the past—of our own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others—with enough wisdom to know that we did not know, and enough candor to admit it? Third, were we truly men of integrity—men who never ran out on either the principles in which they believed or the people who believed in them—men who believed in us—men whom neither financial gain nor political ambition could ever divert from the fulfillment of our sacred trust? Finally, were we truly men of dedication—with an honor mortgaged to no single individual or group, and compromised by no private obligation or aim, but devoted solely to serving the public good and the national interest. Courage—judgment—integrity—dedicationthese are the historic qualities of the Bay Colony and the Bay State—the qualities which this state has consistently sent to this chamber on Beacon Hill here in Boston and to Capitol Hill back in Washington. And these are the qualities which, with God's help, this son of Massachusetts hopes will characterize our government's conduct in the four stormy years that lie ahead. Humbly I ask His help in that undertaking—but aware that on earth His will is worked by men. I ask for your help and your prayers, as I embark on this new and solemn journey.

More John F. Kennedy speeches

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Remembering JFK, From His 'City Upon A Hill'

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Fifty years ago, President-elect John F. Kennedy delivered what's considered one of his finest speeches. And he delivered it in his hometown.

In Boston, Kennedy presented his "City Upon a Hill" address, as it's become known, before a joint session of the Massachusetts Legislature on Jan. 9, 1961.

"We must always consider," he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill — the eyes of all people are upon us."

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library is celebrating the 50th anniversary of JFK's presidency. WBUR has partnered with the library to air this famous speech.

I have welcomed this opportunity to address this historic body, and, through you, the people of Massachusetts to whom I am so deeply indebted for a lifetime of friendship and trust. For fourteen years I have placed my confidence in the citizens of Massachusetts--and they have generously responded by placing their confidence in me. Now, on the Friday after next, I am to assume new and broader responsibilities. But I am not here to bid farewell to Massachusetts. For forty-three years--whether I was in London, Washington, the South Pacific, or elsewhere--this has been my home; and, God willing, wherever I serve this shall remain my home. It was here my grandparents were born--it is here I hope my grandchildren will be born. I speak neither from false provincial pride nor artful political flattery. For no man about to enter high office in this country can ever be unmindful of the contribution this state has made to our national greatness. Its leaders have shaped our destiny long before the great republic was born. Its principles have guided our footsteps in times of crisis as well as in times of calm. Its democratic institutions--including this historic body--have served as beacon lights for other nations as well as our sister states. For what Pericles said to the Athenians has long been true of this commonwealth: "We do not imitate--for we are a model to others." And so it is that I carry with me from this state to that high and lonely office to which I now succeed more than fond memories of firm friendships. The enduring qualities of Massachusetts--the common threads woven by the Pilgrim and the Puritan, the fisherman and the farmer, the Yankee and the immigrant--will not be and could not be forgotten in this nation's executive mansion. They are an indelible part of my life, my convictions, my view of the past, and my hopes for the future. Allow me to illustrate: During the last sixty days, I have been at the task of constructing an administration. It has been a long and deliberate process. Some have counseled greater speed. Others have counseled more expedient tests. But I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. "We must always consider," he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill--the eyes of all people are upon us." Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us--and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill--constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities. For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arabella in 1630. We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less awesome than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and disorder within. History will not judge our endeavors--and a government cannot be selected--merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these. For of those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each one of us--recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state--our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions: First, were we truly men of courage--with the courage to stand up to one's enemies--and the courage to stand up, when necessary, to one's associates--the courage to resist public pressure, as well as private greed? Secondly, were we truly men of judgment--with perceptive judgment of the future as well as the past--of our own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others--with enough wisdom to know that we did not know, and enough candor to admit it? Third, were we truly men of integrity--men who never ran out on either the principles in which they believed or the people who believed in them--men who believed in us--men whom neither financial gain nor political ambition could ever divert from the fulfillment of our sacred trust? Finally, were we truly men of dedication--with an honor mortgaged to no single individual or group, and compromised by no private obligation or aim, but devoted solely to serving the public good and the national interest. Courage--judgment--integrity--dedication--these are the historic qualities of the Bay Colony and the Bay State--the qualities which this state has consistently sent to this chamber on Beacon Hill here in Boston and to Capitol Hill back in Washington. And these are the qualities which, with God's help, this son of Massachusetts hopes will characterize our government's conduct in the four stormy years that lie ahead. Humbly I ask His help in that undertaking--but aware that on earth His will is worked by men. I ask for your help and your prayers, as I embark on this new and solemn journey.

More JFK Coverage:

• 50 Years After Election, Boston Honors JFK
• Video: JFK's Victory Speech At The Boston Garden

This program aired on January 9, 2011.

More from WBUR

The Life of John F. Kennedy

Monday, January 9, 1961

January 9, 1961.

JFK was in Boston, Massachusetts where he addressed a Joint Convention of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as the state legislature is formally known.

This short speech of 8 minutes 39 seconds would become known as the “city on a hill” speech. In it, JFK declared that Massachusetts would always remain his home. In addition, he quoted John Winthrop on the pilgrim ship Arabella who said, “We must always consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill – the eyes of all people are upon us.”

Kennedy closed by describing four themes – courage, judgement, integrity, and dedication – he wished to stress in his upcoming administration, challenging every man (women were not mentioned) to ask if those attributes apply to him.

clip of city upon a hill speech

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How America Became “A City Upon a Hill” 

The rise and fall of perry miller.

Historian Perry Miller ’s  Army identification from 1942.

—HUG 4572.9 Box 1. Harvard University Archives

Perry Miller, a midcentury Harvard scholar of history and literature, was a giant of academe. From 1931 to 1963, as the scholar Michael Clark has summarized, Miller “presided over most literary and historical research into the early forms of American culture.” He helped establish the study of what he called “American Civilization,” contributing to the rise of a new discipline, American Studies.

Devoting himself to what he called “the meaning of America,” he tried to unravel its mystery and understand “America’s unending struggle to make herself intelligible.” After he died, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said that “Miller’s historical labors were . . . of such a high order that they not only gave delight to those who appreciated the brilliance of his imaginative and searching intellect, but also contributed to the self-understanding of the whole American Nation.”

That self-understanding, for Perry Miller, started with the Puritans. In graduate school, as Miller once recalled, “it seemed obvious that I had to commence with the Puritan migration.” The short prologue of his most widely read book,  Errand into the Wilderness  (1956), uses the words “begin,” “beginning,” “began,” “commence,” and “origin” fourteen times in three short pages, and almost all of those words applied directly to the Puritans. And because he began America with the Puritans—because he did so in such an original way and with such overwhelming force—he left in his wake a long train of scholars who took up the study of early New England with fresh interest, all of them re-envisioning Puritanism for the twentieth century.

Miller’s most lasting influence, however, came not from his overall study of the Puritans but from his assertions about one particular text. In deciding that “the uniqueness of the American experience” was fundamentally Puritan, Miller turned to the precise origin of America—the founding of Boston in 1630 with the arrival of John Winthrop on the  Arbella . Or, to be more precise, he turned to the moment marked  as an origin in a mostly forgotten text. After all, other Puritans founded Salem in 1628; the  Mayflower  Separatists established Plymouth in 1620; the Dutch arrived in Manhattan in 1609; the Spanish set up St. Augustine in 1565; and Native Americans had been here all along. Then, too, there was that other English colony farther south, Virginia, founded in 1607, which Miller dismissed for lacking the “coherence with which I could coherently begin.”

In other words, Miller did not seek an origin of America so much as an expression of origins: “the first articulate body of expression upon which I could get a leverage.” For Miller, the Puritans “spoke as fully as they knew how, and none more magnificently or cogently than John Winthrop in the midst of the passage itself, when he delivered a lay sermon aboard the flagship  Arbella  and called it ‘A Modell of Christian Charity.’”

Anonymous painting of John Winthrop (1587–1649), bequest of William Winthrop, 1830. 

—Courtesy American Antiquarian Society

That 1630 sermon by John Winthrop is now famous mainly for its proclamation that “we shall be as a city upon a hill.” Beginning in the 1970s, Ronald Reagan placed that line, from that sermon, at the center of his political career. Tracing the story of America from John Winthrop forward, Reagan built a powerful articulation of American exceptionalism—the idea, as he explained, “that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.” In 2012, American exceptionalism—as summarized by the phrase “city on a hill”—became an official plank in the platform of the Republican party.

Before Miller began his career, no politician had turned to “A Model of Christian Charity” as the origin of America or sought national office by quoting, citing, or invoking it. Hardly anyone knew this sermon existed, and no one described the nation as a “city on a hill.” It wasn’t just Reagan who picked it up, either. After Miller, Winthrop’s text has been quoted by almost every president to hold office: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.

President Ronald Reagan used Winthrop’s sermon in his own speeches.

—Photograph by George Rose, Hulton Archive, Getty Images

In the many years that history textbooks hit the market before Miller’s career, none made the coming of Winthrop’s ship a special beginning to American history, and none called the United States a “city on a hill.” After Miller died, Winthrop’s sermon began spreading across textbooks at every level of schooling, so that by 2010 a new U.S. history textbook appeared taking  City upon a Hill  as its title.

Miller’s claims reshaped literature as well. Through the mid-twentieth century, American literary history had no place in it for “A Model of Christian Charity.” After Miller died, Winthrop’s sermon gradually became the key text defining and explaining the development of American literature from its origins to the present day. By 1979, this text opened and anchored  The Norton Anthology of American Literature , the most dominant anthology on the market. Countless students still read it today.

Why? What did Winthrop’s sermon do for Perry Miller? And through Miller, what did it do for twentieth-century Americans that they so avidly adopted and promoted it?

Born in 1905 to New England transplants in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, Perry Gilbert Eddy Miller entered the world just a few blocks away from Ernest Hemingway, who was raised at roughly the same time in Oak Park, Illinois. Like Hemingway, Miller grew up an atheist (sometimes an agnostic) with an existential quest for meaning and an ardent thirst for travel and adventure. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Chicago but quickly dropped out, roaming to Colorado, New York, Mexico, the Mediterranean, and Africa. It was in Africa, while unloading barrels of American oil, that he claims to have had an epiphany. Thinking of the famous historian Edward Gibbon, who wrote  The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , Miller explained that he, like Gibbon, found his purpose far from home: “It was given to me, equally disconsolate on the edge of a jungle of central Africa, to have thrust upon me the mission of expounding what I took to be the innermost propulsion of the United States.” To that cause he would dedicate his mind, his career, his classroom, his pen, and his public speaking. He spent the rest of his life trying to find out and convince fellow Americans what America really means.

Miller re-enrolled at the University of Chicago, earning his bachelor’s and then his doctorate in 1931. Immediately he began teaching at Harvard, and over the next three decades he built a powerful story of America that began in the intellectual culture of seventeenth-century Puritanism and declined into the modern behemoth of twentieth-century United States materialism. He sought to bring America back to its senses, back to its roots, back to an intellectual and literary culture richer than all the goods that oil could buy. And when he stumbled on a little-known sermon from 1630, Miller determined that the best way to tell his story was by touting the significance of this one particular text.

“A Model of Christian Charity” began Miller’s story of the nation with purpose. “A society that is both clear and articulate about its intentions is something of a rarity in modern history,” Miller lectured. “Most of the nations of Europe and Asia grew up by chance and by accident either of geography or politics.” In other countries, so much had changed over so much time, he explained, “that even the most patriotic citizens would not dare say to what conscious purpose the nation was originally devoted.” Europe had legends and myths, a murky past misted over by a cloud of unknowing. But America had a  recorded  past—a written and  articulate beginning. All one needed to do was gather up the texts. All one had to do was check the sources. All one really had to do, Miller insisted, was read a single sermon by Winthrop.

This need for a purpose—this story of a nation  founded  in purpose and defined by it ever since—resonated with a wide range of thinkers and writers following the close of World War II and the opening of the Cold War. In the late 1950s, for example, Henry Luce, the powerful editor of  Life  magazine, asked respected intellectual and political leaders to articulate and explain the purpose of the country. “More than anything else,” he claimed, “the people of America are asking for a clear sense of National Purpose.” Respondents included politicians, poets, journalists, evangelists, and government officials—everyone from Billy Graham to Adlai Stevenson.

President-elect John Kennedy quoted from Winthrop’s sermon when he spoke to the Massachusetts Legislature on January 9, 1961.

—Associated Press

Most in this august group were haunted by a nation that seemed to have lost its way. As John Jessup, a prominent journalist, wrote, “Is there not a connection between the rise of nations and great purpose, between the loss of purpose and their decline?” The problem, it seemed, was complacency. Wealth had made Americans weak. “Part of our problem,” John W. Gardner declared, “is how to stay awake on a full stomach.” Nothing was being asked of the American people. Having achieved material success and world power, the United States seemed content to let citizens go about spending and consuming, little caring about a higher cause.

A whole culture of academics and public intellectuals took up these concerns. David Brinkley, Betty Friedan, Richard Hofstadter, C. Wright Mills, David Reisman, William Appleman Williams, and so many others in their own ways condemned American consumerism and anti-intellectualism in works that were broadly digested and debated by the American masses. Miller, who portrayed himself as a “lone wolf,” was by no means alone in his concerns. He, like others, believed that America’s influence might be terribly short-lived. “History is littered with the corpses of civilization that reached the limit of expansion, dug in behind walls and moats, and there yielded to decay,” he proclaimed. According to him, the materialistic culture of America would soon exhaust itself. It didn’t require particular genius “to ask yourself, at least from time to time, whether this American way of life is not rushing at a steadily accelerating pace toward a massive megalopolis which finally, of sheer dead weight, shall grind to an agonizing stop, and then crumble into ruin by the force of inertia.” As one of his students summarized, “He could imagine the end of America, if not of American affluence.” Yet for Miller, as for others, mere affluence constituted its own form of demise.

To get back to that underlying sense of purpose, Americans had to return to the  ideas —though not the doctrines—of the Puritans. In making such a claim, Miller argued that “A Model of Christian Charity” mattered both in what it  marked  and in what it  said . For Miller, this sermon meant that America’s story held world-historical importance. According to him, Winthrop self-consciously established his society as a model for all to see, a monument intended to guide the rest of the nations to God. In one of his most famous metaphors, Miller explained that the Puritans engaged in a “flank attack” on Christendom. “New England was the culmination of the Reformation,” he argued. It was “the climax of world history.” That was what Winthrop’s sermon signaled, Miller claimed. Winthrop “preached to the emigrants during the voyage that the eyes of the world would be upon them, that they would be as a city set upon a hill for all to observe.” If this sermon were the origin of America, then America, from the first, had a role to play in putting the world right. That aspect of Winthrop’s sermon would reappear frequently in the political speeches of President Reagan and many others in the years to come.

 In 1630, John Winthrop preached aboard the  Arbella  to the Puritans who would found the city of Boston.

—Illustration from the 1882  King’s Handbook of Boston Harbor ; Flickr, Internet Archive Book Images

But the content of Winthrop’s sermon—what Miller thought Winthrop was actually saying or proposing as a model—differed radically from what Reagan and others would make of it. According to Miller, this sermon called Puritans to model radical communal solidarity. It had nothing to do with the American Dream, nothing to do with bettering one’s life, nothing at all to do with making money or getting ahead. In fact, Miller claimed, Winthrop specifically rejected all such ideas. Going it alone, pulling ahead of others, getting rich or even trying to—these were the very dangers that Winthrop sought to guard against. Society’s success depended instead on mutual affection, being “knit together in this work as one man.” According to Miller, the Puritans exhibited “a mighty conviction of solidarity,” a “living cohesion” and “concept of a fellowship united in a common dedication.” Unlike today, Miller insisted, New England theorists thought of society “not as an aggregation of individuals, but as an organism functioning for a definite purpose, with all parts subordinate to the whole, all members contributing a definite share, every person occupying a particular status.”

According to Miller, the commitment to a higher cause and the dedication to God had made the Puritan community unusually successful, and the success of their venture—the wealth it generated—had eventually undermined the venture itself. When Puritans started making money, their purposes collapsed. “A hundred years after the landings, they were forced to look upon themselves with amazement, hardly capable of understanding how they had come to be what they were,” he wrote. They had lost sight of their cause and plan, their purpose and devotion. For Miller, the point of this failure was clear: The demise of the Puritans did not arise from external opposition; rather, it came about from within. It was caused by the Puritans’ own success.

That was the story Miller saw playing out again in the 1950s: The success of the United States, its sudden wealth and power, would soon prove the nation’s undoing. According to Miller, this paradigm had been repeated in a host of societies scattered through the leaves of history. The downfall of the Roman Empire, which Miller explicitly compared to America, also came about through dissolutions wrought by its own success. For Miller, history was fundamentally ironic. Victory and achievement produce disappointment and disaster; progress results from causes other than one’s own intentions; and no advance is finally secure since all growth contains within it the seeds of a new and possibly more catastrophic decline. As the historian Henry May once summarized, “His works on Puritanism all illustrate the slogan that nothing fails like success.” Wherever Miller turned, he saw the same laws of history replayed, and, in his mind’s eye, the beginning of demise could be read in the modern riches of America’s rise.

The way Miller made such claims set him apart from other scholars. He was “impatient with balderdash and decorum,” one student recalled, “abrupt and snorting—perhaps not unlike one of Melville’s magnificent whales.” When Miller died, his obituary in the  Harvard Crimson  compared him to Melville’s mad Captain Ahab: “Those brawling sentences, the brooding manner, the great, obscene chuckles whose delight it was impossible not to share, all were touched with something superhuman, something demonic. He lived intensely, self-destructively even.” His “manners were often bad,” another student recalled; “his casual conversation was calculated to shock.”

Opening his courses with an attempt “to scare the overwhelming crowds away,” Miller first recounted his “immense accomplishments” and then laid before students an equally immense, almost impossible reading list. Such shows of force would seem to distance him from students, yet “you could not be in his presence without feeling that he cared about you and your ideas,” one student reminisced. “Miller was not unkind,” another added; “he was simply relentless.” In one graduate seminar, “he forbade us to praise our fellow students’ papers. ‘Let us be brutal,’ he said, ‘for we love one another.’” According to at least one account, these lessons applied equally to himself. A student remembered hearing a violent argument in Miller’s office while he waited outside the door. When the shouting died down, he knocked and entered, only to discover that Miller was alone. The argument had been with himself.

In the 1950s, Miller’s arguments and ambitions entered a new phase. Midway through the decade he began work on a magnum opus called  The Life of the Mind in America —an attempt to capture every facet of “the American mind” from the Revolution to the Civil War, the whole of it organized into nine coherent books: religion, law, science, education, political economy and association, philosophy, theology, nature, and the self. This compilation would serve as a capstone to all his efforts, the culmination to over three decades of dedicated study. All he had achieved, Miller once claimed, was just a preface to the real project— this  project, the last.

When Miller began  The Life of the Mind in America , he sought financial support from whatever foundations he could find. Not many existed during his day, and few came forward to help. One supplied him with enough money to hire a graduate student named Alan Heimert, who would soon replace him as the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard. Still, Miller was not granted much assistance. He reported his frustrations to a good friend named Samuel R. Rosenthal, an eminent Chicago lawyer, and Rosenthal responded by funding Miller himself. In 1956, Samuel Rosenthal gave $30,000 to Harvard—enough to pay half of Miller’s salary, plus benefits, for three years running, giving him one semester each year to write. Miller promised he would devote himself wholly to the “grand design” and “not do one particle of the hack work” he had from time to time let himself “get caught in.” Three years, it seemed, would be plenty of time.

Three years later, Miller wrote to Rosenthal to explain his lack of progress. He pleaded the intractability of the material and the ambition of the project itself: “I get overwhelmed from time to time at the arrogance implicit in my proposal,” he admitted. Receiving the letter, Rosenthal simply offered more money. Miller refused. He claimed in 1960 that he had plenty of material, plenty of notes. All he had to do was write it up. The book would be finished soon. Still, Rosenthal insisted that his invented “D and R Fund” would give more if only Miller asked. Instead, Miller pushed his friend off, promising Rosenthal that the book was almost done. Considering what was left when he died in 1963—he completed only two parts out of the nine—there is no way that Miller could have honestly believed he was ever close to finishing.

Perry Miller’s career came to a catastrophic close. Kicked out of his house by his wife, he lived alone in a Harvard dorm room and eventually drank himself to death. Having all his life admired the Puritans in their search for purpose, their desire for a pattern that could make sense of the whole, Miller seems finally to have been overwhelmed by his own quest for meaning. He had begun with John Winthrop and “A Model of Christian Charity”—an articulate expression of origins, a coherence with which he could coherently begin—but as he moved forward, as the story broadened, as the arc of the American narrative bent and shifted in multiple directions, he failed to find the paradigm that would fit it all together. Reading through his papers, one gets the sense that by the end of his life, Miller saw himself as having failed.

In a significant way he did fail, and that failure came about not despite his efforts but because of them. Miller’s dedication to the Puritans and to “A Model of Christian Charity” finally could not address or explain the concerns that dominated American society in the mid-twentieth century. At the opening of Miller’s career, W. E. B. Du Bois published  Black Reconstruction in America  (1935), a searing account of the way historical studies had systematically excluded and denigrated the struggles and contributions of African Americans. The next year, 1936, Langston Hughes wrote “Let America Be America Again”—a plea that the promises of America extend themselves to African Americans at last. In 1941, the same year that Henry Luce published “The American Century” in  Life  magazine, Richard Wright documented the diverse lives and hopes of  12 Million Black Voices in the Great Depression . A decade later, the civil rights movement erupted. And through all these years, millions and millions of African Americans migrated from the South to the North, from agricultural fields to urban centers—including the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, where Miller grew up. “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line,” Du Bois prophesied in 1903. Yet the problem of the color line appears nowhere in all the mighty works of Perry Miller. No single book, and no single scholar, can address every single issue, of course. But Miller explicitly set himself the task of explaining the “meaning of America,” and that meaning never touched on one of the most vital issues engulfing the nation. If he felt that he had failed—if he felt that his story of America was increasingly hard to hold together and decreasingly important to the American people—he was right.

Perry Miller’s  Errand into the Wilderness  established a mythical origin story for the United States.

—Cover design by Ellen Raskin, Harper Torchbooks, 1964

In one way, however, Miller succeeded far beyond his grandest hopes. He brought John Winthrop’s sermon “A Model of Christian Charity” before the public and turned it into the key text of American origins. Miller pronounced it the first articulate statement of community, a sermon expounding the idea that America would be dedicated to the life of the mind. He read in Winthrop’s text a monumental testimony against the basic premises of the American Dream. The irony of history—one that Miller might well have appreciated—is that in promoting Winthrop’s sermon, he caused it to become the key statement of all that he most feared and lamented. In the years to come, Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” sermon would become “the shining city on a hill” of President Reagan: a celebration of individual freedom, material prosperity, and American power—above all, a call for Americans to renew their optimism and believe in themselves again. Nothing breeds failure like success. And no one was more successful than Perry Miller in making Winthrop’s sermon the cornerstone of American culture.

From  City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism  by Abram C. Van Engen. Published by Yale University Press in February 2020. Reproduced by permission.

Abram Van Engen is associate professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis and author of  City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism  (Yale University Press, February 2020)

Funding information

Abram Van Engen received a Research Fellowship and a Public Scholar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which supported his book  City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism  (Yale University Press, February 2020).

Papers of Perry G. E . Miller, 1950–1967, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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JFK Farewell: “We shall be as a city upon a hill” ~ January 9, 1961

MassMoments reminds us that on this day January 9, 1961, President-elect John Fitzgerald Kennedy addressed the Massachusetts legislature. He acknowledged in an oft-quoted reminder that “of those to whom much is given, much is required.” Y et, the main subject of his address was the unique legacy of the Commonwealth – our Bay State. He noted: “No man about to enter high office in this country can ever be unmindful of the contribution this state has made to our national greatness…. Courage  — judgment—integrity—dedication—these are the historic qualities of the Bay Colony and the Bay State.” Kennedy took formal leave of the state and on January 20,1961  he stood hatless in the bitter cold on the steps of the Capitol and stepped into history as he was inaugurated the 35 th President of the United States.

On this day…   …in 1961, John F. Kennedy bade farewell to the people of Massachusetts and reminded them of the state’s unique legacy. In a speech at the State House, the youngest man and first Catholic elected to the presidency quoted the words of John Winthrop in 1630, “We must always consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us.” “No man about to enter high office in this country,” Kennedy said, “can ever be unmindful of the contribution this state has made to our national greatness.” He referred to the “enduring qualities of Massachusetts” — “they are,” he explained, “an indelible part of my life, my convictions, my view of the past, and my hopes for the future.”

Read the full article here at MassMoments.org.

Note: Last year on the 50th anniversary of this address, Peter Cannellos of the Boston Globe penned this analysis of the speech in his op-ed piece – “What Kennedy knew but didn’t say.”

“He was reminding his home state that its fruits were intellectual. He was promising Masschusetts that he would give its tired institutions a new burst of vitality, in a more unified landscape where Boston truly could be a city on a hill, and its people could truly be the best and brightest.”

Read the full Cannellos piece here at boston.com.

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John F. Kennedy Speech, January 9, 1961

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A digital copy of this White House recording has been provided by the Miller Center of Public Affairs. For more information on this and other recordings, visit the Miller Center's Scripps Library .

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Historic Speeches

President Kennedy believed in the power of words -- both written and spoken -- to win votes, to set goals, to change minds, to move nations. He consistently took care to choose the right words and phrases that would send the right message. This section presents some of John F. Kennedy's most historic speeches; view a broader selection of his pre-presidential speeches and presidential speeches in our Speeches section. For a complete record of President Kennedy's public statements, see the  Public Papers of the Presidents .

Courtesy of Google, six of these speeches have been translated into twelve languages. 

Acceptance of Democratic Nomination for President

July 15, 1960

Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

September 12, 1960

The City Upon a Hill Speech

January 9, 1961

Inaugural Address

January 20, 1961

Address to Joint Session of Congress

May 25, 1961

Address at University of Washington

November 16, 1961

Address at Independence Hall

July 4, 1962

Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort

September 12, 1962

Address During the Cuban Missile Crisis

October 22, 1962

Address at Vanderbilt University

May 18, 1963

American University Commencement Address

June 10, 1963

Televised Address to the Nation on Civil Rights

June 11, 1963

Remarks at the Rudolph Wilde Platz, Berlin

June 26, 1963

Address Before the Irish Parliament

June 28, 1963

Televised Address on Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

July 26, 1963

Remarks at Amherst College on the Arts

October 26, 1963

The American Yawp Reader

John winthrop dreams of a city on a hill, 1630.

John Winthrop delivered the following sermon before he and his fellow settlers reached New England . The sermon is famous largely for its use of the phrase “a city on a hill,” used to describe the expectation that the Massachusetts Bay colony would shine like an example to the world. But Winthrop’s sermon also reveals how he expected Massachusetts to differ from the rest of the world.

A Modell Hereof

God Almighty in his most holy and wise providence hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection.

The Reason hereof:

1st Reason.

First to hold conformity with the rest of His world, being delighted to show forth the glory of his wisdom in the variety and difference of the creatures, and the glory of His power in ordering all these differences for the preservation and good of the whole, and the glory of His greatness, that as it is the glory of princes to have many officers, so this great king will have many stewards, counting himself more honored in dispensing his gifts to man by man, than if he did it by his own immediate hands.

2nd Reason.

Secondly, that He might have the more occasion to manifest the work of his Spirit: first upon the wicked in moderating and restraining them, so that the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor, nor the poor and despised rise up against and shake off their yoke. Secondly, in the regenerate, in exercising His graces in them, as in the great ones, their love, mercy, gentleness, temperance etc., and in the poor and inferior sort, their faith, patience, obedience etc.

3rd Reason.

Thirdly, that every man might have need of others, and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection. From hence it appears plainly that no man is made more honorable than another or more wealthy etc., out of any particular and singular respect to himself, but for the glory of his Creator and the common good of the creature, Man. Therefore God still reserves the property of these gifts to Himself as Ezek. 16:17, He there calls wealth, His gold and His silver, and Prov. 3:9, He claims their service as His due, “Honor the Lord with thy riches,” etc. — All men being thus (by divine providence) ranked into two sorts, rich and poor; under the first are comprehended all such as are able to live comfortably by their own means duly improved; and all others are poor according to the former distribution….

Question: What rule must we observe and walk by in cause of community of peril?

The same as before, but with more enlargement towards others and less respect towards ourselves and our own right. Hence it was that in the primitive Church they sold all, had all things in common, neither did any man say that which he possessed was his own. Likewise in their return out of the captivity, because the work was great for the restoring of the church and the danger of enemies was common to all, Nehemiah directs the Jews to liberality and readiness in remitting their debts to their brethren, and disposing liberally to such as wanted, and stand not upon their own dues which they might have demanded of them. Thus did some of our forefathers in times of persecution in England, and so did many of the faithful of other churches, whereof we keep an honorable remembrance of them; and it is to be observed that both in Scriptures and latter stories of the churches that such as have been most bountiful to the poor saints, especially in those extraordinary times and occasions, God hath left them highly commended to posterity…

Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these and those accounts, upon these and those ends. We have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and be revenged of such a people, and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “may the Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

And to shut this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deut. 30. “Beloved, there is now set before us life and death, good and evil,” in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.

Therefore let us choose life,

that we and our seed may live,

by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him,

for He is our life and our prosperity.

John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity,” in A Library of American Literature: Early Colonial Literature, 1607-1675 , Edmund Clarence Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson, eds. (New York: 1892) , 304-307.

Available through Google Books

JFK, Dick Goodwin, and a speech that would be remembered in history

These words, “the city upon a hill,” delivered more than three centuries before, are how john kennedy’s farewell to massachusetts would be remembered in history..

The following is an excerpt from historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, “ An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History,” which will be published April 16. You can also hear Goodwin discuss her book on this week’s episode of “Say More with Shirley Leung.”

JAN. 9, 1961

John Kennedy’s first speech as president-elect was scheduled for the Boston State House 11 days before his Washington inauguration. Since Kennedy’s chief speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, was at work on the inaugural, Kennedy tasked his junior speechwriter (and my future husband) Dick Goodwin to begin drafting the Boston speech. By this point, having come through the primaries and the election, Dick had learned to decipher Kennedy’s manner of giving directives, however indirect or roundabout:

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“I was always fond of [Abraham] Lincoln’s goodbye to his fellow townsmen in Springfield, Illinois,” Kennedy had remarked. “It’s from his heart, and it’s short. That’s important.”

“But, Dick,” he concluded with a nod and a smile, “less God.”

Dick set to work reading and rereading Lincoln’s adieu until he had committed it to memory. In the decades that followed, he would often recite Lincoln’s “Farewell Address,” along with choice passages from Shakespeare, Robert Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn” with its “shot heard round the world,” “Casey at the Bat,” Edward Lear’s “Owl and the Pussy-cat,” and countless others. Whenever he saw fit, Dick would draw from his wide and eclectic repertoire and declaim in his sonorous voice — whether at the ballpark, on walks with me, at our favorite bar, or simply waking up in our bedroom to greet the day.

“My friends,” Lincoln began from the train platform as he set forth on Feb. 11, 1861, for a 12-day journey to Washington. “No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing, when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail.”

The historian Arthur Schlesinger had forwarded a memo to Kennedy suggesting an excerpt from John Winthrop’s sermon to his shipmates on the flagship “Arabella” as they landed in New England, facing the task of building a new government on a perilous new frontier. “We must always consider that we shall be a city upon a hill — the eyes of all people are upon us.” These words, “the city upon a hill,” delivered more than three centuries before, are how John Kennedy’s farewell to Massachusetts would be remembered in history.

It was an emotional speech to write. If it was a nostalgic farewell for Kennedy, it was a trip down memory lane for Dick as well. Massachusetts was Dick’s home, the place where he was born, the place he went to college and law school, the place where his mother and brother still lived. Kennedy had often joked with Dick that they were two Brookline boys. Both had deep emotional investments in Massachusetts.

The night before his address to the State House, Kennedy slept in his old apartment on Bowdoin Street where Dick had first met him during the spring of 1958. The tiny apartment — across from the State House and next to the Bellevue Hotel where local politicians gathered — had been Kennedy’s official Boston residence since his first run for Congress 12 years earlier. A kind of introductory interview had been arranged by Sumner Kaplan, the state representative from Brookline who had championed Dick’s first forays into politics during a rent control struggle and a fight to prevent discrimination in local fraternities and sororities.

A few days after this short Bowdoin Street encounter, Dick wrote his best college friend, George Cuomo:

“I recently had an interesting meeting with Senator Kennedy when he was in Boston. He intimated strongly that he would like to have me come to work for him next January after he finishes running for re-election for Senate.

“However, even if he wants me to work — and this is not at all certain — I am not sure. Work for him, no matter how interesting, is bound to be a sort of dead end for one so young.”

“I bet it didn’t seem such a dead end that morning of January 9th,” I remarked.

“Anything but,” Dick said. “I had changed a lot in those last two years and so had he.”

Despite the bitter cold morning, loud hurrahs and screams of hundreds of people greeted Kennedy as he emerged from his apartment at 10 a.m. before crossing the Charles River to attend a meeting of the Harvard Board of Overseers. There, an equally enthusiastic crowd trailed him through Harvard Yard. “Speech, speech,” they cried. Grinning as he climbed the steps to University Hall, Kennedy jested, “I am here to go over your grades with President Nathan Pusey, and I’ll protect your interests.” That touched off an explosion of applause. After lunch with the overseers, Kennedy spent the afternoon at Arthur Schlesinger’s house where he met with a small group of professors.

He then returned to the great domed Bulfinch building for his address to the joint session of the Legislature. Following ancient tradition, two sergeants-at-arms — in frock coats and top hats, carrying white and gold maces, were granted permission from the presiding officer to admit the president-elect. He had briefly addressed this body only once, 15 years before as a decorated Navy hero, accompanied by his grandfather and the former Boston mayor, John Francis Fitzgerald.

The president-elect was in “a nostalgic mood” as he began his speech. “For 14 years I have placed my confidence in the citizens of Massachusetts. … For 43 years — whether I was in London, Washington, the South Pacific, or elsewhere — this has been my home; and God willing, wherever I serve, this shall remain my home. It was here my grandparents were born — it is here I hope my grandchildren will be born.”

On the draft of the speech, Kennedy had made several annotations, crossing out and inserting new words. Those small changes revealed a huge shift in perspective. They delineate an astute distinction between the days before the election and the day after. No longer was he placing his confidence in the voters, as the draft had read, but rather in the citizens. He was not asking for votes. There were no sides now. We were all working together.

This tribute from a native son produced tumultuous applause in the packed chamber. His delivery barely resembled the clipped voice from the early primaries, and his leisurely pace was not that of the candidate who had raced through his talks as if he were a young student giving a report, anxious to get back to his seat. This was the president-elect returning to his home state, channeling Abraham Lincoln, promising that as he created his new administration, he would be guided by John Winthrop’s recognition that “we shall be as a city upon a hill — the eyes of all people are upon us.”

And then he turned to the future, to the hope that when “the high court of history” came to sit in judgment of his administration, it would note that he had surrounded himself with men of courage, judgment, integrity, and dedication.

“These are the qualities which, with God’s help, this son of Massachusetts hopes will characterize our government’s conduct in the four stormy years that lie ahead,” Kennedy concluded. “I ask for your help and your prayers, as I embark on this new and solemn journey.”

Abraham Lincoln never came back to live in Springfield. Nor would John Fitzgerald Kennedy return to reside in Boston.

Excerpted from “ An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History ” by Doris Kearns Goodwin. © 2024 by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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