"From you we have learned what we, at least, value, to separate Church and State; and from you we gather inspiration at all times in our devotion to learning, to religious liberty, and to individual and National freedom"
About this Quote
The line reads like a toast, but it’s really a curriculum: Seth Low is sketching the syllabus of an American civic identity and crediting it to a particular “you” (likely a host nation, institution, or audience being honored). As an educator-administrator and public figure, Low isn’t trading in poetic abstraction; he’s doing coalition work, using praise to bind intellectual ideals to political loyalties.
The intent is diplomatic and pedagogical at once. “From you we have learned” flatters the addressee while also laundering contested principles into shared heritage. Separation of Church and State, religious liberty, devotion to learning, “individual and National freedom” weren’t neutral platitudes in Low’s era. They were pressure points in a country negotiating immigration, Catholic-Protestant tension, public schooling fights, and the expanding ambitions of the modern state. By presenting these values as lessons absorbed from an admired source, Low sidesteps the domestic argument. If the ideals arrive as inheritance rather than agenda, opponents look parochial pushing back.
The subtext is that education is the engine of pluralism. “Devotion to learning” sits alongside religious liberty as if the two are mutually reinforcing: a society that studies becomes harder to govern by sect, and a society that protects conscience can sustain open inquiry. The pairing of “individual and National freedom” is the quiet masterstroke. Low argues that personal liberty doesn’t weaken the nation; it legitimizes it. In a period when nationalism could easily curdle into coercion, he insists the nation earns its strength by limiting itself.
The intent is diplomatic and pedagogical at once. “From you we have learned” flatters the addressee while also laundering contested principles into shared heritage. Separation of Church and State, religious liberty, devotion to learning, “individual and National freedom” weren’t neutral platitudes in Low’s era. They were pressure points in a country negotiating immigration, Catholic-Protestant tension, public schooling fights, and the expanding ambitions of the modern state. By presenting these values as lessons absorbed from an admired source, Low sidesteps the domestic argument. If the ideals arrive as inheritance rather than agenda, opponents look parochial pushing back.
The subtext is that education is the engine of pluralism. “Devotion to learning” sits alongside religious liberty as if the two are mutually reinforcing: a society that studies becomes harder to govern by sect, and a society that protects conscience can sustain open inquiry. The pairing of “individual and National freedom” is the quiet masterstroke. Low argues that personal liberty doesn’t weaken the nation; it legitimizes it. In a period when nationalism could easily curdle into coercion, he insists the nation earns its strength by limiting itself.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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