Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, December 5, 1865;

"...Fellow-citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:

To express gratitude to God, in the name of the people, for the preservation of the United States, is my first duty in addressing you. . . . To form a more perfect Union," by an ordinance of the people of the United States, is the declared purpose of the Constitution. The hand of Divine Providence was never more plainly visible in the affairs of men than in the framing and the adopting of that instrument...."

"...Who of them will not now acknowledge, in the words of Washington, that "every step by which the people of the United States have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of Providential agency?" Who will not join with me in the prayer, that the invisible hand which has led us through the clouds that gloomed around our path will so guide us onward to a perfect restoration of fraternal affection, that we of this day may be able to transmit our great inheritance, of State governments in all their rights, of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor, to our posterity, and they to theirs through countless generations?

ANDREW JOHNSON.
Washington, December 4, 1865.

Letters of Delegates to Congress: James Duane's Notes for a Speech in Congress...

...1st. A vigorous preparation for our common defence--for Sir, I wish we may never part with the idea that every hostile measure on our part is undertaken for and shall be conducted to our own self preservation: and that however injured and provoked the desire of conquest, of independence and much less of revenge may be banished from every American breast.

Let this be ever considered as a family quarrel, unnatural, disgraceful and ruinous into which we are innocently plunged by intolerable oppression, and which we are sincerely disposed to appease and reconcile, whenever the good providence of God shall put it in our power, consistent with the preservation of our just rights.This loyal and benevolent sentiment which to the honor of injured Americans under all her grievances so universally prevails will open the next head of debate vizt.

2dly. Whether any means of reconciliation are left in our power which we can propose with a prospect of success, and a just regard to our invaded Rights.

As to the 1st point--a vigorous preparation for our common defence....

Full page can be read here.

Letter to Florida Blanca, [The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Volume 2]

"...At the same time he trusts that the Spanish nation will receive no inconsiderable retribution from the freedom of that commerce the monopoly of which contributed so much to strengthen and aggrandize her rival and her foe; nor can anything give more lasting satisfaction to the royal mind than the reflection of having employed those means which God has put into his hands in assisting an oppressed people to vindicate those rights and liberties which have been violated by twice six years of incessant injuries and insulted supplications; those rights which God and nature, together with the convention of their ancestors and the constitution of their country, gave to the people of the States. Instead of that protection in those rights which was the due return for sovereignty exercised over them, they have seen their defenseless towns wantonly laid in ashes, their unfortified country cruelly desolated, their property wasted, their people slain; the ruthless savage, whose inhuman war spares neither age nor sex, instigated against them; the hand of the servant armed against his master by public proclamation, and the very food which the sea that washes their coast furnishes forbidden them by a law of unparalleled folly and injustice. Proinde quasi injuriam facere id demure esset imperio uti. Nor was it enough that for these purposes the British force was exhausted against them, but foreign mercenaries were also bribed to complete the butchery of their people and the devastation of their country. And that nothing might be wanting to make the practices equivalent to the principles of this war, the minds of these mercenaries were poisoned with every prejudice that might harden their hearts and sharpen their swords against a people who not only never injured or offended them, but who have received with open arms and provided habitations for their wandering countrymen. These are injuries which the Americans can never forget. These are oppressors whom they can never again endure. The force of intolerable and accumulated outrages has compelled them to appeal to God and to the sword. The King of Spain, in assisting them to maintain that appeal, assists in vindicating the violated rights of human nature. No cause can be more illustrious, no motive more magnanimous."

- Arthur Lee, March 17, 1777