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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2018 Establishing Disestablishment: Federal Support for Religion in the Early Republic Daniel Roeber
Follow this and additional works at the DigiNole: FSU's Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
ESTABLISHING DISESTABLISHMENT:
FEDERAL SUPPORT FOR RELIGION IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC
By
DANIEL ROEBER
A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
2018 Daniel Roeber defended this dissertation on April 4, 2018. The members of the supervisory committee were:
Amanda Porterfield Professor Directing Dissertation
Edward Gray University Representative
John Corrigan Committee Member
Michael McVicar Committee Member
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.
ii
For Sarah Beth
iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
While researching and writing a dissertation can be an individual and lonely endeavor, this project could not have been accomplished without the advice and assistance of several people and constituencies.
My thanks first to my doctoral committee. John Corrigan and Michael McVicar have been gracious with their time and comments on my work, be it during my prospectus defense, in the American Religious History colloquium, or in other conversations. Edward Gray saw my potential in bringing me to Florida State University in the first place and fully supporting my transition to the Religion Department. I find his willingness to be my university representative particularly affirming. The greatest thanks go to Amanda Porterfield, my advisor and the director of my dissertation. Under her guidance, I always felt like it was possible to achieve this goal.
From my first class learning about Native American religious history until the present day, all of my meetings with Dr. Porterfield have left me encouraged and motivated to pursue my research with a strong goal in mind. Her careful reading and insightful comments have led her fingerprints to be all over this project. Of course, any mistakes and omissions are mine.
My thanks as well to Florida State University and the myriad institutions therein that have helped me complete this project. The History Department welcomed me to Tallahassee and introduced me to doctoral studies. The Religion Department was kind enough to accept me to a field I love, consistently fund my studies, and allowed me to further my desire to teach by allowing me to teach several different courses. The Congress of Graduate Students provided funding for travel to several conferences where I could present and receive feedback on my work. Strozier Library and the interlibrary loan staff was an invaluable asset as I navigated the wide variety of literature that discussed my topics. I am thankful for a university that continues
iv to provide funds for the upkeep and renovation of the library. Most of this project was written in
the recently-renovated study carrels on the second floor.
My thanks to all the fellow graduate students and colleagues too numerous to mention
who provided helpful feedback to my work, be it in the context of a course, the American
Religious History colloquium, the Religion Department graduate symposium, or conferences that
permitted me to present my work including the Evangelical Theological Society National
Conference, the Graduate Conference on Religion at Harvard Divinity School, the Society for
U.S. Intellectual History Annual Conference, the American Society of Church History Meeting, and the Religion and Politics in Early America Conference. Independent researcher Margaret
Shannon was kind enough to take ninety minutes out of her day and discuss a common research
interest in the Senate chaplains.
This project could not have been completed without the love and support of my wife,
partner, and friend. Sarah’s love for new experiences and places has been a necessary foundation for this stage of our lives. Sarah took on our move to Tallahassee in much the same way she prepared for our transitions to Chengdu and Dallas: with confidence and expectation of good things. We began doctoral studies as a small family of two and Bailey, our miniature schnauzer, but finish it much larger as we’ve joyously welcomed Emily Grace, Ethan Daniel, and Hannah
Joy into the world over the past five years. All along the way Sarah has sacrificially provided financial, emotional, and spiritual support for our family that has been indispensable in my studies and writing. Sarah has been my greatest cheerleader. For all these reasons and more, I dedicate this project to her.
v DRR
March 20th, 2018
Soli Deo Gloria
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables ...... viii List of Figures ...... ix Abstract ...... x
1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1
2. THE POST OFFICE: TRANSPORTING RELIGION AT REDUCED RATES ...... 33
3. CHURCH IN STATE: RELIGIOUS SERVICES IN THE U.S. CAPITOL BUILDING ...... 83
4. FEDERAL CHAPLAINCY PROGRAMS IN CONGRESS AND IN THE MILITARY ...... 115
5. FUNDING AND FORGING IDENTITY AND EMPIRE: GOVERNMENTAL SUPPORT FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS ...... 155
6. EPILOGUE ...... 180
APPENDICES ...... 188
A. CHURCH SERVICES IN THE U.S. CAPITOL ...... 188 B. CONGRESSIONAL CHAPLAINS UP TO THE YEAR 1860 ...... 194
References ...... 198
Biographical Sketch ...... 216
vii LIST OF TABLES
1 View of the Post Office Establishment from 1789 to 1809 ...... 57
2 Postmasters in the Federal Civilian Work Force, 1816-1841...... 79
viii LIST OF FIGURES
1 1796 Map of the United States, Exhibiting the Post-roads, the Situations, Connections & Distances of the Post-offices Stage Roads, Counties, Ports of Entry and Delivery for Foreign Vessels, and the Principal Rivers. By Abraham Bradley junr...... 58
2 1804 Map of the United States, Exhibiting the Post-roads, the Situations, Connexions & Distances of the Post-offices Stage Roads, Counties, & Principal Rivers. By Abraham Bradley junr...... 59
3 David Austin’s Advertisement ...... 104
ix ABSTRACT
This project considers the relationship between religion and governance in the early
republic period of the United States. The goal of this project is to uncover the ways the inchoate
federal government provided support for religion in an era when disestablishment is the law of
the land. Using the lens provides a new and distinct way to understand how the federal
government interpreted and applied the concept of disestablishment as seen in the religion
clauses of the First Amendment.
I argue that the federal government, while never formally endorsing a particular
denomination, recognized and supported an underlying common Protestant ethos centered
around biblicism to both develop and disrupt aspects of religious freedom in the early republic.
Such a balancing act was necessitated by competing religious denominations in different states; ideals of both Protestant dissent and enlightenment rationality; and the fragile nature of federal governance in the early republic that sought out security in the absence of previous colonial ideals. Because of all of this, cooperation between church and state was steady and active. But the nature of that cooperation, expressed in the disestablishment language of the First
Amendment, reflected a new reality distinct from European Christendom.
The subjects of this project illustrate the diverse ways religion was supported by the government and show how the new reality of disestablishment was worked out in the developing federal bureaucracy. They include the postal service, which allowed for the dissemination of
religious information through the mail at favorable rates; religious services held in the
governmental buildings, especially the U.S. Capitol building; chaplaincy programs, both within
Congress and the military; and federal policy regarding Native Americans, which included providing support for Christian missionaries in their goal of evangelization.
x CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
For the delegates gathered together on that day, 5 September 1774, the air was electric.
Years of unrest had catalyzed the desire for revolution, but the British colonies in America faced a seemingly insurmountable obstacle for independence: the military might of the most powerful nation in the world. Yes, a vast ocean separated the colonies from the motherland, but the naval power and sheer force of the British infantry would easily overwhelm. This is to say nothing of
Britain’s recently-acquired land to the north or their prospective allies in Native American groups. What were thirteen fledgling colonies with a desire for independence to do?
For some of the gathered delegates, the first thing to do was pray. On the second day of the Continental Congress, Thomas Cushing requested that the following day would begin with prayer. But even this most straightforward task, a call to prayer, was not easily carried out, as the confluence of colonies brought together a range of religious perspectives. As John Adams later recounted in a letter to his wife Abigail, “we were so divided in religious Sentiments, some
Episcopalians, some Quakers, some anabaptists, some Presbyterians and some
Congregationalists, so that We could not join in the same Act of Worship.” But Cushing’s request was accepted, and the following day the Reverend Jacob Duché, an Episcopal rector in
Philadelphia who would later become the first chaplain of the Congress, offered up multiple prayers (several written, one extemporaneous) and read Psalm 35. The extemporaneous prayer elicited great feeling. John Adams noted that the prayer “filled the Bosom of every Man present.
I must confess I never heard a better Prayer of one, so well pronounced.” Another delegate, Silas
Deane, said the prayer “was worth riding One Hundred Mile to hear” and that Duché prayed
“with such Fervency, purity, & sublimity of Stile, & sentiment, and with such an apparent
1 Sensibility of the Scenes, & Business before Us, that even Quakers shed Tears.” For a few
minutes, the Anglican priest drew the varied denominations together.1
Still, the problem was clear: religion would be a source of division in a country with
myriad religious affiliations. The solution, for both the First Continental Congress and fourteen
years later after the United States Constitution replaced a weaker Articles of Confederation, was
a call for religious freedom: there would be no established church at the national level, and
Americans would not be prohibited from the free exercise of their religious traditions. Problem
solved…
…or not. Convening Congress for the first time after the ratification of the Constitution
was difficult enough.2 But it was not long before a problem involving religion and governance
arose: the first issue appeared one day after the Congress had approved the language for the First
Amendment to the Constitution.3 On 25 September 1789, Elias Boudinot suggested a day of
thanks: “he could not think of letting the session pass over without offering an opportunity to all
the citizens of the United States of joining, with one voice, in returning to Almighty God their
sincere thanks for the many blessings he had poured down upon them.” With that in mind,
Boudinot offered a resolution that was to call upon the President to “request that he would
recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be
observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God.” The
1 16 Sep 1774 letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams; 7 Sep 1774 letter from Silas Deane to Elizabeth Deane, in Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789, 26 vols. (Washington: Library of Congress, 1976), I:34,74. For the text of Duché’s prayer, see ibid., XXV:551-52. 2 Erick Trickey, "George Washington’s Congress Got Off to an Embarrassing Start," Smithsonian Magazine, accessed 26 February 2018. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/congress-embarrassing-start-and- how-madison-kicked-it-gear-180963079/. 3 At this point the First Amendment was considered the third - the first two proposed amendments were ultimately not included in the Contstitution. See 1 AOC 913.
2 resolution drew particular attention to the ability “peaceably to establish a Constitution of
government for their safety and happiness.”4
Boudinot included the ratified Constitution in his rationale for a day of thanksgiving, but
a thanksgiving proclamation was not new; the Continental Congress issued multiple
Thanksgiving proclamations as early as 1777. As an activity common to previous legislative
bodies, Boudinot thought his resolution was “prudent and just;” other Representatives did not.
The record notes Mr. Burke’s disagreement where he believed the resolution to be a “mimicking
of European customs, where they made a mere mockery of thanksgivings.” Mr. Tucker argued
that “the House had no business to interfere in a matter which did not concern them;” again, “it is
a business with which Congress [has] nothing to do; it is a religious matter, and, as such, is
proscribed to us.” Tucker had no issue with the states encouraging such a holiday, but in his mind it was beyond the scope of Congress.5 Roger Sherman defended Boudinot’s resolution as a
“laudable one in itself” and, interestingly enough, pointed to precedents from the Bible.
Congress agreed with Boudinot. Though how Representatives voted was not included in
the record, as a whole the House voted in the affirmative. On 3 October 1789, President
Washington designated the 26th of November to be “devoted by the People of these States to the
service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was,
that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble
thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming
a Nation.”6
4 1 AOC 914 5 1 AOC 915 6 George Washington, "Thanksgiving Proclamation, 3 October 1789," National Archives, accessed 26 February 2018. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-04-02-0091.
3 The arguments raised by Burke and Tucker did not go away. While Washington’s
successor to the presidency issued Thanksgiving proclamations, Thomas Jefferson did not. He
described why in a 23 January 1808 letter to Samuel Miller, a minister from New York City,
when he wrote that the government was prohibited from “intermedling with religious
institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.” Instead, any such proclamations were to be
given to the states, “as far as it can be in any human authority.” Responding to the charge that his
predecessors had done what he refused to do, Jefferson noted, “every one must act according to
the dictates of his own reason, & mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the
President of the US. and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.”7 It
bears noting that Jefferson issued a Thanksgiving proclamation in 1777 while governor of
Virginia.8
******
The aim of this project is to investigate the relationship between politics and governance
in the United States federal government in the decades after its creation. Typical appraisals of
this period point to the First Amendment and disestablishment as a landmark achievement. As
Jon Butler wrote, “No other turning point has proven so consequential for so many aspects of
American religion.” The formal inclusion of disestablishment within the Constitution should not
be diminished in its importance. Long gone were the days of cuius regio, eius religio.9 But was this development as clear as these works suggest? The specifics of how disestablishment would
7 23 January 1808 letter from Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller. 8 This was at the request of the Continental Congress and after approval of the Virginia legislature. See Melanie Kirkpatrick, Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience (New York: Encounter Books, 2016), 55-64. 9 Meaning “Whose realm, his religion,” this principle, agreed to at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, defined areas of Europe until as late as the 18th century.
4 be worked out were controversial, as Butler continued: “No other development has generated
such long-lasting tussles about its meaning.”10
After all, the American experiment in disestablishment was just that - an experiment.
Centuries had solidified the conjoining of the eternal and the temporal so that, as John Maxwell
argued in Sacro-Sancto Regum Majestas in 1644, “Piety and policy, Church and State, prince
and priest are so nearly and naturally conjoined in a mutual interest that, like to Hippocrates his
twins, they rejoice and mourn, flourish and perish, live and die together.”11 In 1861 Abraham
Lincoln said regarding the secession of the southern states, "Physically speaking, we cannot
separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable
wall between them." More than 65 years ago, Evarts B. Greene argued that Lincoln provided an
apt analogy for the relations of church and state: "There still remain difficult boundary questions,
conflicting interests, and traditional antagonisms."12 The decades following Greene’s work have seen a great deal of scholarship concerning the relationship between church and state in the
United States, yet many disagreements and questions remain.
One should also note the chasm between political theory and practice. Jefferson could
assure the Danbury Baptist Association that the First Amendment had built a “a wall of
separation between Church & State,” but the realities of governance and policy development
would show the two entities to be more intertwined than his simplistic statement described.
10 Jon Butler, "Disestablishment as American Sisyphus," in Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism, ed. Heath W. Carter and Laura Rominger Porter (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2017), 44. 11 Qtd. In Mark A. Noll, In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492-1783 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 50. This connection is also unsurprising. Both religion and politics are unavoidable dimensions of human experience engaged in the meaningful exercise of power. See David Chidester, Patterns of Power: Religion and Politics in American Culture (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988). 12 Evarts Boutell Greene, Religion and the State: The Making and Testing of an American Tradition, Anson G Phelps Lectureship on Early American History, New York University Stokes Foundation (New York: New York University Press, 1941), 105.
5 Instead of focusing on theory or ideology, this dissertation attends to the controversies that
emerge as the processes and techniques of bureaucracy are developed in federal governance.
More to the point, I show how uncontroversial the entanglements between religion and the
federal government were. The inchoate federal government had the potential to become a
sprawling institution that usurped the power of individual states. Much controversy in the early
decades reflects this power struggle. The clearest example of controversy is found in the
continual and contentious debates over slavery.13 When so much division can be seen on certain
issues, the relative lack controversy concerning the support of religion is revealing.14 Even when
controversies arise, they are frequently over issues related to pluralism. For example, in the
discussion of chaplaincies, we will see how both Catholics and Unitarians upset the previous
Protestant dominance of the position of congressional chaplain. But the controversies are narrow
and different from debates over the propriety of church-state cooperation.
My argument is that the federal government, while never formally endorsing a particular
denomination, recognized and supported an underlying common Protestant ethos centered
around biblicism15 to both develop and disrupt aspects of religious freedom in the early republic.
Such a balancing act was necessitated by competing religious denominations in different states; ideals of both Protestant dissent and enlightenment rationality; and the fragile nature of federal
13 On this see Howard L. Lubert, Kevin R. Hardwick, and Scott J. Hammond, The American Debate over Slavery, 1760-1865: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2016), xiii-xxii, 29-34. It takes the Civil War to fully settle the issue, and even then, the effects of racialized slavery continued (and continue) to reverberate throughout the country. 14 What the lack of controversy actually means is difficult to describe. An absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. Furthermore, the annals of Congress are very sparse, and many things could have been left out. Still, the historian’s task is to make interpretive decisions based on the information at hand. 15 I am using the term “Biblicism” in the same way Mark Noll does: “an effort to follow ‘the Bible alone’— absent or strongly supporting subordinating other authorities—as the path of life with and for God.” For the purposes of this project, this emphasis on the Bible is part and parcel with the “atmospheric ubiquity of Scripture” that permeates the political life of the early republic. See Noll, In the Beginning, 9, 19.
6 governance in the early republic that sought out security in the absence of previous colonial
ideals. Because of all of this, cooperation between church and state was steady and active. But
the nature of that cooperation, expressed in the disestablishment language of the First
Amendment, reflected a new reality distinct from European Christendom.
This project delimits its focus to religious activity in federal governance as efforts to
apply the Constitution intersect with particular situations and events. While my time period is
from the ratification of the Constitution in 1789 until the middle of the 19th century, when it is
applicable I include historical context from the colonial period, Revolutionary War era, and the
confederation period. The project concludes with an epilogue in the 1850s wherein I describe a
foil to the stable cooperation between religion and the state. Even then, congressional
committees responded to hundreds of petitions against church-state entanglement with strong statements endorsing the constitutionality of the status quo.
My analysis paints a broad picture of the federal government by utilizing specific examples from different facets of the government. One of the benefits of organizing the project in this way is its inclusion of a wider variety of voices on the issues concerning disestablishment.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison have much to say about connections between religion and government. Their contributions cannot be overstated: Jefferson’s role in crafting Virginia’s
Statute for Religious Freedom and Madison’s role as “Father of the Constitution” and author of the first version of the Bill of Rights are singular in their influence on religiopolitical thought in the nascent republic. But their voices are but two of many. The inclusion of a wider range of voices from both within and outside the federal government will provide a more holistic
understanding of how the developing bureaucracy engaged issues surrounding the establishment
of a disestablished governance.
7 ******
Scholars have argued unceasingly about both the development of the Constitution as
well as what the Constitution actually developed. Max Farrand's The Records of the Federal
Convention of 1787 have provided insight into the Constitutional Convention for more than 100
years, but recent works have drawn into question the reliability of these notes and our
understanding of the Convention more broadly. What is clear is that the “more perfect Union”
desired by the delegates was by no means unanimously agreed upon, both before and after
ratification.16 Max Edling’s A Revolution in Favor of Government presents the tensions between
Federalists and Anti-federalists as military and fiscal powers were enumerated within the scope
of federal governance.17
The origin of the religious clauses of the First Amendment have also engendered debate.
Some point to an enlightenment perspective that longed for a secular government. Matthew
Stewart tends toward the polemic in his Nature’s God, arguing that the founders were functional
atheists on a secular crusade. Others like Jonathan Israel emphasize broader Enlightenment
origins to a disestablished state.18 In contrast, works by John Compton and Nicholas Miller point
to a more religious foundation for the development of the First Amendment.19
16 See, for example, Lorri Glover, The Fate of the Revolution: Virginians Debate the Constitution, Witness to History (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016). 17 Max M. Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 18 Matthew Stewart, Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014); Jonathan I. Israel, A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 19 John W. Compton, The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Nicholas Patrick Miller, The Religious Roots of the First Amendment : Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Compton argues that much of the debate over the religiosity of the federal government is misplaced due to the presumption that modern notions of the primacy of regulation at the federal level held ultimate sway. In reality, the constitution's "secular" character speaks more to its relegation of religious issues to the states. See Compton, 191n3.
8 The argument of this project is that conceptions of disestablishment can be understood
through the working out of the Constitution in the development of federal governance in the first
decades of the early republic—perhaps even more than can be understood through analyzing the
development of the Constitution. Such framing sheds light on the question which, as Eric Slauter
notes, was “at the center of revolutionary constitutionalism: Did people make constitutions or did
constitutions make people?”20 On this question Jessica Lowe noted, “The Constitution did not have a predetermined meaning, … but rather had the meaning that people gave to it over time.
This meaning was contingent and contested—determined by the process of ratification, which was itself about circumstances as much as hard and fast characteristics.”21 This project argues
that much was still to be worked out after the ratification of the Constitution. In particular, the
very notion of a "disestablished state" was unclear. Yes, the federal government would not
uphold one particular religious group at the expense of others… but what did that mean in
practice?
Disagreement also reigns regarding what was accomplished by Constitution, and
especially the religious clauses to the First Amendment. Stephen V. Monsma and J. Christopher
Soper argue in their comparative study of church-state relations that the United States is the closest to a “strict church-state separation model” - one where
religion and politics are clearly seen as clearly distinct areas of human endeavor that should be kept separate from each other. Religion is seen as a personal, private matter, best left to the realm of personal choice and action. When religion and politics are mixed- -with either the state dictating religious beliefs or practice or religion using the state to advance its cause--both religion and politics suffer. The state should be neutral on matters of religion and this neutrality is assumed to be achieved best by keeping religion and politics separate.
20 Eric Thomas Slauter, The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 13. 21 Jessica Lowe, "Review of Glover, Lorri, the Fate of the Revolution: Virginians Debate the Constitution," H-Net Reviews (June 2017), http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=47391.
9
Monsma and Soper claim that this model has been strong in the past half-century until recently, when the principle has begun to crumble. For them, the principles of strict separation enshrined in the First Amendment were mired by an “informal reestablishment of Protestant Christianity” seen from roughly 1800-1950.22 Steven Green's The Second Disestablishment makes a similar,
though distinct, argument. He argues that the desire for church-state separation seen in the First
Amendment was quickly eclipsed and forgotten for the next 150 years. 23 On the other side of the
spectrum, crusaders like David Barton argue that the notion of church-state separation is a myth.24
This project argues that the newly formed republic was far from a static reality. Instead of
placing the federal government on the spectrum of church-state relations, it is more useful to attend to the dynamic nature of the inchoate, developing government as processes and techniques of bureaucracy were both continued and developed from what came before. The working out of the Constitution in the everyday activities of the various agencies of federal governance show the complexities involved in stating a clear relationship between church and state. Congress may have been able to reduce statements about religion in the First Amendment to fifteen words, but the realities of federal governance would prove to be much more complicated.
“State” and “Religion”
This project involves two subjects that present theoretical issues: the “state” and
“religion.” It is useful to analyze both terms at the outset. John Dewey recognized the problems
22 Stephen V. Monsma and J. Christopher Soper, The Challenge of Pluralism: Church and State in Five Democracies, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 10-23. 23 Steven K. Green, The Second Disestablishment: Church and State in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 24 David Barton, The Myth of Separation: What Is the Correct Relationship between Church and State?: A Revealing Look at What the Founders and Early Courts Really Said, 3rd ed. (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 1993).
10 inherent with discussing the “state.” He wrote, “The concept of the state, like most concepts
which are introduced by ‘The,’ is both too rigid and too tied up with controversies to be of ready
use… The moment we utter the words ‘The State’ a score of intellectual ghosts rise to obscure
our vision. Without our intention and without our notice, the notion of ‘The State’ draws us
imperceptibly into a consideration of the logical relationship of various ideas to one another, and
away from facts of human activity.”25 The problem remains. Compounding the issue is the fact
that the term “state” and its corollary term “nation” was in flux: as Benjamin Park notes,
“America was born at the very moment that the definition of ‘nation’ was being reimagined.”26
Because of this, attempts to qualitatively describe the federal government in the early republic will be met with disagreement. A 2008 article by William Novak posited that the notion of a weak American state, the common story of “legal-political self-abnegation, emphasizing constitutional restraints such as federalism, checks and balances, the separation of powers, limited government, the rule of law, and laissez-faire,” is in fact a myth that belies the realities of
American governance.27 Instead, Novak argues, in quoting Hannah Arendt, that “the true
objective of the American Constitution was not to limit but to create more power, actually to
establish and duly constitute an entirely new power center.”28
Novak’s article was contentious, and three scholars responded with articles to which
Novak provided a final response. Julia Adams generally agreed with the Novak’s claim, but
pointed out that “American history can itself be read as a long dispute over the issue of the nature
25 John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 44. 26 Benjamin E. Park, American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783–1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 1. 27 William J. Novak, "The Myth of the "Weak" American State," The American Historical Review 113, no. 3 (2008): 752. 28 Ibid., 758.
11 of the State” - so has the state been thought of as weak by historians?29 Gary Gerstle argues that
Novak had a point, certainly with the global power of the federal government over the past century, but Novak’s argument also “cautions us against advancing an argument for this state's unremitting strength as a substitute for the older argument about its chronic weakness.” The desire to see the state as continuously strong is too focused on painting a unified picture of governance. “We should resist,” Gerstle notes, “the teleological tendency to read the current power of the U.S. state back to the beginnings of the American Republic.”30 John Fabian Witt points out that though the myth of a “weak state” may have had pull with regards to studies of domestic affairs, such is not the case in studies of international relations.31 All three responses recognize but qualify Novak’s argument; Novak, in response, noted that “significant traces of the myth of the weak American state persist in some classic revisionist texts” as well as in the respondents’ comments.32
What does all this mean for the present project? Weak or strong, Novak’s call to utilize a pragmatic, realist approach to the state is most helpful here. As he noted in the original essay, a pragmatic approach recognizes the “’technologies of public action’ that affected the the day-to- day conduct and practices of real people in the real world.” Thus, such an approach “stands a much better chance of taking the full measure of the American state.”33 The goal is to pay attention to the development of the social as defined by Bruno Latour: “not as a special domain,
29 Julia Adams, "The Puzzle of the American State... And Its Historians," The American Historical Review 115, no. 3 (2010): 790. 30 Gary Gerstle, "A State Both Strong and Weak," The American Historical Review 115, no. 3 (2010): 781. 31 John Fabian Witt, "Law and War in American History," The American Historical Review 115, no. 3 (2010). 32 William J. Novak, "Long Live the Myth of the Weak State? A Response to Adams, Gerstle, and Witt," The American Historical Review 115, no. 3 (2010): 799. 33 Novak, "The Myth of the "Weak" American State," 765.
12 a specific realm, or a particular sort of thing, but only as a very peculiar movement of re-
association and reassembling.”34 Latour sets aside the need for starting with categories; instead,
“The task of defining and ordering the social should be left to the actors themselves, not taken up
by the analyst. This is why, to regain some sense of order, the best solution is to trace
connections between the controversies themselves rather than try to decide how to settle any given controversy.”35 This perspective allows for a more thorough analysis of what Brian Balogh
refers to as “the mystery of national authority in nineteenth-century America” with a
“Government out of sight.”36
This perspective also sees more continuity in the issues of church-state relations before
and after the First Amendment rather than viewing disestablishment as a compartmentalizing
feature of early governance. A pragmatic, realist approach also allows for a focus on, as Nikolas
Rose notes, the “heterogeneity of authorities that have sought to govern conduct, the
heterogeneity of strategies, devices, ends sought, the conflicts between them, and the ways in
which our present has been shaped by such conflicts.”37 In this perspective, the ratification of the
First Amendment is an important marker that means little until its tensions and conflicts are
tested.
34 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 7. 35 Ibid., 23. 36 Brian Balogh, A Government out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Balogh’s work argues that “the central government was most effective when its authority went unnoticed or remained hidden, or was quietly obscured” (52). He notes the clear exception to the rule of the Post Office, the subject of the next chapter. 37 Nikolas S. Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 21.
13 The seemingly non-religious nature of the Constitution belies an increase in religious
affiliation38 and activity that made Christianity a constitutive element of American culture by the
middle of the nineteenth century. Historians debate the reasons for the upsurge. Ralph Gabriel
argued that a romantic reaction against enlightenment thought as well as the perceived ideal of
the free and responsible individual supported the rise of evangelicalism in the turn of the 19th
century. Nathan Hatch’s seminal 1989 book, The Democratization of American Christianity,
contended that the similar components of antiauthoritarianism and diffused governance between
American Evangelicalism and democracy allowed both to flourish together as the new nation developed its own identity. A year later Jon Butler’s work Awash in a Sea of Faith painted a broader, more convoluted picture of the relationship, showing a break from Puritan thought, the prevalent use of the occult arts, and the more authoritarian and coercive elements of religious practice. A more recent work by Amanda Porterfield frames the years of the early republic in similar terms to Butler, focusing on the political uncertainty of the time and how religious leaders took advantage of public fear, manipulating it so as to gain influence and power.39
Amidst changing attitudes toward Christianity, it is interesting to note the use of the term
“religion” more broadly rather than toleration of Christianity alone in the founding documents.
Virginia’s 1786 Statute for Religious Freedom and the religious clauses in the First Amendment
38 The increase in religion is, itself, a complicated aspect of American history. See, for example, Eric R. Schlereth, An Age of Infidels: The Politics of Religious Controversy in the Early United States, 1st ed., Early American Studies (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 39 Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People, Studies in Cultural History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Ralph H. Gabriel, "Evangelical Religion and Popular Romanticism in Early Nineteenth-Century America," Church History 19, no. 1 (1950); Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989); Amanda Porterfield, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation, American Beginnings, 1500-1900 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012). See also Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005).
14 use the term “religion” but do not define the term. What did the Founders mean when they referred to “religion?” Perhaps the best list of religions at the time is Hannah Adams’ 1784 work
An Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects Which Have Appeared in the World from the
Beginning of the Christian Era to the Present Day. Later republished in 1791, 1801, and finally in 1817 as A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations, the work describes various religious groups familiar to the author. The 1784 edition discusses several Native
American religions as well as (briefly) Jews and Catholics, but the majority of the groups discussed are of different Protestant persuasions. Adams’ work was appreciated and read widely by others of her liberal Unitarian bent; outside of her regional popularity, the actual reach of her work is unclear.40
Understanding a popular understanding of the term “religion” is an important prerequisite in considering religious freedom in early America. We can see the both ends of the religious freedom spectrum with regards to the “religion” in the colonies and early republic. At one end, various Protestant groups increasingly discovered how to tolerate and even celebrate the freedom to worship. The coexistence of multiple Protestant groups was increasingly encouraged through the events of the awakenings in the 18th and 19th centuries, though it was not without controversy. On the other end of the spectrum are what Butler refers to as the “limits of the colonies’ toleration,” namely, Native Americans and enslaved Africans. Outside of a few exceptions, Americans avoided native religion when possible and violently subjugated it when
40 The work consulted was contained in R. Marie Griffith, American Religions: A Documentary History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 157-62. For other works on Adams, see James Turner, Religion Enters the Academy: The Origins of the Scholarly Study of Religion in America, George H Shriver Lecture Series in Religion in American History (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 24-31; Thomas A. Tweed, "An American Pioneer in the Study of Religion: Hannah Adams (1755-1831) and Her "Dictionary of All Religions"," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 60, no. 3 (1992).
15 preferable. Any vestiges of African religion were thought of as an indicator of slave revolt and
were strongly suppressed.41
While other scholars have frequently studied the antagonistic relationship between
Protestants and Catholics and Jews, recent works have furthered our understanding of a middle
ground between suppression and acceptance with regard to minority and even imaginary groups.
Denise Spellberg’s important work, Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an, shows how Muslims were
viewed at the end of the 18th century as “beyond the outer limit of those possessing acceptable
beliefs,” but they were also “emblems of two competing conceptions of the nation’s identity: one
essentially preserving the Protestant status quo, and the other fully realizing the pluralism
implied in the Revolutionary rhetoric of inalienable and universal rights.” This was done in the
theoretical, for as Spellberg notes, “none were known at the time to live in America” - a
demonstrably false fact, but the common perception by the Founders nonetheless.42
Worldwide, outside of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, Adams’ 1784 work lumps all
other religions together as “heathen” - but what this term signified may have been more specific.
Michael Altman’s 2017 work Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu provides a useful genealogy of Hinduism in American culture from 1721 to 1893. Altman makes it clear that one should not trace a direct history from “heathen” to “Hindu,” but the terms provided for a representation of religion in
41 Butler, "Disestablishment as American Sisyphus," in Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism, 46. See also Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People, 129-63; Rachel M. Wheeler, To Live Upon Hope: Mohicans and Missionaries in the Eighteenth-Century Northeast (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008). 42 Denise A. Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders, First Edition. ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 4-6. The founders ignored the presence of Islamic thought within enslaved populations. For other works concerning views of Islam in the colonial period and early republic, see Robert J. Allison, The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Robert Battistini, "Glimpses of the Other before Orientalism: The Muslim World in Early American Periodicals, 1785— 1800," Early American Studies, no. 2 (2010); James H. Hutson, "The Founding Fathers and Islam," Library of Congress Information Bulletin 61, no. 5 (2002), http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0205/tolerance.html; Thomas S. Kidd, American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
16 India. As it was for perceptions of Islam, the founding generation considered religion in India without the benefit of people from the South Asian subcontinent. Works like Cotton Mather’s
1721 India Christiana or Adams’ 1784 work could point to a different religious perspective, but its absence made any clarity on the subject of religion all the more elusive.43
Whatever “religion” meant to the founding generation of the United States, the First
Amendment was to change the influence of government on the matter. As Jon Butler notes,
“Through the First Amendment, a brash new nation turned religion questions previously shepherded by central governments over to the public without stipulations and without even defining religion.” Such a public discussion had last occurred in the West more than a millennium before, ending when “Roman authorities began discouraging and then banning other religions after Constantine’s recognition of Christianity in the fourth century.”44
Literature Review
This project intersects with multiple historiographic streams within the broader topic of the religiopolitical environment of the early republic of the United States. The first stream considers the presence (or lack) of religious freedom the United States. The second stream considers the relationship between church and state. Should the religion clauses to the First
Amendment of the Constitution be understood as a call for separation between church and state or an accommodation of religion by the government? Perhaps there is another option that combines both perspectives. The third stream analyzes the role of the federal government in maintaining its “secularity” while upholding certain religions or religion more broadly with
43 Michael J. Altman, Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: American Representations of India, 1721-1893 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). Altman makes the helpful point that representations of religion in India assisted in these generations developing their own understanding of “religion” more broadly. And if Hinduism was a contested reality then, the growth of information and immigration has done little to change that in the present day. 44 Butler, "Disestablishment as American Sisyphus," in Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism, 49.
17 regards to the civic and social life of the early republic. Each stream is interconnected with the
other two but will benefit here from individual consideration.
Regarding notions of religious freedom, much has been written regarding the existence
(or lack) of religious freedom throughout the history of the United States. One may question if it
is possible to understand the concept of religious liberty from the perspective of the founders in
the first place.45 Understood or not, religious freedom has been a celebrated and distinct notion
of US governance in the past.46 But recent works such as David Sehat’s 2011 book The Myth of
Religious Freedom and Winnifred Sullivan’s 2005 work The Impossibility of Religious Freedom have drawn into question whether religious freedom even existed in the United States as well as the inherent fragility of such a concept. Sehat’s work provides a broader perspective of religious freedom throughout the history of the United States, recognizing the federal government not as a secular body that promoted tolerance, but as a Protestant establishment that used “secular” moral laws to punish dissidents.47 Sullivan’s work is more focused. It utilizes a modern court case to
show that any concept of religious freedom requires a particular categorization of religion that
both includes and excludes.48 Both Sehat and Sullivan provide important considerations of
religious freedom in the United States and whether the theme of religious freedom should
apply.49
45 On this point see Steven D. Smith, Foreordained Failure: The Quest for a Constitutional Principle of Religious Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 46 For recent treatments in this vein see, for example, John A. Ragosta, Religious Freedom: Jefferson’s Legacy, America's Creed, Jeffersonian America (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2013).; Andrew Koppelman, Defending American Religious Neutrality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).; Dennis J. Goldford, The Constitution of Religious Freedom: God, Politics, and the First Amendment (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012).; Steven Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 2008). 47 David Sehat, The Myth of American Religious Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 48 Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, The Impossibility of Religious Freedom (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2005). 49 The division in thought here concerning the presence or absence of religious freedom may have a
18 Beyond questioning the existence of religious freedom, recent scholarship has also
provided a revisionist understanding of religious freedom throughout the history of the United
States. At least, these are the terms used by Steven Smith in his 2014 work, The Rise and Decline
of American Religious Freedom.50 From Smith’s perspective, the traditional view of religious
freedom saw America as enlightened innovators who initiated a “lively experiment” and a “bold
break with the past” in removing the link between church and state, with the First Amendment
being a monumental, meaning-full, deliberate decision to make a secular and neutral
government. But these ideals were not upheld through a dark period until a court-led rediscovery of the true nature of the First Amendment in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. Smith sees some truth and understands the appealing nature of this, especially because of how it mirrors conversations on race in American history. But Smith summarizes a revisionist view that has been developed in recent literature, one that sees American religious freedom as a mostly Christian, marginally pagan retrieval, where the First Amendment was unpretentious, unpremeditated, and an attempt to “reaffirm the jurisdictional status quo” by leaving the decisions regarding religion to the states. In this view, the ensuing century-and-a-half was a golden age of American religious freedom: It was a principle "not of secularism or neutrality but rather of open contestation." But such a viewpoint was dissolved and denied by the Supreme Court in the 1940s onward.51
Though painting with a broad brush, Smith provides a helpful overview of the direction and divisions in recent scholarship.
disciplinary aspect to it: political scientists and scholars of constitutional law uphold it, whereas Sehat is an intellectual historian and Sullivan, a religious studies scholar. 50 Steven D. Smith, The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 51 Ibid., 2-10. Smith includes divergent perspectives on the Religious Right in his formulations, but this is outside the scope of this project, beyond the fact that the movement has occasioned much of the scholarship in the past thirty years.
19 The concept of religious freedom has taken an international turn of late, as seen by multiple recent publications. Politics of Religious Freedom, a 2015 work that brought together the editing skills of Winifred Fallers Sullivan, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Saba Mahmood, and
Peter G. Danchin, draws on a wider range of scholars who consider perspectives on religious freedom around the world. In the introduction the editors note, “In a remarkably short period, religious freedom has been naturalized in public discourse worldwide as an indispensable condition for peace in our time, advocated around the world and across the religious and political spectrum.”52 And yet, conceptions of and discourses concerning religious liberty differ depending on the time and place they occur. The goal of this collection of essays is, by diving into the “complex social and legal lives” of the concept of religious freedom, to “unsettle the assumption—so ubiquitous in policy circles—that religious freedom is easily recognized and understood, and that the only problem lies in its incomplete realization.”53 Elizabeth Shakman
Hurd has argued convincingly in her 2015 work Beyond Religious Freedom that a western perspective on religious freedom, when exported to the rest of the world, has in fact furthered some of the same problems the advocacy was meant to solve, but that differences in understandings of lived and governed religion marginalize groups in different ways than what was experienced in the West.54 Both books point to the diversification in understandings of religious freedom when viewed through an international lens. Such a move in the scholarship permits the scholar to turn back and gaze afresh at conceptions of religious freedom in the United
52 Winnifred Fallers Sullivan et al., Politics of Religious Freedom (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), 1. 53 Ibid., 2. 54 Elizabeth Shakman author Hurd, Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).
20 States, recognizing that a wider array of concepts concerning religious freedom allow for the
possibility of situating the concepts differently than before.
In light of recent scholarship that has referred to religious freedom as a myth and an
impossibility, the scholarship that revised past understandings of religious freedom throughout
United States history, and an international turn that has complicated the discourses surrounding
religious freedom depending on its context, my project will return to the question of religious
freedom specifically with regard to the federal government in the early republic. One of the
contributions of my project is in its focus: its chronological and geographical specificity will
allow for a more nuanced consideration of the nature of religious freedom as well as the role the
federal government played in the development of religious freedom in the early republic. I focus
on areas of federal governance in the years following the ratification of the Constitution and the
Bill of Rights in contrast to a historical excavation of the philosophies and ideologies, out of
which the documents were developed. So I emphasize the new reality of the Constitution and
First Amendment as it is worked out in the day-to-day life of various agencies of the federal
government. This approach will more fully flesh out popular understandings of the religious
clauses of the First Amendment in the early republic. This study reveals that the federal
government both advances and restricts religious freedom. The lack of regulation allows for a
wider marketplace of religious groups to coexist and compete. Groups outside of the cultural mainstream were not protected, however and were at times repressed with the support of the federal government.
Debate over the meaning of the religion clauses to the First Amendment has been a continuous aspect of the historiography. There have been two primary interpretations of religious freedom in America: the separationist perspective and the accomodationist perspective.
21 According to the separationist perspective, the “secular” federal government created a separation of church and state and wanted to remove any notion of religion from national governance. To those who hold a separationist reading of the founding period, the seminal document is a “Godless Constitution:” its purpose is to disestablish religion from the realm of politics.55 Though the country was full of examples of connections between church and state, the
Constitution would serve as a marker for the separation of church and state that would eventually be worked out to its completion in a “second disestablishment.”56 Any notion of the United
States as a “Christian nation” should be understood as a “myth,” a story that interprets facts in a particular way to accentuate a useful past that provides deeper meaning to the collective reality of America.57 This view argues instead that the religious clauses in the first amendment reflect the enlightenment-based argument that the church should be wholly separate from the workings of the state.58
The accomodationist perspective, in contrast, holds that the First Amendment does not allow for the promotion of a particular religion, but this prohibition does not mean that the government is to be antireligious; as a matter of fact, the goal of the Amendment is to protect religious practice in general. From the accomodationist view, the concerns of the founding fathers was not about the role of religion; it was understood that religion (which primarily meant
55 Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State, Rev. ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2005). For another take on the decline of religiosity that led to the “godless constitution,” see Slauter, The State as a Work of Art, 241-95. 56 Green, The Second Disestablishment. 57 Steven K. Green, Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 58 Some extend this perspective to the entire revolutionary era, arguing that the time was not merely a revolt against an imperial monarch, but against the global reach and oppressive artifice of supernatural religion. See Stewart. For other works on the separationst perspective, see Leonard W. Levy, The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment, 2nd ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Leo Pfeffer, Church, State, and Freedom, 2nd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967).
22 Protestant Christianity) was the surest foundation of a moral society. Instead, the founders were
concerned about the place of religion, whether bound up in government or separate in a free
market.59 This position has its strongest support from activist historians in the Religious Right,
most notably David Barton.60
A less-discussed perspective argues that these divergent perspectives can be brought
together by attending to the broader concern to create and sustain a functioning government.
Such a claim, recognizing the political necessity of the views enumerated in the First
Amendment, recognizes that the move to strong federal governance was far from an easy one.
The call to amend the Articles of Confederation turned into the writing of a completely new
constitution, but there were many who were concerned about the effects a stronger federal
government would have on the rights and liberties of the states. With even the possibility of
greater centralization and control from Congress in the future, the Bill of Rights was designed
not as a statement of individual rights, but of restrictions against the federal government, thus
permitting more states to ratify the Constitution.61
What is abundantly clear is that using "separation of church and state" as a gloss for the
First Amendment is based on the jurisprudence of the 20th century, but such a perspective was
far from univocal in the first few decades of the early republic. My contribution here is that the
“political necessity” perspective most closely aligns with what is worked out in the first decades
59 On this see Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). 60 For example, see Barton, The Myth of Separation. For other works that argue this perspective, see Walter Berns, The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy (Chicago: Gateway Editions, 1985); Robert L. Cord, Separation of Church and State: Historical Fact and Current Fiction (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988); Michael J. Malbin, Religion and Politics: The Intentions of the Authors of the First Amendment (Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1978). 61 On this perspective see John F. Wilson, "Religion, Government, and Power in the New American Nation," in Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the 1980s, ed. Mark A. Noll (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). See also Compton, Evangelical Origins, 191n3.
23 of the newly constitutionalized republic. At times the federal government functioned separate
from religion, especially in how there was no established religion at the federal level; at other times the government was broadly accommodating to religion, though more unevenly with regards to particular religions. In short, my project will eschew the embedded division in the literature and argue how both perspectives are, at times, valid. I also will show both the possibilities and problems associated with the division of a political entity from a particular religious institution.
The final historiographical stream I intervene in concerns the notion of a “secular” government that still involves itself in religious issues. Recent works have shown that not only is religious freedom a tenuous concept, if not an outright myth or impossibility; so too is the notion of a truly disestablished state. While a disconnect between a particular religion or denomination and the apparatus of the federal government is possible so that there is no beneficial treatment, separating religion from politics is a different matter entirely.
A recent trend in the literature points to the “secular” nature of the federal government as
a mirage and a facade for an embedded Protestant hegemony that exploited the characterization
to maintain its own power and influence. Tracy Fessenden argues this in her work Culture and
Redemption. In it, American Protestantism is an “unmarked category” and a fundamental aspect
of how a particular strain of post-Protestant secularism, often blind to its own exclusions, became
normative for understanding that history. In this perspective, the Constitution and other founding
documents
aimed to unite a presumptively (if diversely) Christian population under the mantle of religious tolerance, the rule of noninterference between religion and government, far from consigning all religions equally to the silent margins of the political, instead created the conditions for the dominance of an increasingly nonspecific Protestantism over nearly all aspects of American life, a dominance as pervasive as it is invisible for exceeding the
24 domains we conventionally figure as religious.62
It was this nonspecific Protestantism that was maintained through challenges such as the so- called Bible wars, for which the courts consistently decided that the nonsectarian thing to do would be to use the King James Version of the Bible in public schools.63
Similar to Fessenden’s perspective, John Lardas Modern has argued that the time
witnessed a diffusion of secularism that haunted culture by manifesting itself in different ways.
In doing so Modern shows the cultural mood that can be characterized by fluid notions of both
religion and the secular. Secularism is not simply the absence of religion, or the opposite of
religion - it is a "haunting," a "search for the great white whale." Modern argues that whatever
we talk about when we talk about secularism surpasses our ability to actually name it. While
Modern’s topic is broader than the federal government, his theoretical intervention colors the
historiography.64
Certainly the influence of Protestant ideals surrounding the development of the
Constitution and other founding documents cannot be ignored; in a sense, both Fessenden and
Modern are pushing back against the argument of a “godless constitution.” But is the federal
government best understood as a bounded and enforced unmarked Protestantism, or is it
Protestantism itself that allows for the notion of the secular in the first place? Works related to
the religious aspects of early governance explore, for example, the role of the Federalist party in
62 Tracy Fessenden, Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 61. 63 On the “Bible Wars” see Jon Gjerde and S. Deborah Kang, Catholicism and the Shaping of 19th Century America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 138-75. The debate over which Bible to use is well-trod. I don’t involve this project in the discussion. I see the use of the Bible in schools as reflective of a broader “atmospheric ubiquity” of the Bible in the cultural life of the United States. 64 John Lardas Modern, Secularism in Antebellum America: With Reference to Ghosts, Protestant Subcultures, Machines, and Their Metaphors: Featuring Discussions of Mass Media, Moby-Dick, Spirituality, Phrenology, Anthropology, Sing Sing State Penitentiary, and Sex with the New Motive Power, Religion and Postmodernism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
25 the 1790s and 1800s as they moved through different stages in their understanding of religion’s
relationship with politics,65 and how the Bible would have been used by those living in the years
leading up to and including the founding generation.66
I argue that any perceived dichotomy between Protestantism and secularism neglects the reality on the ground. For my part, I explore how a Protestant ethos undergirded attempts to allow for a sort of religious neutrality in the federal government while still supporting religion
(broadly construed) in the nascent country. I will consider what was thought of as lost in the aftermath of the creation of the disestablished government and how, if deemed vital, the federal government sought to uphold beneficial aspects of religious establishment in the development of the new country. Instead of viewing this development as an unmarked hegemonic Protestantism or a move toward secularism, perhaps a better description is found in Timothy Larsen’s notion of dechristendomization. Larsen finds this term to be more useful term than secularization, for it emphasizes the removal of “coercion or state sponsorship in an effort to bolster Christianity” instead of removing the influence of religion in governance in toto. This more nuanced perspective gets closer to the heart of the American experiment the founders began.67
Chapter Development
The four chapters of this project draw from various aspects of inchoate federal governance. Using different facets of the federal government paints a picture of consensus from
65 Jonathan J. Den Hartog, Patriotism and Piety: Federalist Politics and Religious Struggle in the New American Nation (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014). Den Hartog’s work is of particular note for this project because it effectively shows the ever-changing nature of the relationship between religion and politics in the early republic - and his work focuses on one political party! My project takes a broader perspective on federal governance than Den Hartog’s work. 66 See Noll; Daniel L. Dreisbach, Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Bible (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). 67 Timothy Larsen, "Dechristendomization as an Alternative to Secularization: Theology, History, and Sociology in Conversation," Pro Ecclesia 15, no. 3 (2006): 330. See also Werner Ustorf and Hugh McLeod, The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750-2000 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
26 the variegated aspects, though the perspective was by no means monolithic. These four facets include the postal service, which allowed for the dissemination of religious information through the mail at favorable rates; religious services held in the governmental buildings, especially the
U.S. Capitol building; chaplaincy programs, both within Congress and in the military; and federal policy regarding Native Americans, which included providing support for Christian missionaries in their goal of evangelization. The chapters are organized to proceed from the institution with the least clear connections between church and state to those with clearer and more obvious support for religion by the federal government.
The Post Office: Transporting Religion at Reduced Rates
The first chapter considers a less-discussed aspect of the federal government, both more broadly in terms of American history as well as with regards to religious history: the post office.
Two events in the history of the Post Office Department relate to the broader thesis here, the former more discussed than the latter: the controversy over the Sunday mail and the provision of favorable postage rates that benefited religious organizations. While permitting Sunday mail riled religious leaders who believed it should be a time of rest and worship, this is only part of the story. Subsidizing newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets facilitated the dissemination of a wide variety of religious ideas throughout the nascent United States, encouraging a print culture heavy-laden with religious materials from various tract and Bible societies, among other groups.
Scholars have considered debate over the Sunday mail at length.68 The Sabbatarian impulse from Protestant evangelicals following the 1825 law requiring mail delivery seven days a week was met with resistance from a separate anti-Sabbatarian constituency that permits a
68 See, for some representative works, Tim Verhoeven, "The Case for Sunday Mails: Sabbath Laws and the Separation of Church and State in Jacksonian America," Journal of Church and State 55, no. 1 (2013), and James R. Rohrer, "Sunday Mails and the Church-State Theme in Jacksonian America," Journal of the Early Republic 7, no. 1 (1987).
27 broad overview of the controversy over the limits of church-state interaction. Missing from this discussion, however, is a consideration of the role the Post Office played and plays in distributing material throughout the United States at a fraction of the cost to typical mail service.
My narrative flips these two emphases by highlighting the support for religious mailings primarily and considering the Sunday mail controversy as one aspect of the broader connection between religion and federal governance.
Some argue that the federal government had “little effect on the social, economic, religious, and intellectual developments that were shaping American civilization.”69 The post office is but one example that provides exception to the observation. My project considers the development of the post office from its British and colonial contexts to its entrenched position as a major aspect of the federal government. I explore the secular, commercial, and political reasons that made a federal post office appeal to a broad cross section of people who disagreed strongly about many other things. My main point is to show how the Post Office as a secular, federal institution made an indelible effect on the development of religion in the United States.
Church in State: Religious Services in the U.S. Capitol Building
When a government supports an established religion, the choice of where to attend weekly religious services is straight-forward, and even more so when a particular church is deemed the national gathering place. The federal government had neither place nor position to look to as the seat of governance transitioned to the newly established city of Washington; the
First Amendment prohibited favorable treatment to a particular religion, and the “great church for national purposes” in Pierre L'Enfant’s original designs for the city would not be acted on
69 Edward Pessen, Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics, Rev. ed., The Dorsey Series in American History (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1978), 2.
28 until the last decade of the 19th century.
But what was lacking in establishment and location was made up for in an institution
more fitting to the ideology of the time period: a non-denominational religious service in the
U.S. Capitol building. Throughout sixty years of religious services presidents, politicians and everyday people utilized various rooms of the Capitol for religious services. They were frequently boisterous, theologically variegated services that drew both the United States Marine
Corps Band as well as preachers, both men and women, from a wide variety of Christian denominations, both Protestant and Catholic. Frequently the services were standing-room-only and even the chair reserved for the President, were he to attend, was at times taken, forcing more unorthodox arrangements (John Adams once sat on the steps leading up to the Speaker’s area).
The argument of this chapter is that religious services at the Capitol reflect the contingent nature of the government’s relationship to religion in the early republic. While no one particular denomination was to be elevated, it was thought to be a good thing when Christianity in general was celebrated. The general ecumenicism in the Capitol reflected what was seen elsewhere in the
Second Great Awakening as denominational distinctions diminished in favor of a more emotional simplicity of thought and worship. The services encouraged and thus helped to develop a more generic understanding of Christianity. Along the way, the services assisted in the developing of a patriotic national identity—a civil religion—that actively celebrated Christianity while still being somewhat removed from explicit support of it.
This topic is important in its own right because of the lack of scholarly attention on the subject. Scholars have been interested in Thomas Jefferson’s attendance at a religious service two days after he sent his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association and in response to his
29 receiving a “mammoth cheese,”70 but other than this the literature is slim. The only existing
literature that focuses on the religious services is within a broader work by James Hutson that
was a book project derived from an exhibition at the Library of Congress.71
Federal Chaplaincy Programs in Congress and in the Military
Chaplaincy programs were not invented by the United States; the term dates back perhaps to the fourth century. The inclusion of a chaplain within the halls of Congress as well as chaplaincy programs during the Revolutionary War and then in the ensuing branches of the military is not new or surprising. But some scholars point to the inherent issues of having a chaplaincy supported by the federal government at all.72 In fact, challenges to the existence of
chaplaincy programs have occurred throughout United States history, be it over the fact that
there are religions excluded, or over the presence of the chaplaincy at all.73 Indeed, chaplaincy
programs are an obvious example of entanglement between church and state.
In light of this incongruence between modern understandings of the Constitution and the
existence of a state-supported religious office, in this chapter I consider the discussions
surrounding the creation of chaplaincy offices both in congress and within the military. How
were such programs supported and developed when, based on a straightforward reading of the
First Amendment, such programs would be unconstitutional? How did the federal government
70 See, for example, Jeffrey L. Pasley, "The Cheese and the Words: Popular Political Culture and Participatory Democracy in the Early American Republic," in Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, ed. Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). 71 James H. Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1998). 72 For example, Steven Green argues that “The military chaplaincy system is a constitutional train-wreck waiting to happen” (Green, Reconciling the Irreconcilable, 168, qtd. in Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, A Ministry of Presence: Chaplaincy, Spiritual Care, and the Law (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014), 168.. 73 On the history of challenges to the Army chaplaincy see Israel Drazin and Cecil B. Currey, For God and Country: The History of a Constitutional Challenge to the Army Chaplaincy (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Pub. House, 1995).
30 respond to calls for the ending of such programs on constitutional grounds?
I argue the programs reflected a cultural ethos that recognized the practical benefits of religion in times of great upheaval, be it in political disagreement or military conflict. The utility of chaplains for supporting morale, combined with their inexpensiveness, meant that the difficult question of whether the new U.S. government should support them, as British and European governments did, was not addressed. Questions about the propriety of Unitarian of Catholic chaplains commanded some public attention, overshadowing the underlying issue. Meanwhile, chaplains proliferated and became minor fixtures of government.
Funding and Forging Identity and Empire: Governmental Support for Christian Missions
The War for Independence brought the thirteen colonies freedom from colonial control but with it sole responsibility for their relationship with native groups living in North America.
Relationships between these groups and the new country, already frayed by previous conflict, were further deteriorated by alliances the native groups made with Great Britain during the war.
At issue was the future: how would the two entities (broadly conceived) interact?
For the United States, the eventual goal of removal was preceded by an attempt to assimilate native groups into a western lifestyle. Thus, a three-fold policy to “civilize, Anglicize, and Christianize” the native groups was born. In pursuing this policy, the federal government provided money and land to Christian missionaries who were to be at the forefront of this endeavor. Begun as early as 1776, such a policy was seen to be beneficial to both sides: “a friendly commerce between the people of the United Colonies and the Indians, and the propagation of the gospel, and the cultivation of the civil arts among the latter, may produce inestimable advantages to both.”74
74 Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Policy in the Formative Years: The Indian Trade and Intercourse
31 Much has been written regarding the religiously-tinged relationship between the United
States and native groups.75 My aim is to show how the federal government, in the early
nineteenth century, used and manipulated Christian evangelization efforts for the benefit of their
overall Indian strategy.76 My project is distinct in that my emphasis is not on the individual native groups, but on what this reveals about the stances of the federal government. The
government did not shy away from using religion as a tool when it served their overall goals. In
this case, religion was useful in navigating the tense relationship between the new county and the
Native groups whose lands they desired. For a while this goal was in accord with mission agencies, but the desire for Indian removal eventually led to a parting of ways.
Epilogue
The most sustained criticism of connections between church and state do not emerge until the late 1840s and 1850s. Even then, the arguments are part of a broader political disagreement in the lead-up to the Civil War. Still, Congress responds by providing justification for the existing system. In response to attacks on chaplaincy programs, Northern evangelicals defended chaplaincies as essential ingredients of American governance and patriotism.
Acts, 1780-1834 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 214. 75 For a recent work see L. J. Daggar, "The Mission Complex: Economic Development, "Civilization," and Empire in the Early Republic," Journal of the Early Republic 36, no. 3 (2016). 76 My focus in this chapter will be limited to Native Americans. Recent work on the international outreach of America makes similar arguments. See, for example, Emily Conroy-Krutz, Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic, The United States in the World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015); Christine Leigh Heyrman, American Apostles: When Evangelicals Entered the World of Islam (New York: Hill and Wang, 2015).
32 CHAPTER 2
THE POST OFFICE: TRANSPORTING RELIGION AT REDUCED RATES
Leonard Bacon loved the time he was living in. The pastor of First Church
(Congregational) in New Haven, CT, Bacon helmed a prominent church made famous
throughout New England by previous leaders like Moses Stuart and Nathaniel Taylor. Bacon’s
role afforded him time to start the New Englander in 1843, which later became the Yale Review -
perhaps the oldest literary quarterly in the United States. He founded the journal out of the
Christian Examiner which, since 1819, had been more focused on the promotion of
Evangelicalism; the Yale Review would include articles on history and economics as well:
“Nothing that concerns our interests and affections as citizens, our duties as men, or our faith and
hope as Christians, will be without the range of topics contemplated.”77
The first article Bacon included in the journal described a technology that distinguished the United States from other great civilizations that had gone before: the Post Office department.
“Neither Egypt when her Pharaohs built the pyramids, or when her Ptolemies made Alexandria the emporium of the world—nor Greece when her artists adorned her hills with structures and statues which to this day all kindred genius only seeks to imitate, or faintly hopes to rival—nor
Rome when her arch of empire overshadowed every nation,” Bacon opined, “had any such thing as a mail for the accommodation of the public.”78
Bacon was not the first to compare the technologies of America with the great
77 Leonard Bacon, "Prospectus," The New Englander 1, no. 1 (1843): 1. 78 Leonard Bacon, "The Post-Office System, as an Element of Modern Civilization," The New Englander 1, no. 1 (Jan 1843 1843): 9.
33 civilizations of the past. Even more specific discussions of the post office are replete with
comparisons to the technologies of the previous empires, especially that of Rome. Indeed,
Christians like Bacon believed that, with the assistance of the post office, they were doing
something that Jesus and the apostles could not:
The era of the first propagation of Christianity-the era of the New Testament Scriptures- was that of “the most high and palmy state” of Roman civilization; yet the Apostles and primitive missionaries, in their communications with each other and with their converts, never enjoyed the convenience of a post-office—a convenience which is only next to the printing-office among the essential things of modern civilization. Thus, in almost every one of the Apostolic epistles, we find some very natural reference, more or less explicit, to the messenger by whom the epistle was to be conveyed to its destination. … All these conveniences-post-offices, mails, bank-deposites, and bills of exchange, were as unknown to Roman civilization, as newspapers, steamboats, and railroads.79
Jesus and the apostles could only accomplish so much in their time, Bacon argued; with the post
office system by their side, Christians could send the gospel throughout their country and the
world.
******
Two common themes emerge in scholarship about the post office80 in the early republic:
the dearth of studies on the subject, and the immense importance of the institution in the
development of the United States. Richard R. John wrote in 1995, “To a surprising degree, [the
history of the post office] has been entirely overlooked, with most general accounts including no
more than a token sentence or two about the role of the postal system in American public life.
With the exception of a number a specialized studies of particular topics, the postal system
remains the "important," yet "virtually unknown," institution that one historian proclaimed it to
79 Ibid., 9-10. 80 The postal system goes by several names throughout its history. Early records refer to the institution as the “General Post Office;” the phrase “Post Office Department” appears in the literature as early as 1821. The department was viewed as an executive department in 1873. The transformation to the United States Postal Service occurred in 1971, when the Postmaster General was no longer part of the President’s cabinet and operational authority was handled independently from Congress and the executive branch.
34 be in 1974.”81 John saws claims of ignorance regarding the office as early as 1838, in the 1860s,
and in 1951. Fortunately, the former theme has become less true in the past twenty-five years as
John’s insights in his own magisterial 1995 work Spreading the News: the American Postal
System from Franklin to Morse were furthered by other recent works such as David M. Henkin’s
2006 work The Postal Age: the Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century
America and Winifred Gallagher’s 2016 book How the Post Office Created America: a History.
Why is the post office so important in describing the development of the United States and federal governance? There are several reasons. First, the post office is the only institution that spans the entire history of the United States, both before and after the Constitution. It is the
principle and original federal institution. Beyond its chronological ubiquity, the practical reach of
the post office was far greater than any other aspect of the federal government. For many
Americans, the post office was the federal government. Pliny Miles, an early expert on the
institution, noted, “The post-office is of more importance to the people, and its daily operations
are felt to a wider extent, and affect a far larger share of the population, than the land-office, pension bureau, war, navy, treasury and interior departments, all put together.”82 In fact, for
many, the post office would be the only institution of federal governance with which they would
interact. With the exception of the upheaval caused by the Civil War, this remained true
throughout the nineteenth century. John Wanamaker, Postmaster General from 1889 to 1893,
81 Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 15. John points to two primary reasons for the institution being understudied: the overwhelming amount of source material, though the records are skant when compared to the size of the institution; and misconceptions about the post office as being slow or unreliable for the time, a symbol of the (wrongly perceived) weak federal government. An 1837 letter from the Postmaster General to a local post office illustrated the issues for the contemporary historian as well as the Postmaster’s own work: “Your answer was received, but was destroyed in the subsequent conflagration of the Post Office building. Be good enough to consider the same inquiries as no again made of you.” 82 Pliny Miles, "Our National Post-Office," The New-York Quarterly 3 (1854): 2.
35 noted that “The Post Office is the Visible Form of the federal government to every community
and to every citizen. Its hand is the only one that touches the local life, the social interests, and
business concern of every neighborhood.”83
The post office has been ignored by historians of the United States in favor of focusing on large-scale social processes as engines of social change such as commercialization and demographic expansion. And yet, one can not ignore the “communications revolution” that historian Richard R. John describes. Political theorist Francis Lieber in 1832 argued that the postal system should be ranked with the printing press and the mariner's compass as “one of the
most effective elements of civilization.” Far from a weak or ineffective institution, the post office
in the early republic was creating a system that should not have been able to be done. “It is not
easy to overemphasize the difficulty of transmitting news and information throughout the United
States in the years immediately following the adoption of the Constitution,” Julian Bretz noted in
1911.84 In overcoming these difficulties, the post office heralded a new age: "No other institution
had the capacity to transmit such a large volume of information on such a regular basis over such
an enormous geographical expanse." The postal system was "the linchpin of the American
communications infrastructure" before the advent of the telegraph.85
As an information transmitter, the post office instantiated the theoretical language of the
Constitution and First Amendment. Congress was restricted from “restricting an establishment of religion” or “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” but what that meant was far from clear. Fredrick Schauer refers to the post office as a First Amendment institution, which is to say,
83 Quote from the wall of the National Postal Museum 84 Julian P. Bretz, "Some Aspects of Postal Expansion into the West," Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1909 (1911): 143. 85 John, Spreading the News, vii.
36 a societal institution that is recognized by judges as furthering First Amendment values in unique
ways.86 Anuj C. Desai elaborates on this, “By establishing an institution and giving it particular
attributes, the drafters of postal statutes helped shape the First Amendment long after the
promulgation of their statutes.”87 The relationship was reciprocal: the First Amendment affected the organization and function of the post office, but the working out of the regulations bolstered particular interpretations of the First Amendment that provided fodder for judicial decisions centuries in the future.
The primary focus of this chapter concerns the influence the post office had on the development of religion in the United States. Peter Coleman noted in 1960, “One wonders how a meaningful history of American business can be written without an understanding of the contribution of the postal service.”88 I argue the same but replace the term “business” with
“religion.” Rarely does the post office show up in histories of American religious history, or the
effect on religion in histories of the post office. The sole exception to this is descriptions of the
Sabbatarian controversies - two periods of time (1810 to 1817 and 1826 to 1831) where the
opening of the post offices on Sundays led to protests and disagreements over the
appropriateness of such an arrangement. For example, John’s 1995 work relegates any focus on
religion in the post office to one chapter that concentrates solely on the sabbatarian controversy.
He quotes William Ellery Channing, who notes that this disagreement was “perhaps the most
86 See Frederick Schauer, "Principles, Institutions, and the First Amendment," Harvard Law Review 112 (1998). Paul Horowitz does not include the Post Office in his description of First Amendment institutions, though it seems like it would fit. Horowitz’s omission could be due to the decline in the post office as the prime mainstay of communication in the present day. See Paul Horwitz, First Amendment Institutions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). 87 Anuj C. Desai, "The Transformation of Statutes into Constitutional Law: How Early Post Office Policy Shaped Modern First Amendment Doctrine," Hastings Law Journal 58, no. 4 (2006): 674. 88 Peter J. Coleman, "Beard, Mcdonald, and Economic Determinism in American Historiography," Business History Review 34 (1960): 120.
37 important that ever was, or ever will be submitted for national consideration.”89 Perhaps. The
Sunday mail issue is an underexamined, important part of any story at the intersection of the post
office and religion in the early republic.90 But it is not the whole story.
It is also important to note the favorable conditions provided to periodicals such as
newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets, and to recognize the sheer volume of religious
periodicals that would be included in those favorable provisions. “Since the emergence of
periodical publications geared toward a mass market, religious titles have accounted for a substantial percentage of the total; for much of the nineteenth century they outnumbered strictly secular magazines, newspapers, and cognate periodicals.”91 In this chapter I argue that, in its formative decades, the United States Post Office was used by religious groups to disseminate of a wide variety of religious ideas throughout the nascent United States. This was done at significant expense by the post office, which at times subsidized the type of mail being sent out
(newspapers) and at other times only allowed magazines and pamphlets from religious groups to be sent, prohibiting others due to their unwieldy nature in transport. Such favorable rates predicated later classes of mail, developed at the end of the 19th century, that assisted non-profit groups in the transmission of their message. The transmission of uncensored religious literature mail at reduced rates facilitated the exponential growth of a vibrant and varied religious marketplace in the early republic. My main point is similar to that of Albaugh: "With the benefit of special postal rates for journals classified as newspapers, the religious press facilitated communication between widely dispersed people by like-minded individuals and groups. This
89 John, 169. 90 Rebecca Brenner’s forthcoming dissertation on the Sunday mail controversies will more fully explore this important topic, including what it means for groups not concerned with the setting apart Sunday as a day of rest. 91 Mark Fackler and Charles H. Lippy, Popular Religious Magazines of the United States, Historical Guides to the World's Periodicals and Newspapers, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), xi.
38 greatly accelerated the process by which these individuals and groups might be drawn together into state, regional, and national bodies that shared common activities, sentiments, and beliefs."92
Here I will show the debates surrounding the development of the post office as well.
One of the goals of this chapter is to make explicit some of the mechanics of communication that are frequently overlooked. An example: John Boles’ useful 1972 work The
Great Revival, referring to the Second Great Awakening, describes how the “movement proliferated” and how “the camp meeting revivals leaped over the mountains” to coastal states.
Even the news that God was working would inspire further enthusiasm: “The thought that God himself was present and at work was certainly enough to elicit the most devout and extreme professions of faith.”93 What is the underlying force that causes the proliferation of the movement - the spreading of the news that saw localized revivals become regional and even national affairs? I argue that the postal system played an important role that has generally been ignored.
This chapter describes the role a secular institution played and plays in the development of religion in the United States. The secular benefits afforded the new country help explain why there was no controversy in the federalization of the post office. Postal service was essential to the development of inter-colonial communication and to the emerging movements for political independence and national identity, so although early Americans disagreed about many other things, the need for the post office was not one of them. Even though the post office lacked any sort of religious affiliation in its design and institutional goals, the post office made an indelible
92 Gaylord P. Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers Established from 1730 through 1830, 2 vols. (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1994), I.xvi. 93 John B. Boles, The Great Revival: Beginnings of the Bible Belt, Religion in the South (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 72-73.
39 effect on the development of religion in the United States. If there ever was a clear case of a
secular institution becoming a boon to religious growth, the post office was it.
This chapter proceeds with a brief description of British postal system in the colonies and
the transformation to a “constitutional post,” which later develops into the federalized post office
through congressional acts in 1782 and 1792. After describing the major changes in the post
office in the years following the new federal system, I describe the ways the post office affected
the religious landscape through their support of religious publishing as well as the push back to
such favorable rates. I then consider the two sabbatarian controversies to more fully describe the
church-state issues that emerge surrounding the post office in the early republic.
******
The development of the postal system in the British colonies was done out of a desire to
allow for greater confidence in the mail. The first legislative action of a post office was in the
General Court of Massachusetts in 1639, where one person was to be the go-to person for the
mail:
For preventing the miscarriage of letters -- It is ordered that notice be given that Richard Fairbanks his house in Boston is the place appointed for all letters, which are brought from beyond the seas or are to be sent thither, are to bee brought to him and he is to take care, that they bee delivered, or sent according to their directions, and hee is allowed for every such letter 1d and must answer all miscarrages through his owne neglect in this kind; provided that no man shall be compelled to bring his letters thither except he please.94
The emphasis was on foreign letters: communication with England was key, and government officials and business leaders alike required reliable communication. This is why penalties for the mismanagement of the mail were put in place, like this act from the Virginia Assembly in
94 Qtd. in Wesley Everett Rich, The History of the United States Post Office to the Year 1829 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1924), 4.
40 1661 which stated, “all letters superscribed for the service of his Majesty or publique shall be immediately conveyed from plantation to plantation to the place and person they are directed to and a penalty of 350 pounds of tobacco to each defaulter.”95 This early system was a matter of convenience rather than compulsion or requirement.
The British Parliament passed an act in 1711 to reorganize and consolidate the postal system throughout the British Empire, with an eye to creating a new revenue source that could alleviate war expenses. The system was, generally speaking, agreed to without protest, though in
Virginia the House of Burgesses refused to provide money for supplies for the office, arguing that the British act constituted taxation without consent.96 More broadly, the British postal system in the colonies was underused and evaded in the first century of its existence. Smith notes that, even as late as the middle of 18th century, “the post office was not used by the public any more than was absolutely necessary, and that every means was taken to evade the regulations designed to preserve the postmaster general's monopoly.”97 Early colonial arrangements were sparse; frequently postmasters in larger towns would also be publishers of newspapers and their post riders would distribute the papers. Rival papers would bribe the postmen to deliver their publications.
Though rarely used, the British system was the foundation for the American system.
Benjamin Franklin was a primary connection between the two services. As was common for printers, Franklin desired the advantages inherent in running the local post. He assumed the role of Deputy Postmaster for Philadelphia in 1737.98 Franklin would later take on the role of
95 Qtd. in ibid., 5. 96 Ibid., 25-26. 97 William Smith, The History of the Post Office in British North America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), 25. 98 Printers were drawn to the role of the Postmaster and vied for the role for several reasons. The ability to
41 comptroller and, in 1753, Postmaster General (jointly with William Hunter) for all of the British
colonies. Franklin developed the post system to the point of financial surplus in 1761. He also recognized the importance of transmitting newspapers, including his own publications, though carrying newspapers was quite burdensome to riders: they were responsible for collecting money
from subscribers who would not always pay the exorbitant rates. In 1758 Franklin tried to solve
this by fixing rates for newspapers “to remedy these inconveniences and yet not discourage the
spreading of newspapers with are on many occasions useful to Government and advantageous to
Publick.”99 A 1765 Act in Parliament further developed the postal system in British North
America in an attempt to improve correspondence and thus trade and commerce by dividing the
continent into a Northern District (Quebec to Virginia) and a Southern District (Carolinas,
Florida, Bahama Islands).
British authorities dismissed Franklin from his role as Postmaster General in 1774,
though he recognized the possibility of dismissal as early as 1767. The increasingly restless
colonies recognized other issues with utilizing the British system: an emerging drive for
independence would be furthered by effective communication, but which side would the leaders
of the postal system sympathize with? One such leader was William Goddard who had been postmaster at Providence and in 1773 was publishing the Maryland Journal. In the Journal he
outlined the need for a “Constitutional Post Office”—one that could overcome both the
insecurity of the correspondence (letters could be opened at will by postmasters) and the
ideological issue of the British system being an instrument of taxation without consent.
receive the news before others gave them a competitive advantage. They could also rely on reciprocal agreements with printers from other towns and have their newspapers mailed for free. The role also gave colonial printers a competitive advantage: they would frequently refuse to mail competing papers. 99 Qtd. in Rich, History, 37.
42 The Continental Congress agreed, and on 29 May 1775 Benjamin Franklin was tasked
with the development of an independent postal system that would allow for communication from
Congress to the armies as well as between the colonies. Facilitating individual correspondence
was less significant. Due to the antipathy toward the British crown as well as postage rates being
set at “twenty percent less than those appointed by the Act of Parliament,” the “constitutional post” quickly made the British office in the colonies obsolete, so postal riders were discharged soon after.100
One important change concerns the financial designs of the newly founded postal system:
the offices were no longer revenue focused. The intention was to facilitate the movement of the
mail. If there was a surplus in the funds collected from the mailings, it was to be put back into
the service. In fact, many people received permission to send their letters and packets for free.
An 8 November 1775 act provided that “all letters to and from the delegates of the United
Colonies, during the sessions of Congress, pass, and be carried free of postage,” with the
expectation that the system would not be abused.101 Eventually the same privilege was given to
generals and then to all soldiers in the Continental Army.102 In addition, Franklin’s earlier desire
to encourage newspapers through favorable rates was continued in the new postal system.
Initial service through the postal system mirrored the difficulties seen by the colonies in
their drive for independence. While communication between Congress and the armies succeeded,
it was slow costly, so inter-colonial correspondence suffered. The routes were frequently
interrupted by British troops and volumes were low. John Adams noted in 1777, “A committee
on the post office have found a thousand difficulties. … And the expense is very high and the
100 JCC, II.208-209 101 JCC, III.342. 102 Rich, History, 50.
43 profits, so dear is everything, and so little correspondence is carried on except in franked letters, will not support the office.103” Historian Wesley Rich noted the lack of “favoring circumstances” such as “peace and security, easy communication, and flourishing commerce” necessary for a successful postal system. Without reliable paper money the system struggled all the more. Riders were at times unpaid, and some carried letters for their own profit.104
Though the new postal system struggled throughout the war, the Continental Congress thought it was important enough to keep under the auspices of federal governance. The Articles of Confederation provided Congress the “sole and exclusive right and power” of “establishing or regulating post offices from one State to another, throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing through the same as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said office.”105 An act passed on 18 October 1782, supplemented by additional regulations later in the year, provided the basic structure of the law until 1792. One of the innovations here was privacy: except in time of war, no letters might be opened or destroyed except by order of the President of Congress.
The postal system had improved by the time the Congress had passed the post office act.
Though it was difficult to enforce a monopoly for the federal system, and overseas business was controlled by the French and the British, there was great improvement under the leadership of
Ebenezer Hazard and debts to the treasure were being repaid. A highlight of the confederation period was the development of a “great post road” in 1785 that could transport mail in stage coaches (as opposed to horse and rider) from Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Savannah, Georgia three times a week in the summer and twice a week in the winter. “Cross-post” routes extended
103 Works of John Adams IX.467, qtd. in ibid., 52. 104 Ibid. 105 Art. IX, section 4
44 the system westward beginning with a road from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in 1788.
The issues that faced the postal system mirrored problems for the developing confederation: should the system use state money or federal specie, and more broadly, should there be only federal control or state control as well? Maryland desired to establish a state
Postmaster General that would manage offices not on the main roads between states; they argued that Congress had no jurisdiction over their intrastate affairs. In response, an ordinance stating the monopoly of the federal system was issued, noting, “the United States in Congress assembled are invested with the sole executive character right of establishing and regulating post offices from one state to another throughout the United States and exacting such postage on the papers passing on the same as may be requisite to defray the expense of the said office.”106 Though it was impossible to enforce the federal monopoly from state or private transports, the policy was in place.
Benjamin Franklin’s desire for the spread of information through the cheap transportation of newspapers was another controversial issue. While the focus was laudable, the costs were significant. Hazard recognized the problem and, after noting the costs to Congress, discontinued the practice of transporting a copy of each newspaper free of charge from printer to printer. He argued that some 283 newspapers would be transported from Portsmouth to Philadelphia under the old system in an exchange of the twenty-six papers printed at the time.107 Many, like George
Washington who wrote to John Jay on 18 July 1788, were incensed. “It is extremely to be lamented that a new arrangement in the Post Office unfavorable to the circulation of intelligence should have taken place at the instant when the momentous question of a general government
106 PCC 61, qtd. in Rich, History, 63. 107 Ibid., 63-64.
45 was to have come before the people.” Washington pulled no punches: to him, removing the
papers provided an avenue for enemies of the Constitution who were “inducing a belief that the
suppression of intelligence at that critical juncture was a wicked trick of policy contrived by an
aristocratic junto.”108 Unsurprisingly, Ebenezer Hazard would be removed from the role of
Postmaster General shortly after Washington, as president, was given the authority to do so.
Giving Congress the right to develop the post office was, on the whole, an
uncontroversial issue. Like the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution gave the new
federal government the ability to develop and control the postal system. Article 1, section 8
provided that one of the powers of the Congress would be “To establish Post Offices and Post
Roads.” Original wordings included the stages on post roads, but this was turned down in
committee. One reason for the absence of controversy lies in precedent: both the British crown and the Articles of Confederation established governmental oversight of the postal system. A lack of issues with the existing system meant there was no catalyst for change.
While the establishment of post offices was authorized in the Articles of Confederation,
establishing Post roads was not. This addition was not lost in the debates over ratification in New
York, where the following resolution was made: “Resolved, as the opinion of the committee, that
the power of Congress to establish post-offices and post-roads is not to be construed to extend to the laying out, making, altering, or repairing highways, in any state, without the consent of the legislature of such state.” Overall, the record notes “little or no debate,” and issues with this clause were nonexistent in other conventions.109 In New York the amendment reflected the
108 18 July 1788 Letter from George Washington to John Jay, in The Papers of George Washington, vol. 6 (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1997), 384-86. 109 Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, as Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia, in 1787., 2nd ed., 4 vols. (1836), II:406.
46 broader theme of general skepticism with regards to federal power at the expense of the state.
Little is said in support of this control as well. The post office appears in two of the Federalist
Papers, and both mentions are but in passing. The most significant statement comes from James
Madison in the concluding words of Federalist no. 42 when he notes, “The power of establishing post roads must, in every view, be a harmless power, and may, perhaps, by judicious management, become productive of great public conveniency. Nothing which tends to facilitate the intercourse between the States can be deemed unworthy of the public care.”
While the post office was not a source of controversy in the governmental transition from a loose confederacy to a constitutional state, it also was not a priority. The statute provided “That there shall be appointed a Postmaster General; his powers and salary, and the compensation to the assistant or clerk and deputies which he may appoint, and the regulations of the post-office shall be the same last were under the resolutions and ordinances of the late Congress.” Giving authority to the President to direct the institution, the statute ends, “this act shall continue in force until the end of the next section of Congress, and no longer;” the acts of congress refer to the bill as a “temporary establishment of the Post Office.” But the machinery was in place and was, for the time being, not to be messed with. The act passed the Senate on 15 Sept 1789 and the House two days later; the bill was signed on 22 Sept 1789. Samuel Osgood was nominated for Postmaster general on 25 Sept 1789 by President Washington; the appointment was immediately confirmed the following day.110
Fully determining the organization and structure of the post office would have to wait, as no post office bill was signed until 1792. Bills passed in both 1790 and 1791 continued the statute of 1789, though each said that the bill would be “continued in force until the end of the
110 1 AOC 79-80, 894; 1 Stat. 70.
47 next session of Congress, and no longer.”111 Still, both Congress and the President recognized
the necessity of an act to fully enumerate the powers of the general post office. In his first annual
address to congress on 8 January 1790, President Washington urged the members to engage in
“facilitating the intercourse between the distant parts of our country by a due attention to the Post
Office and post-roads.”112 With nothing accomplished in the first session, Washington’s address
to Second Congress on 25 October 1791 again referred to the post office as equally important as
the militia, the mint, weights and measures, and the sale of vacant lands in the west. Regarding
the post office he noted its “instrumentality in diffusing a knowledge of the laws and proceedings
of the Government” and urging the establishment of additional cross posts, “especially to some
of the important points in the western- and northern parts of the Union.”113
Why was clarity regarding the post office not provided? Historians disagree about the
reason for the delay. Apparently downplaying the role of the institution, Francis Huebner argued,
“There were too many important matters for the legislature of the new government to consider…
and Congress gave postal business no consideration except to authorize the Postmaster-General
to continue the system theretofore in force.”114 This seems to align with President Washington’s
25 October 1791 address to Congress which noted, “The urgency of other affairs has hitherto
postponed any definitive resolution.”115 Wesley Rich argued that nothing urgent needed to be
changed, as the system was an “embryo the office of to-day. Its main lines of policy had nearly
111 1 Stat. 178, 218. The 1791 bill provided for letters from some government posts to be sent free of charge and to create post roads from Albany, NY to Bennington, VT. 112 1 AOC 933 113 3 AOC 15 114 Francis C. Huebner, "Our Postal System," Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 9 (1906): 138-39. 115 3 AOC 15
48 all be laid down and its basic rules established.”116 In contrast, Richard John argues for the importance of the institution but also the controversial changes that needed to be made: he points to “sharp disagreements as to how it ought best to proceed. The adoption of the federal
Constitution had created new expectations for the central government, and it took time for these expectations to work their way into law.”117 While Heubner’s perspective can be set aside, both
Rich and John make important points here. The post office system could continue without large- scale changes, yet Congress was interested in updating the institution and such changes would not come without disagreement. There was agreement in the importance of the postal system, as seen in this 1792 message by the House of Representatives: “The operation of the law establishing the Post Office as it relates to the transmission of newspapers, will merit our particular inquiry and attention. The circulation of political intelligence through these vehicles is justly reckoned among the surest means of preventing the degeneracy of a free government, as well as of recommending every salutary public measure to the confidence and cooperation of all virtuous citizens.”118
Although there was a delay, the Post-Office Act of 1792 was the first comprehensive statute passed by the Congress after the signing of the Constitution, even preceding acts creating the mint or a militia. The thirty sections laid out all of the post roads; described the duties of the
Postmaster General in establishing contracts for the roads; detailed reporting requirements from the Postmaster General and his deputies to the treasury; created laws against interfering with the transmission or improper handling of the mail; established rates of postage; and determined the post office to be a monopoly without competition. Of particular note here are sections twenty-
116 Rich, 67. 117 John, 31. 118 Qtd. in Rich, 91.
49 one and twenty-two which concerned the handling of newspapers. Under the statute, “every
printer of newspapers may send one paper to each and every other printer of newspapers within
the United States, free of postage, under such regulations, as the Postmaster General shall
provide.” Beyond this, normal mailing of newspapers cost one cent for mailings less than 100
miles and one and a half cents for longer distances. This is in comparison to a single letter being
charged anywhere from six to twenty-five cents, depending on the distance sent. Of note here is
the opening of the service to all newspapers—in fact, to restrict some was a punishable offense:
“if any of the persons employed in any department of the post-office, shall unlawfully detain, delay, embezzle or destroy any newspaper, with which he shall be entrusted, such offenders, for every such offence, shall forfeit a sum, not exceeding fifty dollars.”119
The 1792 Act established what was already in existence from the Act 10 years ago, but
with some noticeable shifts in focus. Historian Richard John points to three major policy changes
brought about by the 1792 act: the (re)admission of newspapers into the mail, prohibition of
surveillance of the mail, and the laying of the groundwork for a rapid expansion of the mail.
Only the issue of surveillance will be discussed here, along with an additional policy change:
whereas previous postal systems were meant to be revenue-generating institutions for their
respective governments, the new policies directed the US postal system to be concerned first
with the general welfare. The primary public benefit the post office could offer was information
through the transmission of newspapers at favorable rates.
The British post office was meant to be a revenue-generating institution. The desire to
raise funds through the post office in the years following the French and Indian War led to the
passage of the Stamp Act, a catalyst for protests in the colonies with the primary complaint
119 1 Stat. 232-239
50 being, “no taxation without representation.” Benjamin Franklin, deputy postmaster general for
North America at the time, argued that the Stamp Act did not constitute a tax - he viewed it as “a
quantum meruit for a service done; no person was compellable to pay the money if he did not
choose to receive the service.”120 Still, the need for correspondence, especially for commercial
interests, compelled the use of the post office, creating a de facto tax.
In contrast, the Continental Post had a more basic goal: to secure revenue so it would be self-supporting, an aim that was reached by 1782. Any extra funds were to be directed back into the postal service. As Wesley Rich noted, after the Constitution, “leaders showed more of a desire to extend the postal routes because of the service rendered by the mails in the general development of the country. Much stress was laid on the political advantages of such a course.”121
The ideological shift from the postal service being a revenue-generating institution to one
focused on serving the public interest had few detractors. Congress determined, as noted in the
December 1791 debates leading up to the 1792 Act, that the franking privilege (giving
Congressmen the ability to send mail free of charge) would be “a benefit to their constituents,
who, by means of it, derive information from those who are best qualified to give it, as they are
the persons chosen to administer the General Government.” So sending information through
franked mail and reduced-rate newspapers would produce “the most salutary effects in
reconciling the people to the measures of Government, when the principles upon which every
law is framed, are explained to them, as well by the correspondence of the members, as by their
debates, published in newspapers.” In fact, it was noted, “It is the duty of the members to
120 Qtd. in Smith, History, 55. 121 Rich, History, 91.
51 disperse the newspapers among those people who cannot, otherwise, obtain them.” The
summary of the matter was clear: “The establishment of the post office is agreed to be for no
other purpose than the conveyance of information into every part of the Union.”122
While the allowance of periodicals at favorable rates was overwhelmingly encouraged by the nascent federal government, it was not without controversy. Benjamin Franklin’s reduced rates for papers set in 1758 was furthered by the ordinance of 1782, but was scaled back by
Postmaster General Hazard in 1788 after deeming the practice to expensive. The same idea for newspapers was proposed in 1792. Most recognized the benefit of an “abatement of postage as may be necessary for the easy conveyance of information to the citizens of the United States,” but there was concern that the right of the Postmaster General to establish such a system could be abused. It was argued that this could create a “Court Press and a Court Gazette,” and allow for
“total discouragement and exclusion, through the post office, of every other newspaper, if the
Administration thought proper to do so, in case of any of those contests and jarrings which often happen in a Government like ours.” In short, the desire was for a uniform system of benefits for newspapers rather than for one that would privilege particular papers.123
The first decades after the 1792 Act organizing the Post Office were filled with minor
adjustments to the institution concerning organization and policy, and especially the connection
to the legislative and executive branches of the government. The president appointed the
Postmaster General, who would appoint deputies; Congress would determine new Post roads and
the postage rates for the mail. The institution began as a subordinate to the Treasury Department,
but it grew to the point that the Postmaster General would be included in the President's Cabinet
122 3 AOC 252-253 123 2 AOC 1680.
52 (perhaps to control the appointment of deputy postmasters).124 The growth of the post office also
saw power centralized around the Postmaster General. An 1814 speech in the House of
Representatives illustrates concern regarding abuse, with the head position being compared to
the Pope: “It does appear that unless some remedy be applied to end this evil and that without
delay, we are in danger of a new order of Jesuits in this country, with an unlimited General at
their head to dictate his orders, and enforce them, under all the pains and penalties of removal
from their deputation.”125 It was argued that the appointment of the Postmaster General should
be done with the advice and consent of the Senate. Congress took no action.
Generally speaking, favorable rates for newspapers was thought to be a beneficial
allowance for the country as a whole. Writing in 1911, Julian Bretz notes that the information
sent through the medium was “highly serviceable to the Government” - when newspapers or correspondence of Congressmen made it to their destinations, “no opposition had been made to the laws; and that the contrary was experienced in those parts to which information had not penetrated, and even there the opposition ceased as soon as the principles on which the laws had been passed were made known to the people.”126
This perspective remained for the ensuing decades. Although the Post Office was
constituted as part of the Treasury Department,127 service was more important than revenue.
Charles Burrall, the first Assistant Post Master General under Samuel Osgood, wrote to the
124 Rich, History, 164. 125 26 AOC 865. Representative Ingersoll referred to the possibility of an evil rather than an existing one: the unchecked power of the Postmaster General to remain at the post indefinitely and appoint whomever he pleases to the 3,000 positions scattered throughout the country. 126 Bretz, Some Aspects, 145. 127 This was a matter of some concern - Thomas Jefferson believe it to be better to place the institution under the Secretary of State, arguing that “the department of the Treasury possessed already such an influence as to swallow up the whole executive powers, and that future presidents would not be able to make head against this department.” Qtd. in Rich, History, 113.
53 secretary of the treasury in 1795, “The Post Office Establishment is not intended to raise a
revenue; it is to accommodate the citizens in their private communications.”128 Five years after
the 1792 Act the focus remained the same. A February 1797 statement from the House noted, “it
was not proper that any money, on such a laudable establishment, should be put into the
Treasury,” even as Congress debated the best ways to raise revenue.129 In 1825 Richard Rush,
Secretary of the Treasury, noted that money from the Post Office was “exhausted in defraying
the expenses of the extensive and useful establishment,” thus performing “the highest purposes
of revenue by contributing to the intercourse, the trade, and the prosperity of the country.”130
That the post office was not focused on revenue generation was celebrated by the general public as a distinctive feature of their postal system, as noted in Leonard Bacon’s salutary 1843 discussion of the institution:
It does not enter into the plans of the American people, to tax the correspondence of the nation for the purpose of supporting the army or the navy, or for any other department of the public expenditure. It is not for the sake of making money, or saving money, for the government, that we maintain this post-office establishment. It may be assumed then as a first principle, that whatever may be the policy in other countries, our post-office system ought to be simply a great public convenience, for the equal accommodation of all the members of society.131
The primary beneficiaries of a service-oriented post office would be those in outlying
areas and the expanding west for whom getting information would be prohibitively expensive.
Postmaster General Timothy Pickering noted in 1793, “Our fellow citizens in the remote parts of
the Union seem entitled to some indulgence. Their great distances from the seats of government
and principal commercial towns subject them to peculiar difficulties in their correspondence.
128 Qtd. in ibid., 148. 129 6 AOC 2058-2059 130 Qtd. in Rich, History, 110. 131 Bacon, "The Post-Office System, as an Element of Modern Civilization," 14.
54 They have also few or no printing presses among them. Hence without the aid of public post
roads they will not only be embarrassed in their correspondence, but remain destitute of every
necessary information.” In his mind, the post office should be used to its fullest extent in the
circulation of "useful information concerning the great interests of the Union.”132 So geographic
subsidization was common as well. For example, in 1815 the entire revenue from the posts in the
Western States and Territories did not exceed forty percent of the cost of transporting the mails
in that region.133 Postmaster General Habersham argued the deficits were justified: “The
unproductive routes in distant parts of the Union are not noticed, as those who are remotely
situated appear to have a just claim to that liberal establishment of post roads which has been
extended in every direction through this great and flourishing country. It has been a wise policy
to open this useful source of information to the settlers of a new country, and the expense will
not be considered where the object is so Important.”134
Another distinguishing feature of the emerging postal system was the freedom to send
any letters through the mail. Previous postal services had the full right to restrict pieces of mail
that were deemed to be detrimental to the authorities. Under English law, controlling the
transmission of information was a useful enterprise for, as Blackstone’s Commentaries on
English Common Law note, “Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he
pleases before the public: to forbid this is to destroy the freedom of the press.” And yet, if one
were to transmit “what is improper, mischievous or illegal, he must take the consequence of his
own temerity.” In fact, to control information was necessary for liberty: “To punish (as the law
132 Qtd. in Bretz, Some Aspects, 144-45. 133 ASP:PO 48 134 10 Feb 1796 letter from PMG Habersham to Thatcher, in letterbooks of the Postmaster General, qtd. in Bretz, Some Aspects, 145-46.
55 does at present) any dangerous or offensive writings which, when published, shall on a fair and impartial trial be adjudged of a pernicious tendency, is necessary for the preservation of peace and good order, of government and religion,-the only solid foundations of civil liberty. Thus the will of individuals is still left free; the abuse only of that free will is the object of legal punishment.”135
In practice, what this meant was that the postal service would handle a great deal of mail by myriad people who have no interest in the contents themselves, other than the general proposition that information was shared. This concept—sending mail without knowing its contents—is a good analogue for the post office’s connection to religion. Such an arrangement was celebrated by George Plitt who wrote in 1841, “what order, what a chain of trust and confidence in one another, what degree of international good-will, how vast and systematic an arrangement--indeed, how gigantic must not an institution be to bring about such an effect, and which, extending over whole families of nations, is nevertheless able to carry its blessings into the meanest cottage!”136
The first three decades of the Constitutional republic witnessed significant growth of the postal service, both in geographic range and in the density of the post offices. From a broad perspective, there were 75 offices in 1789 to serve a population of three million; twenty years later, the number had grown to more than two thousand. The following chart submitted to the
House of Representatives illustrates the growth.
135 Blackstone’s Commentaries, 4.152-153 136 "Report of George Plitt, Special Agent of the Post Office Department," The New York Review (1837- 1842), July 1841, 72.
56 Table 1: View of the Post Office Establishment from 1789 to 1809137
The growth of the post office was both a reaction to and an encouragement of the expanding presence of Americans in new areas. Congress consistently encouraged the establishment of new roads that would reach into the West. Abraham Bradley, Jr., a clerk for the general post office and eventually senior assistant to Postmaster General McLean, drew two maps that illustrate the geographic growth—the first in 1796, the second eight years later.
137 ASP:PO 1:43
57
Figure 1: 1796 Map of the United States, Exhibiting the Post-roads, the Situations, Connections & Distances of the Post-offices Stage Roads, Counties, Ports of Entry and Delivery for Foreign Vessels, and the Principal Rivers. By Abraham Bradley junr
58
Figure 2: 1804 Map of the United States, Exhibiting the Post-roads, the Situations, Connexions & Distances of the Post-offices Stage Roads, Counties, & Principal Rivers. By Abraham Bradley junr
The nature of the growth was astonishing. Cameron Blevin’s dissertation on the expansion of the U.S. Post in the West applies to its beginning decades as well. Blevin refers to the system as a “gossamer network” - it grew
by grafting the public functions of mail service onto the existing operations of private businesses: contracting with a stagecoach company to transport bags of mail, or paying a local businessman to periodically distribute letters from his general store. This flexible, ethereal structure allowed the U.S. Post to expand and contract across remote areas with a stunning speed. Its ability to move in lockstep with Anglo-Americans had enormous consequences for the West, accelerating a pattern of imperial conquest and settler colonialism while serving as the underlying machinery of governance in the region.138
138 Cameron Blevins, "Research," accessed 28 Feb 2018. http://www.cameronblevins.org/research/.
59 Such growth was extensive. A 17 April 1801 letter from Postmaster General Habersham
to Col. John Holmes noted, “The crossroads are now established so extensively that there is
scarcely a village courthouse-or public place of any consequence but is accommodated with the
mail.”139 This was when there were one thousand post offices - the number would double in the
next decade. By 1828, the US post office had almost twice as many offices as Great Britain and
five times as many as France. The US had 74 offices for every 100,000 inhabitants, compared
with 17 for Great Britain and 4 for France.140 Canadians, desiring a more reliable mode of
transmission, would frequently send inter-provincial mail via the United States.141 A
Washington newspaper editor summarized the growth well: “[The growth was] well calculated to
excite our wonder… Its progress… has been so rapid as almost to stagger belief, and did we not
know its history to be true, it might pass and be received as a romantic tale, having no foundation
but in the regions of fancy, in the wanderings of imagination.”142
As the post office grew, so too did its desire to expand favorable mailing privileges. At
first magazines and pamphlets did not initially receive the same benefits as newspapers. An isolated reference in Postmaster General Pickering’s letterbook in 1792 allowed for magazines to be sent at letter rates, but generally speaking, they were not allowed into the mail.143 The
explanation for this was convenience. On 25 April 1815 Postmaster General Meigs wrote to
William Burke in Cincinnati, “It is believed that pamphlets & magazines interrupt the regular &
due conveyance of newspapers to your section of the country.” While Meigs was looking for
139 Qtd. in Bretz, Some Aspects, 149. 140 John, Spreading the News, 5. Numbers exclude Indians and slaves, but for Great Britain include Ireland. 141 Smith, History, 327. 142 National Intelligencer, 22 Nov 1826, qtd. in John, Spreading the News, 8. 143 Pg. 495; referenced in Rich, History, 145.
60 more information to bolster this claim and keep them removed from the mail, Meigs provided for
“the exception of magazines relating to Bible Societies for which a general authority has been
given to let them pass by mail.”144 Such “general authority” did not appear in the official Post
Office regulations. Even though they were a hindrance, magazines and pamphlets were allowed
to be sent through the mail after an April 1816 Act was passed by Congress, with as many as
sixteen octavo pages being charged the same rate as one sheet of paper.145
But the desire to send information cheaply was not without practical costs. The
newspapers were cheaply produced and difficult to transport due to the need to preserve them:
frequently the ink was still damp when they were sent out. Collecting the postage rates, even if
less than letter rates, was complex. The newspapers were so cheap to send that some would write
notes in the newspapers that were sent to other people rather than pay the full rate - this was
penalized by the April 1816 Act as well: “Any memorandum which shall be written on a
newspaper, or other printed paper, and transmitted by mail, shall be charged letter postage; and
any person who shall deposite (sic) such memorandum in any office for the purpose of
defrauding the revenue, shall forfeit, for every such offence, the sum of five dollars.”146
There were financial considerations as well. While the Post Office was financially in the
black consistently after 1782, individual post roads, especially to certain frontier areas, were a
drain on the system. With continual debate over the benefit of such a system, an 1825 Act which
updated the list of post roads also allowed for the discontinuance of post roads that, after three
years’ time, failed to produce 25% of the costs of the transportation of the mail. Exceptions for
144 25 Apr 1815 letter from R.J. Meigs to William Burke, contained in the 1815 Postmaster General’s letterbook, pg. 185-186. 145 29 AOC 1810-1811. 146 29 AOC 1810. See David M. Henkin, The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2006), 42-50.
61 roads as part of a larger route and when the route was needed to reach a county seat.147 The transmission of newspapers was an obvious weight on the system, but it was quantified in 1832 when a Senate committee found that 14/15 of the weight of mail was newspapers and pamphlets, but it only provided 1/9 of revenue. This finding was in response to a Boston petition that said the rates for newspapers and pamphlets were already excessive.148
The benefits of newspapers and other periodicals reaching the frontiers diminished over time as cities in the Midwest developed their own printers and periodicals. Favorable rates for newspapers were seen as a disadvantage for the local papers. One argued that the “unreasonable cheapness of newspaper postage, as compared with every other kind of postage, gives to their competitors in the great centers of commercial, political and religious intelligence, an unnatural advantage over them.” It was the federal government’s support of newspapers from Boston, New
York, and Washington, to the rest of the country that negatively affected “the circulation and the influence, and consequently the character, of the country newspapers.”149 The article goes on to argue that removing the privilege of newspapers and franking in favor of a lower rate across the board would be helpful for groups like “directors and executive agents of benevolent societies-- ministers of the Gospel, who are burthened, more perhaps than any other class of men, with the payment of postage out of a small income, for that which concerns other people as much as them.”150 Newspapers were helpful, but so too were letters. And the country was changing:
Samuel Morse’s 1844 telegraph, “WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT” presaged the nationwide transmission of information within two decades.
147 4 Stat. 100 148 ASP:PO 347 149 Bacon, "The Post-Office System, as an Element of Modern Civilization," 24. 150 Ibid., 27.
62 The Postal Act of 1845 opened up the possibility of sending letters to the general
populace by pricing the rates much more reasonably than before. Rates for newspapers,
magazines, and pamphlets were still subsidized, but newspapers would only be sent free of
charge if they were smaller than nineteen hundred square inches and sent to people within thirty
miles of the place of printing. Otherwise, the newspaper would be charged at rates in keeping
with the 1825 Act. Magazines and pamphlets cost half as much as the cost to send a single-sheet letter.151
******
Religious historians are well acquainted with the periodicals of early America. Along
with denominational records and the reports of various religious societies, the publications
provide vital insight into the religious activities of the day. Less considered is the transmission of
information to individuals in the time the periodicals were printed and the crucial role the post
office played in the movement of this information. Both then and now, without the subsidized
rates of the post office for periodicals, information about the revivals of Kentucky or the Burned-
Over District, for example, might otherwise be lost to history.
The connection between the post office and religious publications defined the former and
bolstered the latter. Fuller notes the distinctiveness of American post: “No postal system in the
world distributed so many publications, and none so widely.”152 In fact, for the first fifty years,
the American post was, essentially, a newspaper transmission service. And without the benefit of the Post Office, there would have been no newspapers. Bretz's 1909 AHA report says as much:
151 5 Stat. 733 152 Wayne Edison Fuller, Morality and the Mail in Nineteenth-Century America (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003), x.
63 “[Newspapers] could hardly have existed without this aid from the general Government.”153
Henkin summarizes this connection:
The extraordinary significance of the post in American public life from the 1790s at least until the 1830s lay precisely in this special relationship to the periodical press, whose rhythms it mirrored and reinforced. The post and the press were deeply intertwined and mutually supportive cultural institutions; their claims to overcome barriers of time and space by bringing news from afar (typically at regular weekly intervals) were essentially one and the same.154
Thus, Protestant ideals of literacy and learning were supported by the transmitting abilities of the
post office. This allowed for, as Fackler and Lippy note, “considerable growth in publishing of
all sorts and the development of what we might regard as the first enduring popular periodicals,
or periodicals designed to appeal to a mass audience rather than one with a limited professional
or theological interest.”155 The number of periodicals grew rapidly, especially two decades following the creation of the federal government.
The post office transmitted many types of reading materials, including newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets, though not books.156 Gaylord Albaugh observed a general pattern:
“the less frequently it appeared, the heavier was the reading matter.”157 Early colonial newspapers were known as broadsides: single sheets of paper, printed on one side, and posted in public places. Early papers would have been printed and sold by the postmasters, as they would
153 Bretz, Some Aspects, 143. 154 Henkin, Postal Age, 42-43. 155 Fackler and Lippy, Popular Religious Magazines, xii. 156 A 21 February 1823 letter from Postmaster General Meigs to the the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads illustrated the problem of transmitting books: “It appears to me that no book ought ever be sent by mail, even if letter or packet postage was paid on it. It is an article which is not, like letters and newspapers, valuable only for its quick conveyance, and may well be sent by the usual routes of many articles of merchandise. … Books are usually bound with leather, and so strongly pressed together, that they have the hardness of blocks of wood, and, when carried in the mail with letters and newspapers any considerable distance, rarely fail to wear out the wrappers, and break the bundles of letters and papers to pieces, by which the letters are injured, and many newspapers lost” (ASP:PO 1:112). 157 Albaugh, History, 1.xii.
64 be the first to get the news (and thus had a financial incentive to keep it that way). Broadsides
began as weekly productions but grew in frequency as the population of the colonies grew. The
importance of the postal system to the newspapers can be seen in the names of the papers: titles
like The Post, The Packet, or The Courier referred to how each paper was delivered.
Magazines would contain a variety of material that was not as time-sensitive as newspapers,
though they still provided a glimpse of the broader religious landscape. Neal Edgar’s work on
religious magazines recognized a “set pattern,” summarizing the contents: “historical and
background articles, sermons, explications of religious teaching and scriptures, book reviews,
and reports of missionary and revival activities were combined with hymns, reports of deaths and
ordinations, and miscellaneous religious news.”158
Pamphlets were useful for their ability to present arguments in a longer form than
newspapers, but pamphlets could still be printed and disseminated quickly. Their shelf-life may
have been similar to newspapers, as a compiler notes: “they are written without much thought of
posterity; and thus the vast majority of them, having raised their clatter of a day, pass quickly
into oblivion, only to be read with weariness and difficulty by the curious in the latter years.”159
Still, pamphlets were an expeditious method to popularize religious and political ideas.
The first edition of the Herald of Gospel Liberty, published the evening of 1 September 1808 in
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, claimed in its front-page “Address to the Public” to be a novel
thing as a religious newspaper: “A religious news-paper, is almost a new thing under the sun; I know not but this is the first ever published to the world.”160 The claim is demonstrably false, but
158 Neal L. Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810-1820 (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1975), 62-63. 159 Percy Dearmer, Religious Pamphlets, The Pamphlet Library (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1898), 9. 160 Elias Smith, "Address to the Public," Herald of Gospel Liberty, 1 September, 1808.
65 it reflects the narrow reach of some newspapers. Due to the lack of records, it is impossible to
track the mailings of religious periodicals, let alone fully understand their reach. But what can be
noted for sure is the outsized number of religious periodicals, especially newspapers, and their
transmission alongside other periodicals at favorable rates. Many subscriptions were shared
between several households, especially those of lesser means.
Religious publishing grew dramatically in the United States in the second and third
decades of the nineteenth century. Gaylord Albaugh has documented 590 religious periodicals
and newspapers using 867 separate titles from 1730-1830 but “only fourteen American religious
journals existed before 1789, with twenty more founded between 1790 and 1799, fifty-three from
1800 to 1809, ninety-nine between 1810 and 1819, and 360 in the next decade.”161
An analysis of religious publishing is further complicated by the frequent turnover of the
publications: fully three-quarters of religious publications survived four years or less. Neal Edgar
argues that “the effect and importance of the magazines is difficult to judge,” but he believes
they had a smaller footprint: “the specifically religious magazines seemed, in general, to have
failed to find the proper formula for influencing great numbers of people with the beneficence of
their opinions. The problems of printing and distribution, lack of an audience, lack of material,
and the absence of promotional ability are all applicable to the failure of religious magazines.”162
Edgar notes the diversification of religion in America as a cause for the frequent failure of
religious magazines as well. But the causality of the situation is unclear. Established religious
groups and upstart denominations both struggled in their publishing endeavors.
What, practically speaking, did the favorable rates for newspapers and other religious
161 Albaugh, I:xi. He also notes that 124 additional titles were proposed but never published. 162 Edgar, 75.
66 periodicals do for the developing United States? This can be answered under three headings.
First, the spread of publications provided for the spread of religious excitement, as information
about revivals and other religious activities would spur action in other areas of the country.
Second, the periodicals created community for groups that were marginalized both
geographically and demographically. Finally, from a broader perspective the writings promoted a development of a national identity with religion as a significant aspect.
Religious periodicals drove home the religious narratives of the colonies and nascent country. One of the first successful magazines in America was The Christian History. Published in Boston in 1743, the work existed to, as explained in its heading, “[Contain] accounts of the
Propagation and Revival of Religion in England Scotland and America.” Success is a relative term at this time - the work lasted for 104 weekly issues, but the tenure of a typical magazine was much shorter.163 At times publishers found it more useful to design magazines like
newspapers, as the Congregationalist and Herald of Gospel Liberty did beginning in 1816. In
addition to more favorable postal rates for newspapers, editors were also aware that “a
newspaper could attract readers while a magazine could, and often did, die unnoticed.”164 Some
magazines looked increasingly like newspapers so as to sell more copies. Yet the magazines
themselves recognized their temporality. The opening article of the first issue of the Spirit of the
Pilgrims, a Congregational magazine published monthly from 1828 until 1833, when speaking of
previous religious periodicals, noted that many “were successively discontinued; but this no
more proves that they were not extensively useful, than the death or removal of a minister proves
163 The magazines were later compiled into a book - see The Christian History, Containing Accounts of the Revival and Propagation of Religion in Great-Britain & America. For the Year 1743., 2 vols. (Boston, N.E.: printed by S. Kneeland and T. Green, for T. Prince, junr., 1744). 164 Edgar, 67.
67 that his labors…were of no value to his people, or to the church at large. A periodical publication
may have a certain work to perform; and when it is accomplished, it may peacefully and
honorably repose.”165
Periodicals, by providing accounts of revivals and other religious excitement, were a
catalyst for religious activity in other locales. Indeed, writers recognized their work as mission in
itself: the dedication to the book celebrating the centennial of a religious publication reads, “To
the religious press as messengers of light in every nation.”166 A 29 Sep 1800 letter from the Rev.
Gideon Blackburn, a pastor in Blount County, Tennessee, illustrates the effects of religious
information contained in magazines. He wrote to The New - York Missionary Magazine, and
Repository of Religious Intelligence with a “duty to gladden the hearts of the friends of Zion, by letting them know of the little cloud (though it be like a man’s hand) which had passed over this part of the redeemer’s kingdom.” He goes on to describe multiple seasons of religious revival and points out one particular cause:
About this time the first Number of your Magazine came to hand. I read it in society, and all present seemed to be affected with the news. As the numbers came forward, I continued with the exercises in society, and I am persuaded it was a great mean of awakening the thoughtless, and animating and reviving the pious. … The news of the Missionary spirit in Europe and America, and the outpouring of divine influence in New- England and elsewhere, operated like the most salutary cordial to their hearts.
Blackburn later concludes, “I have been thus particular in giving you an account of the day of small things which we have experienced, in hope that it may excite the friends of Zion to earnest prayer on our behalf; and O! that the Lord may have no rest until he make her a praise in the whole earth, and spread his kingdom from the rising to the setting sun.”167 It was summarized by
165 "Religious Magazines in the United States," The Spirit of the Pilgrims 1, no. 1 (1 Jan 1828): 4. 166 John Pressley Barrett, The Centennial of Religious Journalism (Dayton, OH: Christian Publishing Association, 1908), 5. 167 "Extract of a Letter from the Rev. Gideon Blackburn, Dated Blount County (Tenesee), Sept. 29, 1800,"
68 Edgar, “Merely by reporting activities, magazines could and did encourage the work of religious groups.”168
Religious periodicals also encouraged the diversification of religion in the United States.
The late eighteenth and early nineteenth century witnessed the rise of the Protestant denomination as a distinct form of religious organization; periodicals were used by these denominations to spread their beliefs, programs, and social agendas.169 This provision of religious information engendered meaningfulness to new denominations, marginalized groups, and people on the frontier. In a way, the Post Office in the nineteenth century functioned similarly to how the internet and social media have disrupted religion in the twenty-first century.170
One such group is the Christian denomination. Reflecting on a century of publication, a
1908 book discussed the emergence of the group:
Not far from the beginning of the nineteenth century, doubtless influenced by the political freedom in state affairs, Methodists in the South became impatient with the Methodist hierarchy, and Presbyterians of the West wrote the ‘Last Will and Testament’ of the presbytery. Baptists of the North also broke with their Church exclusiveness, and all came out of their respective denominations endeavoring to form Churches of greater fraternity and more harmony with republican institutions. Much to their surprise they heard of people in other parts of the country that were believing and attempting the same things, and as one result was born the “Christian” denomination, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men have a right to interpret the Bible for themselves.171
A substantial aspect of the emergence of the new group was the spread of information about the
The New - York Missionary Magazine, and Repository of Religious Intelligence, 1801, 237-40. 168 Edgar, History, 62. 169 Fackler and Lippy, Popular Religious Magazines, xii. 170 On the effect of social media on religion see Heidi Campbell, When Religion Meets New Media, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 2010). 171 "Centennial of Religious Journalism," The Independent ... Devoted to the Consideration of Politics, Social and Economic Tendencies, History, Literature, and the Arts, 1 October 1908, 801.
69 denomination. Foremost among the religious publications encouraging the move was the Herald
of Gospel Liberty, which historian Elizabeth C. Nordbeck credits as “the glue for a coherent
Christian identity.” To Nordbeck, it “is hard to overstate the importance of religious journalism,
in particular the Herald of Gospel Liberty” to independent frontier churches.172 In marking two
centuries of journalism from the periodical, J. Martin Bailey wrote that the work “furnished the
energy and focus that unified a scattered indigenous religious movement in nineteenth-century
America. … it provided the sense of direction as well as the magnet that drew people
together.”173
Religious publishing also permitted those who were outside of the mainstream religious
life, for various reasons, to have a voice. For example, friends of Noah Worcester established the
magazine Christian Discipline in May 1813 with the purpose of providing “a mouthpiece for
Noah Worcester, who had, a few years before, lost his pulpit at Thornton, N.H., through
advocacy of the Unitarian cause.”174 The first religious periodical for Jews, aptly named The
Jew, was an attempt by Solomon Jackson to support the 8,000 Jews in the country who were
frequently the target of Christian evangelistic attempts. Jackson was pointed in his rationale for
the magazine: it was to be, as seen in the subtitle for the periodical, a “defense of Judaism against
all adversaries, and particularly against the insidious attacks of Israel’s Advocate,” the periodical
of the American Society of Missionaries to Christianize the Jews.175 A century later Bernard
172 Daniel Hazard, "200 Years and Counting: The Legacy of the Herald of Gospel Liberty Lives On," last modified 30 September, accessed 28 February 2018. http://www.ucc.org/200-years-and-counting-the. 173 J. Martin Bailey, "Christian Critic: Recognizing the 200th Anniversary of the Herald of Gospel Liberty," Bulletin of the Congregational Library 5, no. 2 (2008): 4. 174 Norval Neil Luxon, Niles’ Weekly Register: News Magazine of the Nineteenth Century (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana University Press, 1947), qtd. in Edgar, 68.. Edgar argues that the magazine “not only had a better appearance by also more readable contents than the majority of the other religious magazines,” perhaps due to its connections in Boston and writers trained at Harvard. 175 The Jew, 1 March, 1823, 1.
70 Postal noted that the work was “a pretty poor specimen of journalistic endeavor,” made up entirely of Jackson’s bombastic ripostes against the Advocate. Even Jews at the time did not view the work highly.176 Though the work may not have been “conducted with candour, temper and moderation,” with “language to be always such as should not offend,” its self-described goals, the publication was an early example of religious journalism to assist those on the excluded margins - delivered to “subscribers in New-York, at their dwellings, and to distant subscribers at the Post Office in New-York.”177
Diversity in the publishing sources was reflective of, responded to, and ultimately encouraged greater diversity in religious thought and practice. An “unsuccessful” magazine, in its brief existence, could nonetheless provide a novel and distinctive perspective to people spread throughout the nation. And the diversity in practice, both denominationally and in methods of outreach (churches, societies, service organizations) led to greater specialization in the religious press: by 1830, only three of 193 religious publications were not focused on one particular group.178
Favorable rates for newspapers and other publications provided for the development of a national identity. Such an identity was both political and religious in nature. The political information was vital, as Richard John notes: the deliveries “described the proceedings of
Congress and the routine workings of the central government. This steady flow of information in turn helped to introduce a widely scattered population to two key ideas: that the boundaries of the community in which they lived extended well beyond the confines of the individual locality, state, or region, and coincided more or less with the territorial limits of the United States; and
176 Bernard Postal, "The Early American Jewish Press," The Reflex 2, no. 4 (April 1928): 68-69. 177 The Jew, 1 March, 1823, 19. 178 Albaugh, History, I.xx.
71 that the central government might come to shape the pattern of everyday life."179 Rufus Putnam, a military leader and brigadier general in the Revolutionary War noted, “The knowledge diffused among the people by newspapers, by correspondence between friends” was crucial for the future of the nation. He would know: his Ohio Company drove the sale and settlement of lands in the
West, leading him to be known as the “Father of the Northwest Territory.” For Putnam, “Nothing can be more fatal to a republican government than ignorance among its citizens.”180 Postmaster
General Pickering agreed: arguing that receipt of information can have “a happy tendency to
counteract prejudices and inspire confidence in the Government,” a March 1797 Act extended
post roads into the back country of Virginia that had recently been affected by the Whiskey
Rebellion.181 In 1829 William Elery Channing argued that the Post Office created a “chain of
sympathies,” bringing the country together in a way that no other institution could: “It does much
towards making us one, by admitting free communication between distant parts of the country,
which no other channel of intercourse could bring together.”182
The developing national identity was religious as well as political. This can be seen by
the increasing number of religious articles that appeared in secular newspapers. It was common
at the time for articles to be copied word-for-word from other newspapers and printed. Albaugh
noted that by 1817, as many as twenty county newspapers were giving space to religious
materials from current religious journals.183 Such a practice was celebrated by the religious press
like the New England Christian Herald, which noted, “Many papers professedly secular” were
179 John, Spreading the News, 7. 180 Rufus Putnam, The Memoirs of Rufus Putnam and Certain Official Papers and Correspondence, ed. Rowena Buell (Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1903), 394. 181 1 Stat. 509-510. 182 William Ellery Channing, "The Union," Christian Examiner and General Review, May 1829, 160. 183 Albaugh, History, I.xvi.
72 giving a “prominent place” to “all important” religious matter “except that which is of high
revival character” using materials from religious journals.184 The Religious Messenger of the
Philadelphia Conference noted in 1826 that “Political papers are beginning to act as moral
monitors greatly to the advantage of the public.”185
The centers of religious printing (Philadelphia, Boston, and New York) grew as their
publications could reach further and more people due to the improvement in transportation and
the special privileges given them through the post office. By 1829, religious publications were
some of the highest-circulated periodicals in the world. While no secular journals reported a
circulation higher than 4,500, the Methodist weekly Christian Advocate and Journal and Zion's
Herald reported a circulation of 20,000, and the Interdenominational monthly American National
Preacher had a circulation of 25,000.186 The reach of the periodicals was even greater, as many
subscriptions were shared among multiple families. A 19 April 1830 letter in the Boston
Recorder and Religious Telegraph records the desire “never to destroy a religious newspaper”
and to disseminate the information in the best way possible, which was determined to be “The
Religious Newspaper and Tract Travelling (sic) System.” The idea was “to form a line, either
straight or circuitous, as the case might be, leave my last week’s papers with Mr. A., my papers 2
weeks old with Mr. B., 3 weeks old with Mr. C., and so on, forming a line with old papers and
also tracts to travel with them, for each to pass them punctually on a certain day. Thus from 10 to
30 destitute families can be supplied with religious reading by one person.”187 If this
184 New England Christian Herald, 29 December 1830, 52; qtd. in Albaugh, History, I.xvi. 185 Religious Messenger of the Philadelphia Conference, 30 November 1826, 191; qtd in Albaugh, History, I.xvi. 186 Ibid., I.xiii. 187 "Union of Religious Newspapers and Tracts," Boston Recorder and Religious Telegraph (1826-1830), 19 May 1830, 77.
73 arrangement was not available, another possibility was simply to steal the publication from someone else.188
******
Newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets were sent out at favorable rates, and religious groups were prime beneficiaries of this arrangement. Controversy concerning religion only emerges around the issue of the Sunday Mails. The issue provoked a lively debate in two eras: from 1810 to 1817, and from 1826 to 1831.189
The issue at hand was not moving the mail; rather, the issue arose in the town of
Washington, Pennsylvania, over the sorting of the mail and opening the office that day as a courtesy to patrons. The office was a central point in of distribution from the cities along the
Atlantic to the frontier towns of the west, so any delays were discouraged. But Hugh Wylie, an elder in his Presbyterian church and postmaster for the town, recognized the confrontation that the current arrangement created. Wylie was committed to the services his office could provide and did not want to risk his income from the position. But when the debate over the propriety of the arrangement was debated by Wylie’s spiritual superiors in the Pittsburgh synod, it was decided that Wylie should have communion withheld until he changed his ways. An appeal to
188 For example, an 1808 letter from Thomas Jefferson to the attorney general noted that robbery of the mails had “become so frequent and great an evil” that the punishments for postal crimes needed to remain. Qtd. in Wayne Edison Fuller, The American Mail; Enlarger of the Common Life, The Chicago History of American Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 241. 189 There is much to consider regarding the Sabbatarian controversies, much of which is eluded here in favor of the broader focus on the post office. Richard John’s 1990 article is a helpful introduction, and John G. West’s chapter on the issue shows the connection to broader church-state issues. Rebecca Brenner’s forthcoming dissertation on the Sunday mail argues that the issue can be viewed as more than a controversy over church and state, instead providing a window into moral authority and political economy. The Sunday mail did not formally end until 1912. See Richard R. John, "Taking Sabbatarianism Seriously: The Postal System, the Sabbath, and the Transformation of American Political Culture," Journal of the Early Republic, no. 4 (1990); John G. West, The Politics of Revelation and Reason: Religion and Civic Life in the New Nation, American Political Thought (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 139-70; and Verhoeven, The Case for Sunday Mails.
74 the Presbyterian General Assembly led Wylie to be expelled from the church.190
The regulations that caused Wylie to open the Washington Post Office were not from
Congress; it was never determined by statute when the institutions should be open. An April
1810 Act changed that by enacting that the offices will be open “every day on which a mail, or
bag, or other packet or parcel of letters shall arrive by land or water” and for the postmaster to,
“at all reasonable hours, on every day of the week, to deliver, on demand, any letter, paper or packet.”191
Reaction to the act was swift and harsh, leading to a shift in perspective from Gideon
Granger, the Postmaster General at the time. While Granger originally argued that having the
post office open on the Sabbath could not be considered “immoral” or “offensive to Heaven,” he
later concluded that it could “bring into disrepute the institution of that Holy Day.”192 But the
situation escalated, with the Pittsburgh synod that had censured Wylie now petitioning Congress
to stop all postal activity on the Sabbath, including the movement of the mail. Considering that
activities of the post office were one of the only activities sheltered from state and local laws
concerning work on the Sabbath, such a petition is not surprising.
While the debate swelled within religious groups throughout the country, Congress had a
much more practical perspective at play. James Tallmadge tried to argue the Sabbatarian position
based on Biblical grounds but lost the vote 100 to 35. The opposite perspective came from Elijah
Hunt Mills, a congressman from Massachusetts, who believed that to prohibit the mail from the
U.S. Post would only engender private networks to fill the void. For the sake of continuity and
consistency, he argued for no change in the policy. His arguments in 1817 quelled the debate for
190 John, Spreading the News, 169-71. 191 2 Stat. 595 192 Letters from Gideon Granger, qtd. in John, Spreading the News, 170-72.
75 almost a decade.193
A resurgence of the issue in 1826 was once again seen at the hands of the Presbyterian
General Assembly, though not because of a single postmaster. Their concern for the desecration
of the Sabbath led to the formation of the General Union for Promoting the Observance of the
Christian Sabbath. Drawing in luminaries like Lyman Beecher and Jeremiah Evarts to their
cause, the controversy departed from the first in their desire to only close post offices on the
Sabbath and not shut down the transmission of the mail entirely. The organization also formulated a pledge to refrain from using any transportation companies that operated on the
Sabbath. The petitioning to Congress was more numerous than a decade before - the chairman of
the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads, Samuel McKean, wrote, “It is believed that
the history of legislation in this country affords no instance in which a stronger expression has
been made, if regard be had to the numbers, the wealth, or the intelligence of the petitioners.”194
If this was true, it was because of the importance of the controversy it was a “struggle over the
proper role of the central government in American public life,” and not simply a debate between
competing social groups.195 Yet the result in 1831 was the same as in 1817: no change in policy
was made. A congressional act to close post offices on the Sabbath would not happen until 1912.
Historians debate the makeup and tenor of the public debate surrounding the Sabbatarian
controversies. Richard John argues that the debate was primarily one among evangelicals
concerning the proper relationship between Church and State; James Rohrer echoes this and
notes that the debate should not be seen as an attempt to redefine the relationship between
193 Ibid., 177-79. 194 ASP:PO 1:212. 195 John, Spreading the News, 191.
76 religion and government.196 In contrast, Tim Verhoeven argues that an analysis of the petitions delivered to Congress during the second controversy point to a “removal not just of preferential treatment for certain denominations but of all contact between organized religion and government.”197 This chapter elides the debate in focusing on the acts of Congress rather than the goals and makeup of the petitioners. But one petition is of note: a 20 January 1830 petition from
Salem, New Jersey, unnamed but who “belong to various religious denominations of Christians,” argues against the banning of mail on Sunday, saying it would “circumscribe and restrict the benefits of a free press, which is the palladium of our liberties, and to check or retard the diffusion of knowledge, which, in the order of Providence, is the surest means of spreading the
Gospel.” Of particular importance for the petitioners are the “many tracts, pamphlets, and newspapers ‘devoted to the interest of Zion and the prosperity of the Redeemer’s kingdom,’
[which] are transmitted by mail; and why may not ‘mail carriers,’ equally with ‘illiterate fishermen,’ become the heralds of salvation?” In short: to create such a law would both make a connection between church and state by making an “ecclesiastical hierarchy” yet hamper the means of spreading the Christian message.198
******
The growth of the Post Office did not reduce Americans’ appreciation of the institution.
For many Americans, it was celebrated as one of the only institutions of federal governance with which they would interact. “For so beautiful is the system of government continued by our wise
196 Ibid., 169-205; Rohrer, Sunday Mails, 59-60. 197 Verhoeven, Sunday Mails, 75. To argue that the Sabbatarian controversies concerned a separation between religion and government with regards to contact is misleading. The desire from antisabbatarians was not to create a separation between the two entities. In fact, both sides argued that for the government to ban (or not ban) the activities of the Post Office would be an intrusion of government on religion. 198 ASP:PO 1:240-241
77 forefathers,” John Barton Derby wrote in 1835, “that while the general government of the United
States poises and holds together the whole, no man in the country ever feels its direct action
(when it is peacefully and constitutionally administered), excepting in the appointment of a
postmaster of his village. And it is only by some irregularity in the system, that he becomes conscious of subjection to higher powers than his own paternal state government.”199
The growth did raise questions regarding its place in the federal government. Some
argued that, had the founders foreseen the incredible size and influence of the post office, they
would not have been so quick to put the institution under the federal government’s oversight. A
Georgia Representative noted in 1845,
The framers and adopters of the Constitution, devoted as they are known to have been to the power and importance of the States, and jealously apprehensive of the undue preponderance of the federal branch, would never have consented to engraft on that branch a power so great, so growing, so penetrating and pervading, as that of the post office system-a power involving the direct exercise of the carrying trade by the government on a vast scale, and requiring, in order to its exercise, the organization and maintenance of a huge and distinct administrative department, which, in its operations, touches daily and intimately the private affairs as well as public interests of the people; receives and expends millions of money every year; and continually employs, pays, and controls many thousands of persons, scattered through all parts of the country,-thus adding mightily to federal power, and especially to the influence and patronage of the federal executive. These are all consequences which result directly arid necessarily from the bestowment of the post office power on the general government. And inasmuch as the government thus derives from that power so great an addition to its own weight and influence, it certainly ought to be considered as contracting therefrom a correspondently heavy obligation, to make the power advantageous and useful to the people, to the utmost extent of which it is capable.200
He had a point. Indeed, the size of the post office department compared to the federal employees
in the entire federal government is striking. As John has noted in the below table, postal officers
approached 80% of all federal officers by the middle of the century.
199 John Barton Derby, Political Reminiscences (Boston: Homer & Palmer, 1835), 171. 200 Absalom H. Chappell, Magnetic Telegraph from Baltimore to New York (28th Congress, 2nd session, 1845), 2.
78 Table 2: Postmasters in the Federal Civilian Work Force, 1816-1841201
Year Postal officers All Federal Officers Percentage 1816 3,341 4,837 69.1 1821 4,766 6,914 68.9 1831 8,764 11,491 76.3 1841 14,290 18,038 79.2
The influence of the postal system did not go unnoticed by Alexis de Toqueville in his
1831 travels through the US. Even in the frontiers of Kentucky and Tennesee, he noted, “There
is an astonishing circulation of letters and newspapers among these savage woods… I do not
think that in the most enlightened districts of France there is intellectual movement either so
rapid or on such a scale as in this wilderness.”202 Such communication led Tocqueville to make a
striking statement: “There is no French province in which the inhabitants knew each other so
well as did the thirteen million men spread over the extent of the United States.”203 Two decades later Pliny Miles remarked, “The postal chain is a link that joins those who are separated by distance, but united by ties of affection or interest. It is a constant "bearer of dispatches" between sovereign hearts and kindred minds.”204 In a similar vein John C. Calhoun noted, “The mail and
the press… are the nerves of the body politic. By them the slightest impression made on the most
remote parts is communicated to the whole system.”205
201 John, Spreading the News, 3. The percentages John tabulated included civilian employees in the military but not military personnel. 202 Alexis de Tocqueville, Journey to America, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence, Rev. and augm. ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), 283. 203 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1969), 304. 204 Miles, History, 1. 205 14 AOC 863.
79 The development of this communications infrastructure was both a reflection of the nation’s progress and a catalyst for the nation’s development. As Fuller notes, the postal service
“had much to do both directly and indirectly with the spread of the country’s early stagecoach lines, the building of roads, and the development of steamboats, railroads, and the merchant marine. Newspapers and periodicals relied upon it for their survival, as did countless businessmen whose transactions and advertisements were carried largely by mail. Even democracy itself and the welding of sections into one mighty Union owed something to this omnipresent arm of the national government.”206 In short, the postal system, far from being a subsidiary development of modern civilization, was a central feature of modern civilization. This was not lost on those who utilized its benefits like Leonard Bacon who noted in 1843 that machines, steam engines and trains are great,
but is it any less wonderful to see this vast machinery of the post-office, taking up the letter which you drop into one of its ten thousand hoppers, carrying it hundreds of miles, with a speed and safety otherwise impracticable, and delivering it into the hands of the individual to whom your will directed it. Why this is a machinery which in a sense, extends your presence over the whole country, even to the edge of the wilderness, where the last traces of government and of civilized life disappear. And the enjoyment of this machinery has come to be, everywhere, so completely on of the necessaries of civilized life, that any government in Christendom which should refuse to afford the people this accommodation, would be overturned as intolerable. Such is the progress of society.207
Ralph Waldo Emerson agreed with Bacon. In considering the new technological world of the nineteenth century, he wrote in chapter two of Nature, “…how is the face of the world changed, from the era of Noah to that of Napoleon! The poor private man hath cities, ships, canals, bridges, built for him. He goes to the post-office, and the human race run on his errands....”208
206 Fuller, The American Mail; Enlarger of the Common Life, 2. 207 Bacon, "The Post-Office System, as an Element of Modern Civilization," 14. 208 Ralph Waldo Emerson and William H. Gilman, Selected Writings, A Signet Classic (New York,: New American Library, 1965).
80 Indeed, the nation’s transmitter of information became a bond that effectively held the
nation together. This was a necessary innovation for the young country, as Bretz notes: “It was
understood that without public and regular means of conveyance newspapers could not penetrate
that distant region nor could a local press develop there.” Bretz rightly recognized the danger of
not having reliable communication to the frontier. “Without this aid in bringing about a better
understanding of the purposes of the National Government it was feared that the people of the
West would be influenced by intriguers and demagogues and that tendencies toward separation
might be increased rather than diminished.”209 The post office reflected and supported the
geographic reach of federal governance in the nineteenth century. It was, as Cameron Blevins
notes in his work on the American west, “the era’s most spatially expansive institution. No other
network, public or private, connected so many different people in so many different places across
such a large area.”210
******
“The mere power of writing letters is of course worth little,” Leonard Bacon wrote,
“unless there be given the power of sending what is written to the person for whom it is
designed.”211 The same can be said about the increasingly wide range of religious periodicals that were promulgated throughout the young United States. The Post Office, the largest department in terms of staff in the federal government, reached into the lives of the average citizen more than any other department. Its work was celebrated: “Of all existing departments,”
Senator Charles Sumner said in 1870, “the post office is most entitled to consideration for it is
209 Bretz, Some Aspects, 143. 210 Blevins, “Research.” 211 Bacon, "The Post-Office System, as an Element of Modern Civilization," 9.
81 the most universal in its beneficence… There is nothing which is not helped by the post
office.”212
The Post office would continue to affect the religious history of the United States.
Included in that history is the notorious episode of Anthony Comstock who wrote the eponymous
1873 Act, repealed in 1957, that would censor mail that was “obscene, lewd, or lascivious.” In
1894 nonprofit organizations were permitted to send mail at the newly-created second-class, the
rates for newspapers and magazines. The current system was put in place in 1951 that created a
third-class rate (also known as Standard Mail) for non-profit entities. Publication 417 describes the regulations for this type of mail, including the standards for becoming eligible for the subsidized rates. The first eligible category, before educational or charitable groups, is religious organizations.
Before the Methodist circuit riders spread their gospel throughout the expanding country, the postal service was there; even after, the post office reached further. Their freight was information that would unite a country growing rapidly, both geographically and in terms of population. And a significant part of that information was religious: newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets, delivered at favorable rates, that would excite and encourage individuals to both hold on to previous religious traditions as well as drive them to new ideas, as the mail created communities out of people geographically separated.
212 Qtd. in Fuller, The American Mail, 2.
82 CHAPTER 3
CHURCH IN STATE: RELIGIOUS SERVICES IN THE U.S. CAPITOL BUILDING
One of the most notable and controversial of Thomas Jefferson’s writings on the subject of politics and religion is his 1 January 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association. The
Danbury group, concerned about their religious liberty as a minority group in Connecticut, asked the new president to clarify his view. In response Jefferson wrote:
Religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship… I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;’ thus building a wall of separation between church and state.213
This paradigm-creating phrase, “wall of separation between church and state,” has been the touchstone for discussions of religious freedom, especially over the past century.
What is striking about this letter is not only the content, but also the timing: New Year’s
Day 1802 was a Friday. Two days later, Jefferson attended a religious service in the then-current
Hall of Representatives in the Capitol building. To understand Jefferson’s motivation, one must
213 1 January 1802 letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association, qtd. in Matthew L. Harris and Thomas S. Kidd, The Founding Fathers and the Debate over Religion in Revolutionary America: A History in Documents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 152. The original document has the word “eternal” before separation, but it was crossed out. Letters to two of Jefferson’s cabinet members who lived in New England, Attorney General Levi Lincoln and Postmaster General Gideon Granger, to vet the political import of the letter illustrate the thought and effort that went into Jefferson’s reply. Granger believed the letter would “give great Offence to the established Clergy of New England while it will delight the Dissenters as they are called.” In summary: “He cannot therefore wish a Sentence changed, or a Sentiment expressed equivocally.” (December 1801 letter from Gideon Granger to Thomas Jefferson, in Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall, The Sacred Rights of Conscience: Selected Readings on Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the American Founding (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2009), 528). One must note the controversy rather than the clarification this letter created, both then and at present. For example, a “wall of separation” is restrictive in two directions, whereas the Constitution restricts acts of Congress against respecting a particular religion. Federalists, already no friend of Jefferson, saw in this letter a furtherance of political atheism. See Daniel L. Dreisbach, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State, Critical America (New York: New York University Press, 2002); James H. Hutson, "Thomas Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists: A Controversy Rejoined," The William and Mary Quarterly 56, no. 4 (1999): 2-8,21-22.
83 consider the role of cheese: a group of Baptists in Chesire, Massachusetts, were particularly fond
of Jefferson and wanted to show their appreciation to him in a big way. They milked 900 cows
and used their product to create a 1,234 pound block of “mammoth cheese” – four feet in
diameter and eighteen inches tall. Inscribed on the red crust may have been a Jeffersonian motto,
“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”214 The cheese was delivered to Jefferson on New
Year’s Day by two members of the town, one of whom was John Leland, the town’s Baptist
divine. Jefferson invited him to be the speaker at the Capitol religious service on Sunday. Leland
accepted and, in his itinerant country-preacher style, used a Biblical passage to pay homage to
Jefferson.215
******
The cheese, quickly-publicized letters, and Sunday service provide a humorous entrance
into the connection between politics and religion at the nation’s founding. Apprehending
Jefferson’s views on religion and politics are confusing enough, but also important, for Jefferson
more than any other founder shaped the language of church-state separation.216 He was the
author of Virginia’s 1777 Act of Establishing Religious Freedom, which influenced the language
used in the religious clauses to the Bill of Rights. Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists is
214 Dreisbach, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State, 10. Dreisbach notes the mythic nature of the quote, which cannot be verified. 215 Pasley, in Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, 31-36. Criticism of Leland’s message illustrates the overt political divisions of the time. A Congregationalist clergyman and Federalist congressman named Manasseh Cutler referred to Leland as “the cheesemonger, a poor, ignorant, illiterate, clownish preacher” who, in alluding to Jefferson, “bawled with stunning voice, horrid tone, frightful grimaces, and extravagant gestures… Such an outrage upon religion, the Sabbath, and common decency, was extremely painful to every sober, thinking person present.” See 4 January 1802 Letter from Manasseh Cutler to Joseph Torrey, qtd in William Parker Cutler, Julia Perkins Cutler, and William Henry Egle, Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, Ll.D, vol. 2 (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1888), 2:66- 67. 216 The other major founder whose thought held sway was James Madison, though Muñoz argues that George Washington deserves consideration as well. See Vincent Phillip Muñoz, "Religion and the Common Good: George Washington on Church and State," in The Founders on God and Government, ed. Daniel L. Dreisbach, Mark D. Hall, and Jeffry H. Morrison (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).
84 widely cited by groups and individuals dedicated to the separation of church and state. In fact,
the Supreme Court has used the phrase as evidence several times in both majority and minority
opinions on religiopolitical issues.217
The juxtaposition of Jefferson’s carefully-worded, influential letter to the Danbury
Baptists and his presence at a religious service in the Capitol building is striking. An outside
observer could hastily conclude that Jefferson’s words and actions were not consistent this first
weekend of 1802. But the events of this weekend, and the hundreds of other religious services in
the Capitol building as well as other government buildings in the City of Washington218 point to
something else: Jefferson and others recognized the benefits of developing a national identity
that transcended inter-denominational division.
This chapter will narrate particular occurrences where the Capitol building in
Washington, D.C. was used for religious services and consider the rationale behind such events. I
argue that these events show that policies of religious liberty in the Constitution represented a
response to a history of religious oppression and dissension in Europe, as well as an attempt to
find unity amidst the colonies’ diverse religious perspectives. While a sense of the religiosity
(and the cultural and political power of an assumed pan-Protestant identity) of the nation can be
ascertained from these events, the services speak more to a civil religion that was a foundational
217 The first mention of the document by the Supreme Court was for Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145 (1878), a case over religious liberty and the concept of religion (which is not defined by the Constitution). Other notable cases that referenced the document include Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), which debated the use of government funds to bus students to a Catholic school; Engle v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962) which ruled unconstitutional mandatory school prayer; Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968), over an Arkansas law that prohibited the teaching of evolution; and Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971), over funding secular subjects and materials in religious schools. This final case created the “Lemon test” to see if the Establishment Clause was being transgressed or not. 218 Religious services occurred in the Treasury and War Office buildings as well. This chapter will focus on the religious services in the Capitol building. On the other services see James H. Hutson, Forgotten Features of the Founding: The Recovery of Religious Themes in the Early American Republic (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003), 63.
85 part of the country’s emerging national identity. The civil religion manifest in the frequency and
variety of religious services at the capitol reinforced the republican ideal of government by
broadcasting respect for different opinions, and educating attendees in the variety of theological
views espoused by American citizens. These services provided a forum celebrating American
religious freedom as a contribution to good government.
Little has been written with a focus on religious activity in the Capital building or other
government buildings. One work that includes a brief discussion of the topic is James Hutson’s
Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, a companion book to the 1996 exhibition
of the same name at the Library of Congress. Besides Hutson’s useful work, further primary
sources such as diaries, personal correspondence, and newspaper advertisements provide records
of religious services that occurred in the Capitol building. Compiling these sources provides a
picture of varied comprehensiveness with regard to the nature and substance of the services.219
******
The Revolutionary era is a period of transition vis-à-vis religious liberty in the United
States. The untried confederacy was seeking an identity that would be inclusive of all thirteen colonies and the varied denominations of Christianity they espoused. Just a few decades before, many colonies had their preferred denomination at the expense of others, though the situation was evolving, as historian Wilhelmus Bryan notes:
The rigors of religious intoleration and persecution as expressed in the laws [of the colonies] were severe and complete. But it is a pleasant reflection… that for some years prior to the revolution, while the laws remained unchanged, their enforcement gradually became less vigorous, owing in part to the common danger felt in communities close to the frontier… and the need of united action with the mother country.220
219 Appendix A is a compiled list of the religious services in the Capitol building, including the preacher, reactions, and sources of information for each event. 220 W. B. Bryan, A History of the National Capital from Its Foundation through the Period of the Adoption of the Organic Act, 2 vols. (New York: The Macmillan company, 1914), 80.
86
The final decades of the eighteenth century saw the repeal of laws restricting the practice of Catholicism, and the use of taxes to support clergy of a preferred denomination waned. Still, an underlying tension concerning the direction of the country remained and demonstrated two realities of the time, as Harry Stout describes: “one political and constitutional, which explicitly separated church and state and left God out of the formulation; and the other rhetorical and religious, in which ‘America’ inherited New England’s colonial covenant and where God orchestrated a sacred union of church and state for his redemptive purposes.” Tension like this had the capability of causing violent division and jeopardized any notions of a national unity.221
Conceptions of nationalism were also inconsistent in the nascent republic. Certainly desires for a stronger national government were opposed by groups more interested in maintaining power at the state level. Beyond this, Benjamin Park’s recent work illustrates that allegiance to a federal body was a divisive issue that developed at different rates throughout the nation. He writes, “nationalism was never a set of static, self-dependent principles that were agreed upon by a majority of citizens. Rather, conceptions of national identity–and even the
“nation” itself – varied dramatically during the early republic period, and a homogenized understanding distorts a dynamic and diverse reality.”222 The new federal government was faced with a problem: in light of religious and political differences, how could they develop a coherent and compelling national identity?
Contained within the Constitution was the plan to establish a seat of the federal government that would be separate from the states. The debate over where the land would be
221 Harry S. Stout, "Rhetoric and Reality in the Early Republic: The Case of the Federalist Clergy," in Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the 1980s, ed. Mark A. Noll (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 63. 222 Park, American Nationalisms, 6.
87 located is a story in itself,223 but under George Washington’s leadership, and in response to the
1790 Residence Act, a plot of land ten miles square on the Potomac River was designated as the capital district. The land came from both Maryland and Virginia and encompassed the settlements of Georgetown and Alexandria, but was primarily an open wilderness ready to become a new city for the federal government.
The construction began during the final decade of the eighteenth century with the building of roads, houses, the first stages of the Capitol building,224 and the seemingly proactive construction of a Presbyterian church:
…the summer of 1794 places the Presbyterian Church in the front rank in the pioneer religious work started in the new city. At that time a population had just begun to gather, for only the year before the cornerstones of the Capitol and the White House had been laid and the lines of only a few of the streets had been cut through the forests, while the erection of houses had scarcely been started. A year later the population of the city was estimated to be only 500, so that it will be perceived that the promoters of church work, as well as those identified with the material development drew largely upon the hopes of the future of what was to be the capital city of the American Republic.225
Though out of place in its Episcopalian environs, the erection of a Presbyterian church was not wholly surprising considering the influence of the denomination in New England. Such influence was expanding: John Witherspoon, then president of Princeton University, assisted in the writing of the Constitutions for both the United States and the Presbyterian church. References to the
223 See, for example, Melvin Yazawa, "Republican Expectations: Revolutionary Ideology and the Compromise of 1790," in A Republic for the Ages: The United States Capitol and the Political Culture of the Early Republic, ed. Donald R. Kennon (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1999); Kenneth R. Bowling, "A Capital before a Capitol: Republican Visions," in A Republic for the Ages: The United States Capitol and the Political Culture of the Early Republic, ed. Donald R. Kennon (Carlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1999). 224 George Washington laid the cornerstone to the United States Capitol in a Masonic ceremony. See William C Allen, 'In the Greatest Solemn Dignity.' The Capitol's Four Cornerstones. , Senate Document / 103rd Congress, 2nd Session. Senate ; No. 28 (Washington, DC: 1994); Bowling, ""The Year 1800 Will Soon Be Upon Us:" George Washington and the Capitol," in A Republic for the Ages: The United States Capitol and the Political Culture of the Early Republic. 225 Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, The Beginnings of the Presbyterian Church in the District of Columbia (Washington: 1905), 52.
88 church are absent until 1800. Another early church building was referenced in a 16 November
1800 letter from early Washington settler Margaret Bayard Smith, the wife of a newspaper
publisher: “At this time the only place for public worship in our new-city was a small, a very
small frame building at the bottom of Capitol-hill. It had been a tobacco-house belonging to
Daniel Carrol and was purchased by a few Episcopalians for a mere trifle and fitted up as a
church in the plainest and rudest manner.” She also notes that no more than fifty or sixty people
could fit in the building, and the service usually had about twenty.226 Evidently the plans for the
new city were attracting religious houses of worship. This development seems more pragmatic
than planned, as leaders who desired the new capital to be a cultural as well as political capital
discussed “a library, a botanic garden, museums to enhance knowledge and fan the flames of
American patriotism, an archives to preserve the nation’s documentary history, scientific
societies, and an experimental agricultural station,” but not a church.227
Amidst the establishment of churches and the construction of the city came a newspaper
mention of a religious service occurring in the partially completed Capitol building:
CITY of WASHINGTON, June 19 [1795]. It is with much pleasure that we discover the rising consequence of our infant city. Public worship is now regularly administered at the capitol, every Sunday morning, at 12 o’clock by the reverend Mr. Ralph, and an additional school has been opened by that gentleman, upon an extensive and liberal plan.228
226 The letter referenced here and elsewhere in this chapter is contained in Margaret Bayard Smith and Gaillard Hunt, The First Forty Years of Washington Society, Portrayed by the Family Letters of Mrs. Samuel Harrison Smith (Margaret Bayard) from the Collection of Her Grandson, J. Henley Smith (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1906), 13.. For a history of Christ Church, the church that met first in the tobacco house, see Nan Robertson, Christ Church, Washington Parish: A Brief History (2016), 2-4, http://washingtonparish.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/Christ-Church-History-2015-Final2.pdf. 227 Bowling, "A Capital before a Capitol: Republican Visions," in A Republic for the Ages: The United States Capitol and the Political Culture of the Early Republic, 49-50. George Walker discussed the need for lots to be set aside for “markets, warehouses, colleges, a hospital, poorhouses, churches, and other buildings of public utility” - considering churches in the everyday life of the city more than a cultural statement. 228 "Domestic Intelligence," Federal Orrery, 2 July, 1795. The article originally appeared in the 19 June 1795 edition of the Impartial Observer and Washington Advertiser before being copied by the Federal Orrery in Boston as well as other publications.
89
While the unfinished Capitol building may have filled an immediate need for a physical space,
the presence of Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches in the area would have met at least some
of the need for religious services. So were services in the Capitol building meeting necessary?
Ida A. Brudnick argues yes - in a report for the Congressional Research Service, she writes,
“When Congress moved to Washington in 1800, houses of worship were so few that the
chaplains took turns conducting Sunday services in the House chamber—now Statuary Hall.”229
John Quincy Adams, at this point a senator, agreed with this sentiment three years later: “There
is no church of any denomination in the city.”230 Adams’ incorrect statement can be attributed to
his arrival in Washington only two days before. Churches did exist, but as a whole Washington
was little more than a construction site. Fredrika J. Teute notes, “Early on, the functions of the
city were so purely political that a private side to life hardly seemed to have existed.
Boardinghouses accommodated members of the government’s three branches and served as
informal caucuses for politicking. Domesticity resided back in the home districts where wives
and children had been left behind.”231
What were apparently unofficial services became sanctioned gatherings in the turn of the
century. The Annals of Congress on 4 December 1800 contain a short note on the subject: “The
Speaker informed the House that the Chaplains had proposed, if agreeable to the House, to hold
229 Congressional Research Service, House and Senate Chaplains: An Overview, by Ida A. Brudnick, R41807 (2011), 1. 230 John Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848 (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1874), 1:268. 231 Fredrika J. Teute, "Roman Matron on the Banks of the Tiber Creek: Margaret Bayard Smith and the Politicization of Spheres in the Nation's Capital," in A Republic for the Ages: The United States Capitol and the Political Culture of the Early Republic, ed. Donald R. Kennon (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 90. See also James Sterling Young, The Washington Community, 1800-1828 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966).
90 Divine service every Sunday in their chamber.”232 No further debate is recorded, and the issue is
not raised in the proceedings of the Senate. The House spent more time that day debating the
need for and location of stenographers to record the debates in the House.
In addition to regular services on Sundays, the Capitol was also used for services on
holidays like the 4th of July. An 18 June 1801 letter from David Austin to Thomas Jefferson
states, “…a discourse should be delivered in the Capitol, to any disposed to attend.”233 That
Austin would make the request to the President deserves consideration. One might assume that
the chaplains would oversee such services (in addition to the Sunday services) as well. The
records of the National Archives list thirteen letters sent to Jefferson by Austin before this
request; his first letter indicates no previous acquaintance between the two, so there is no special
relationship here. Why would Austin make this request directly to the President? Whatever the
reason, Austin received an affirmative reply and delivered a sermon based on Psalms 22:28: “For
the kingdom is the Lord’s: and he is the Governor among the nations.”234
The rush to move Congress to Washington in 1800 did not ultimately help John Adams’
bid for reelection, and Thomas Jefferson came to power. In the early years of his presidency
Jefferson wrote the letter of response to the Danbury Baptist Association, and two days later
attended a U.S. Capitol church service. As a matter of fact, Jefferson made a habit of attending
Sunday church services while in Washington both as Vice President and President.235 He did so
232 10 AOC 797 233 18 June 1801 letter from David Austin to Thomas Jefferson. Accessed 17 March 2018. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-34-02-0297 234 Austin was dismissed from the Presbyterian Church in 1797. Perhaps he found greater possibilities for his life by appealing to people in power rather than the existing church hierarchies. See A. P. C. Griffin, "Issues of the District of Columbia Press in 1800, 1801, 1802," Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 4 (1901): 56-58. 235 Bishop Claggett’s (Episcopal Bishop of Maryland) 18 February 1801 letter reveals that, as vice- President, Jefferson went to church services in the House. Available in the Maryland Diocesan Archives.
91 first at the tobacco-house turned Episcopalian church, though as already noted he had few
options. As a contemporary of Jefferson wrote, “He could have had no motive for this regular
attendance, but that of respect for public worship, choice of place or preacher he had not, as this,
with the exception of a little Catholic chapel was the only church in the new city.”236 During his presidency Jefferson regularly attended services in the U.S. Capitol building, even sitting in the same seat each week. Smith records as much in her letters: “The custom of preaching in the Hall of Representatives had not then been attempted, though after it was established Mr. Jefferson during his whole administration, was a most regular attendant. The seat he chose the first
Sabbath, and the adjoining one, which his private secretary occupied, were ever afterwards by the courtesy of the congregation, left for him and his secretary.”237
One might argue that, for Jefferson, this was the “most conspicuous form of public
witness possible, regularly attending worship services where the delegates of the entire nation
could see him - in the "hall" of the House of Representatives.”238 This public view assisted him
politically, for it silenced critics who were less than kind about Jefferson’s perceived lack of
faith. While the Congregational minister and Jefferson opponent William Cutler thought
Congress was “insulted by the introduction of Leland, the cheesemonger, as a preacher” in the
January 1802 service, Cutler perhaps revealing his distaste for Baptists, he also recognized the
political value of a move. He wrote later regarding Jefferson’s attendance at the services,
“Although this is no kind of evidence of any regard to religion, it goes far to prove that the idea
of bearing down and overturning our religious institutions, which, I believe, has been a favorite
object, is now given up. The political necessity of paying some respect to the religion of the
236 Smith and Hunt, First Forty Years, 13. 237 Ibid. 238 Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, 84.
92 country is felt.”239
The ecumenical nature of the services shed some light on why Jefferson felt comfortable
participating. As Hutson argues, “The nondiscriminatory manner in which the nation's various
Christian denominations were permitted to conduct congressional church services seems to have
shielded them from controversy and made them politically safe for Jefferson to attend.”240
Jefferson celebrated the diversity of people who were, as he said in his first inaugural speech,
“enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man.”241
Certainly people noticed Jefferson and treated him with great respect. Catharine Mitchill,
the wife of a Senator from New York, once noted in a letter her social faux pas of stepping on
Jefferson’s foot after a service. In her words, she was “so prodigiously frighten'd that I could not
stop to make an apology, but got out of the way as quick as I could.” In a celebration of
Republican freedom, Mitchill goes on to note, “Now I suppose if this had been King George or
the Emperor of France I should have had my Head cut off for the insult. But thank heaven we
Fredonians [an informal term for colonists after the Revolution] have no such tyrants to reign
over us.”242
But the argument can be taken further, as it is elsewhere (again by Hutson): “While it is
certainly true that Jefferson did not, like James I, publicly exult in his role as a nursing father of
the church, an argument can be made that, within the space left by his principled aversion to the
239 Cutler, Cutler, and Egle, Life, 58-59,119. 240 Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, 86. 241 U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses from Washington to Obama (Auckland: Floating Press, 2009), 30. 242 Carolyn Hoover Sung, "Catharine Mitchill's Letters from Washington 1806-1812," The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 34, no. 3 (1977): 175.
93 use of state power to promote religion, he played the part.”243 In addition to attending the services in the Capitol building, Jefferson assisted young churches in the city of Washington by allowing services in multiple government buildings and provided money for the building of churches in the area.
Jefferson’s successor James Madison attended religious services in the Capitol as frequently as Jefferson. Madison “evidently thought that the Constitution conferred some modest degree of authority that would permit the national government to support Christianity in a non- discriminatory, non-coercive way.”244 A Christian service that was broadly Protestant would surely belong in this category of authority. It is unclear if James Monroe followed his predecessor’s example. A British traveler recorded in an 1823 periodical his attendance at a service in the House of Representatives, and after he had a meal, he “sat in the seat next to the
President’s in the Episcopal church, where we had an excellent sequel to our morning’s sermon.”245 Monroe could have been in both services, but he could also be absent from both, his designated place left empty.
John Quincy Adams is a useful source for this subject because of both his detailed memoirs as well as his long tenure in Washington starting as a Senator in 1803, then Secretary of
State and President, and finally a Representative until his death in 1848. His first Sunday was spent at the Capitol, as noted earlier, and he attended services there off and on throughout his tenure in the capital city. This is not to say that it was always enjoyable. For example, his memoirs record Adams’ attendance at the Capitol for two weeks in May 1842 when a Mr.
243 Hutson, Forgotten Features of the Founding: The Recovery of Religious Themes in the Early American Republic, 63. 244 Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, 78. 245 “Remarks of an English Traveller in the United States,” The Columbian Star, 11 January 1823.
94 Maffitt was preaching. The first week, when Mr. Maffitt was preaching from Luke 15, was
viewed by Adams as a “stab, Joab-like, under the fifth rib” directed at him by a preacher whose
sermon was “certainly given in no Christian spirit.” Adams judged the public speaking ability of
the preacher as well, believing his oratory to be “superficial, flashy, and shallow, but very
attractive.”246 The following week, when the subject was the resurrection, Adams viewed the topic as “too capacious for the grasp and too weighty for the poise of Mr. Maffitt.”247 Another
sermon by an unnamed preacher was called “galimatias.”248 Responsive comments like these are
scattered throughout Adams’ memoirs.
Describing the general nature of a religious service over the course of almost seventy
years, with limited and piecemeal information, is an imposing task. The general structure for the
religious services is clear: the chaplains of each house organized the services and would preach
on alternate weeks. Occasionally visiting clergy were invited to preach as well; as Smith notes,
“those of distinguished reputation attracted crowed audiences and were evidently gratified by
having such an opportunity for the exercise of their talents and their zeal.249”
If there is a common theme for these services, it would be a lack of general organization.
The role of chaplain began as a part-time task taken on by members of the clergy with
responsibilities elsewhere.250 The work of the chaplain included preaching in these services,
though Jefferson invited Leland to speak and other guest preachers, approved by the Speaker of
the House, participated as well. The meeting place changed depending on the week - early
246 Adams and Adams, Memoirs, 11.160. 247 Ibid., 11.164. 248 Ibid., 11.196. 249 Smith and Hunt, First Forty Years, 15. 250 The congressional chaplaincies are discussed more fully in chapter four.
95 locations in the Capitol included the north wing; “the Oven,” a temporary meeting place for the
House of Representatives that was removed in 1804; the Supreme Court chamber in the basement; and what is now known as Statuary Hall. An entry in Adams’ memoirs records him one Sunday going from room to room until he found the actual gathering - apparently the meeting place was not always known.
The services made full use of the room they were meeting in, regardless of the actual room. When meeting in the House chambers, the rostrum of the Speaker of the House was utilized as the pulpit. The nature of the religious services in the Capitol is telling: their function was much more than simply religious observance. According to one of the attendees of the early services, Washington resident Margaret Smith, at times they did not look like religious services, but more like social gatherings. She writes,
I have called these Sunday assemblies in the capitol, a congregation, but the almost exclusive appropriation of that word to religious assemblies, prevents its being a descriptive term as applied in the present case, since the gay company who thronged the H.R. looked very little like a religious assembly. The occasion presented for display was not only a novel, but a favourable one for the youth, beauty and fashion of the city, Georgetown and environs.251
Not only were they fashionable—they were popular as well, as the chairs would be packed into the room and occupied, even on the platform behind the Speaker’s chair. According to Smith,
“This sabbath-day-resort became so fashionable, that the floor of the house offered insufficient space, the platform behind the behind the Speaker's chair, and every spot where a chair could be wedged in was crowded with ladies in their gayest costume and their attendant beaux and who led them to their seats with the game gallantry as is exhibited in a ball room.”252
The music added to the festive atmosphere, the opposite of a typical worship service for
251 Smith and Hunt, First Forty Years, 13-14. 252 Ibid., 14.
96 the time,253 as the United States Marine Corps Band accompanied the singing, at least for a while. Smith describes the music as “little in union with devotional feelings, as the place. The marine-band, were the performers. Their scarlet uniform, their various instruments, made quite a dazzling appearance in the gallery.” In her mind, “The marches they played were good and inspiring, but in their attempts to accompany the psalm-singing of the congregation, they completely failed and after a while, the practice was discontinued, --it was too ridiculous.”254 A service in February 1841 was more staid, as John Quincy Adams notes in his memoir - “There was a small choir of singers in the front galleries, who sung the hymns.”255
The religious services were progressive for both their ecumenism and their allowance of female preachers. Smith notes, “Even women were allowed to display their pulpit eloquence, in this national Hall. … The admission of female preachers, has been justly reprobated: curiosity rather than piety attracted throngs on such occasions.256” The first woman known to preach at the
Capitol was Dorothy Ripley, a British Methodist missionary, on 12 January 1806. The first time a woman preached in the Capitol was likely the first time a woman was allowed to speak at a formal gathering in the Capitol at all. When granted permission to preach from the Speaker of the House, Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina, Ripley asked “the Lord [to] direct my tongue, and open my mouth powerfully, that His Name (by a woman) may be extolled to the great
253 While church services at the time were generally more solemn affairs with long expositions of scripture, the camp meetings occurring at the same time during the so-called Second Great Awakening were far from tame, with “elemental religious feelings” and “unusual bodily effects – the jerks, dancing, laughing, running, and ‘the barking exercise’” [Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1992), 168, 267.] The atmosphere of the services at the Capitol would vary greatly depending on the week, but generally speaking, the emotion would fall between these two extremes. 254 Smith and Hunt, First Forty Years, 14. 255 Adams and Adams, Memoirs, 10.435. 256 Smith and Hunt, First Forty Years, 15.
97 astonishment of the hearers, who no doubt will be watching every word to criticize thereon.”257
Twenty-one years later Ripley was followed by another female preacher, Harriet Livermore, who also spoke in 1832, 1838, and 1843. While Ripley was an outsider, Livermore was the daughter and granddaughter of former Congressmen. It is said that her first engagement drew a packed crowd, so much so that John Quincy Adams “sat on the steps leading up to her feet because he could not find a free chair.”258 Another witness of the event noted that the Avenue leading into
the building “was full of persons excluded.” Livermore’s text was 2 Samuel 23:3-4 - “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds, as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.” The observer’s account notes that the message “was intended principally for the rulers of the nation,” though she considered as well “the whole multitude—the rulers of schools—the rulers of families: and as individuals, the rulers of our passions.” Her sermon was eloquent and well received, drawing “the profound attention and sympathy of the audience.259”
What Ripley and Livermore did in the political center of the nation was echoed by more
than a hundred other women preachers around the nation in antebellum America, a reality that
was highly controversial. As an attendee of Livermore’s discourse noted, “The objections which
have been made to female preachers have been nearly insurmountable in this country, except
among the Friends: but Miss Livermore seems to unite the Quaker and the Methodist; and
conducts herself in such a manner as to please both sects.260” Historian Catherine Brekus refers
257 Dorothy Ripley, The Bank of Faith and Works United (Whitby: G. Clark, 1822), 240. 258 Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, 87. 259 "Miss Livermore," National Intelligencer, 13 January, 1827. 260 "Extract of a Letter Dated Washington, Jan 3, 1827," Newburyport Herald, 1.
98 to these preachers as embodiments of a “biblical feminism: they based their claims to female equality on the grounds of scriptural revelation, not natural rights.”261 By participating in what was though to be an exclusively male endeavor, the women “gave voice to an alternative vision—a vision that linked evangelicalism to feminism in complex and often contradictory ways.”262 That Ripley and Livermore were preaching before the political leaders of the country would have been a powerful image to all who heard about it, inspiring others to follow the path they laid.
John Quincy Adams provides an 8 September 1837 account of a woman from the Society of Friends, Mary L. Cox, who requested to “address a discourse” to Adams, to which he obliged.
She proceeded to preach to Adams for about 15 minutes, Adams drawing parallels to previous sermons by woman such as Harriet Livermore, Elizabeth Lambert, and Elizabeth Fry. According to Adams, “She appeared desirous of obtaining the use of the hall of the House of
Representatives to preach in next Sunday, and asked me to speak for her to Mr. Potts, to make the request; which I promised.” It is unclear from his memoirs if she was given the opportunity to preach.263
The services were distinct, not only for their festive nature, but as has already been mentioned, their inclusive approach. Livermore represented a wave of nineteenth century
American evangelicalism that desired to bridge denominational divisions, as Brekus notes: “Like thousands of other evangelicals in the early republic, she sought to break down sectarian boundaries in order to restore the apostolic simplicity of the primitive church. Insisting that she
261 Catherine A. Brekus, "Harriet Livermore, the Pilgrim Stranger: Female Preaching and Biblical Feminism in Early-Nineteenth-Century America," Church History 65, no. 3 (1996): 390. 262 Ibid. 263 Adams and Adams, Memoirs, 9.367-8.
99 had no creed but the Bible, she proclaimed herself a ‘pilgrim stranger,’ a religious seeker who was ‘conscientiously solitary.’”264 Ripley’s work was in nondenominational mold as well, as she herself notes: “As I am not a member of any community, no society can answer for my irregular conduct; neither do I wish to apologize to the world for my procedure; as I believe the Lord is my Shepherd, and Bishop of my soul. Duty to my Maker, excites me to faithfulness, knowing that life is the time to work for God; that I may be counted worthy to reign with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in ‘the city of the Living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem.’”265
One must note the distinctiveness of this new reality, considering the resentment with which many Protestant factions treated each other, to say nothing of the broader animosity toward the Roman Catholic Church. Denominational persecution has subsided to a degree but, as the letter from the Danbury Baptists to Jefferson attests, justified concern over maltreatment by the majority denomination continued into the nineteenth century. In contrast, religious services in the Capitol were an early example of ecumenical activity. In addition to those like Livermore who functioned outside of denominational constraints, sources indicate a wide variety of clergy represented in the religious services. Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, Quakers, and Baptists approached the pulpit as well as Roman Catholics, Unitarians, and Swedenborgians.266 The
Unitarian Jared Sparks did cause some controversy amidst a crowd of Trinitarian leanings when he preached on 23 December 1821, his first sermon as chaplain. Mr. Hawley, an Episcopal priest
264 Brekus, Livermore, 393. 265 Ripley, Bank, 4. 266 According to Sir Augustus Foster, a British diplomat, “a Presbyterian, sometimes a Methodist, a member of the Church of England, or a Quaker, sometimes even a woman took the Speaker's chair,” which was used as the pulpit (Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, 85.). Other sources mention the presence of Baptists and Swedenborgians as well. Smith notes in her letters, “Preachers of every sect and denomination of christians were there admitted-Catholics, Unitarians, Quakers with every intervening diversity of sect” (Smith and Hunt, First Forty Years, 15).
100 at St. John’s Church, was blunt: by electing Jared Sparks, the body had “voted Christ out-of-
doors.” He urged the members of his church to boycott the capitol until Sparks was no longer
chaplain. A Representative from New York, Mr. Patterson, unsuccessfully moved to install a
new chaplain before Sparks’ tenure had even begun. John Quincy Adams noted that “this
extraordinary mode of opposition has only served to render Sparks more conspicuous, and to
sharpen the curiosity to hear him.” Sparks’ first Sunday sermon was to a crowded room; he
served the entirety of his first term.267
That the services drew varied Protestant groups should not be overlooked. Margaret
Bayard Smith recognized the distinction of such services by comparing them to the efforts of
German contemporary Frederick the Great who, “in order to enforce universal tolleration in
religion,” devised a way to “promote harmony between the different and numerous religious
sects. This was to erect a spacious Edefice, or temple, in which at different hours the public
service of all, and each of the christian denominations might be performed.” The plan was never enacted because of the advice of Voltaire who argued that “the religious prejudices which divided christians, were too strong to be conquered by either reason or despotic power.” In contrast, in the Capitol one found that “the idea of this philosophic monarch has been realized without coercion; without combination.”268
One should note the lack of examples of baptism and communion in the services. Such an absence is not surprising. These sacraments were the most disagreed-upon aspects of religious services, even within Protestant denominations. Attempts at ecumenical services would, necessarily, exclude them.
267 Adams and Adams, Memoirs, 5:548-49. 268 Smith and Hunt, First Forty Years, 15.
101 It is surprising to note (considering the prevalent anti-Catholic bias seen more broadly in the country) that the Roman Catholic Bishop John England did not encounter Protestant resistance when he was received in 1826.269 His sermon is a story in itself. Adams was no friend
of Catholicism. The 21 January 1818 entry in his memoirs records his attendance at a Catholic
church for a funeral, the oration for which being “the most extraordinary composition of
Jacobinism, heresy, and priestly doctrine that I ever heard. All the foreign Ministers and their
legations were present, and all their gravity could not restrain some of them from laughter.”270 In
1821 Adams delivered an Independence Day speech in the House chamber argued that the
English and Catholic systems were ones of “despotism and of superstition,” systems where “man
had no rights. Neither the body nor the soul of the individual was his own.” These ideas were in
opposition to American republicanism.271 England offered a reply almost five years later as he
provided an apologetic for the existence of the Catholic Church within a republican political
environment. Far from being controlled by church hierarchy, England stated, “I would not allow
to the Pope, or to any bishop of our church, outside this Union, the smallest interference with the
humblest vote at our most insignificant balloting box. He has no right to such interference.”
According to England, there is a “plain distinction between spiritual authority and a right to
interfere in the regulation of human government or civil concerns.”272 England’s encyclopedic defense of freedom within Catholicism was well received by the audience; a number of members
269 John England’s sermon was published that same year with the title “The Substance of a Discourse Preached in the Hall of the House of Representatives” and later compiled with his other works. See John England and Ignatius Aloysius Reynolds, The Works of the Right Rev. John England, 5 vols., The American Catholic Tradition (New York: Arno Press, 1978), 4:172-90. 270 Adams and Adams, Memoirs, 4.45. 271 4 July 1821 oration by John Quincy Adams, seen at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/speech-on-independence-day/ 272 England and Reynolds, Works, 4.184.
102 of Congress requested the discourse be printed.
Preachers gave sermons on a range of subjects as broad as the denominations represented.
“The president and his fellow worshipers received a steady diet of high octane, New Testament
Christianity,” but the message also at times used an apologetic approach – for example, “to show the excellence of religion and the importance of a truly religious character,” or “a very good discourse upon the evidences of the Church of Christianity, and the importance of a truly religious character.”273 Surely the preachers were wary of the deleterious effects politics may have on one’s character! Additional subjects included millennial preaching like that of
Swedenborgian John Hargrove who preached on the Second Coming of Christ and the Last
Judgment, an increasingly commonplace topic culturally in America at that time. Some were brave enough to shout some prophetic warnings as well.274
The fact that the sermons were given in government buildings were seen by some preachers to add importance to their words. An advertisement (below) seeking subscribers for publication by the Rev. David Austin, for example, refers to the discourses having been delivered “at the treasury-office, City of Washington.” Apparently, including the location of the discourse was not enough to procure the funds to publish the work; no extant copies exist.275
Some used the occasion of their sermon to raise money for a particular cause, be it to build a chapel in Washington, as congregational minister David Austin did in 1801 (Jefferson provided him with twenty-five dollars on three separate occasions), or for missionaries planning to spread the knowledge of the Gospel to Asia.276
273 Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, 86. 274 Ibid., 88. 275 Griffin, Issues, 57. 276 Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, 84-85.
103
Figure 3: David Austin’s Advertisement
The tradition of holding religious services in the Capital continued into the 1850s and
1860s, long after many churches in the city of Washington built their own structures. As it was in the opening decades, the meetings were apparently commonplace. An 1858 article simply states,
“The clergy of Washington take turns in performing the religious service before the Houses of
Congress on Sunday. On the 9th inst., this duty was performed by Rev. W.D. Haley, pastor of the
Unitarian Church.”277 It is a short article, and no reference to having a controversial Unitarian
minister speak is mentioned. The passage of time did not diminish the attendance at these
services, though apparently the weather could, as another reporter noted in 1853: “When the
weather was at all favorable, the attendance was large and gratifying. Many of the Senators and
Representatives, together with some of the Judges of the Supreme Court, were regular and
punctual as members of this congregation,” as well as a good number of both residents and
visitors of the city. At this point the services were held in the hall of the House of
Representatives, the “most capacious in all the public buildings.” The reverend and journalist
277 “Sunday at the Capitol,” Christian Inquirer, 22 May 1858.
104 recorded that the services “manifested very deep and lively interest in the gospel, not only by
yielding profound and unbroken attention, but often by exhibiting strong emotion in view of
revealed truth.”278
The services benefited from the growth of the Capitol building. The new House chamber
opened for session on Wednesday, 16 December 1857, but the room was used for a religious
service before it was used for political purposes.279 Religious services continued in the Capitol
building as late as three years after the Civil War, as the First Congregational Church of
Washington met periodically in the great hall from December 1865 to November 1867 and
regularly from 8 December 1867 to 5 May 1868 while they attempted to raise money for their
own building. The need for the new church stemmed from similar issues previously: the number
of churches in the city were not sufficient for the growing population of Washington, which grew
due to wartime necessity from 90,000 people in 1861 to 150,000 people in 1865.280 While
Boynton was also Chaplain of the House of Representatives at the time, permission to hold the
services was given by Schuyler Colfax, the Speaker of the House. These services were some of
the largest in town, drawing some two thousand attendees every Sabbath, making the the House
gathering “the largest Protestant Sabbath audience then in the United States.”281 Modern-day
278 James Gallaher, "Religion at Washington City," New York Evangelist, 5 May 1853, 1853. Gallaher goes on, “Strong men, men with grey heads, men famed for talent and cultivation, wept, wept freely while listening to the story of redeeming love.” 279 When this was is unclear. The memoirs of the Rev. Dr. George David Cummins says the first service happened in May 1857, six months before the first House session; other sources say it was three days before, though without substantiation. See A.M. Cummins and George David Cummins, Memoir of George David Cummins, D.D., First Bishop of The Reformed Episcopal Church, by His Wife (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1878). 280 Everett O. Allredge, Centennial History of First Congregational United Church of Christ, Washington, D.C. 1865-1965 (Baltimore, MD: Port City Press, Inc., 1965), 1. 281 Ibid., 10. This may be the church itself or the attraction of the pastor, Charles Boyton, who in his double role as chaplain and pastor drew some of the largest crowds to the Capitol. See his 1 November 1867 fundraising letter on behalf of the church at http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.20501600. Even after their new building was completed, Dr. Boynton desired to delay services there so that the meetings could continue in the House chamber.
105 definitions of a “megachurch” include an average attendance of at least two thousand; though the
term originated in the middle of the 20th century, it could rightly apply to these later services in
the Capitol.282 This continuation is striking for the sheer length of time the practice existed
amidst challenges to the mingling of church and state.283 Though the church is a particular
denomination, the Congregational church at this time was known for its more liberal theological
positions – a perspective it maintains to this day as a part of the United Church of Christ.284 This
inclusive nature would accord well with the more open atmosphere Jefferson and Madison
experienced.
******
The basic facts stated, one must consider their meaning. James Hutson is right in noting
that “it is no exaggeration to say that, on Sundays in Washington during Thomas Jefferson’s
presidency, the state became the church.”285 How these services influence one’s understanding of
the relationship between religion and politics in the early republic is contested. Some point to
this service and its attendees as conclusive evidence that Jefferson was a Christian and the nation
was founded on Christian principles.286 On the other hand, Jefferson’s common attendance at
282 For a list of megachurches compiled by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, see http://hirr.hartsem.edu/megachurch/database.html. 283 The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, allowed for “equal protection of the laws.” It has been applied to a wide range of practicalities, including church state issues, though such arguments appear several decades after its ratification. See, for example, William W. Van Alstyne, "The Failure of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment," Duke Law Journal 46, no. 2 (1996). The literature does not point to the amendment as a rationale for the ending of the religious services in the Capitol building. 284 For example, members of the church played a prominent role in the founding of Howard University, an African American school, even before the church’s building was constructed. See Allredge, 15-19. 285 Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, 91. 286 See, for example, David Barton, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, Paperback edition. ed. (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2016); Kingsjester, "A Country Forged by Faith: Jefferson, Madison, and Church in the Capitol Building," accessed 14 September 2017. https://www.spartareport.com/2017/06/country-forged-faith-jefferson-madison-church-capitol-building-kj-sunday- morning-special/. To their credit, the site for Wallbuilders, an organization focused on uncovering the “forgotten history” of the “moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built,” makes no such conceptual leap in their description. See "Church in the U.S. Capitol," Wallbuilders, last modified 20 June, accessed
106 these services are elided, even in works on Jefferson that are considered religious biographies.287
That Thomas Jefferson approved and attended these services is striking. The founding father and president has not faded away in discussions of religions and politics in the United States; indeed, as Edwin Gaustad notes, “no other president has been appealed to more frequently or more fervently in religious matters than Jefferson.”288 More telling, for the sake of the current discussion, is the persistence of these services. Long after the erection of churches to meet the spiritual needs of the Washington community, people continued to gather on Sundays in the
Capitol for religious services. Many legal scholars would view these meetings as opposed to the meaning of the 1st and (perhaps) the 14th Amendments. What does the existence of some sixty years of religious services in the Capitol building reveal? Answering this question requires a consideration of the influence of the services.
Determining the influence of a church service is a complicated affair. One might note the attendance, number of conversions, baptisms, or offering numbers, though these change in importance depending on the denomination. Of these metrics, only attendance would have any real value in recognizing the influence of the service. Both the number and kind of people that attended the service is important to consider. In these cases, we can see great variation: services could draw an overflowing crowd of more than two thousand people; it could also draw less than a hundred. Attendance varied due to a number of factors including the weather, the preacher for the day, and whether or not congress was in session. Who attended the service also was affected
14 September 2017. https://wallbuilders.com/church-u-s-capitol/. 287 See, for example, Edwin S. Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson, Library of Religious Biography (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 1996). Gaustad’s omission is surprising. He discusses two important events surrounding one of Jefferson’s attendances at the gathering (his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association and John Leland’s gift of the mammoth cheese, which led to Jefferson inviting Leland to speak that Sunday. 288 Ibid., xiii.
107 by these variables. Members of all three branches of government appear in lists of attendees for
the services; this is true throughout the history of these services. St. John’s Church in
Washington rightly claims to be the “Church of the Presidents,” with every President since
James Madison attending at least one service at the church since its first service in 1816; pew 54,
the “President’s Pew,” gained its moniker by being reserved for the President when he
attended.289 Even after the creation of St. John’s, presidents would attend services in the Capital
as well. Why would presidents and politicians attend services in the Capital when they could
(and did) attend other churches like St. John’s Church? Adams answers this in the 5 June 1842
entry in his memoirs: “I consider it as one of my public duties, as a representative of the people,
to give my attendance every Sunday morning when divine service is performed in the hall.”290
An analysis of the music and orations of the gatherings provides insight into the
substance of the services, which is also related to their influence. Did the services change the
activities of Washington with regard to legislation or other events in the capitol city? One
example shows the answer to be “no” by pointing to the the lack of a prophetic punch on the part
of the preachers. A 29 May 1812 message by James Brackinridge, a pastor from First
Presbyterian Church in Washington, was given (according to Margaret Bayard Smith) “in the
plainest and boldest language of reprehension.” Brackinridge’s focus was on the observance of
the Sabbath or, as he noted, “the neglect of these duties.” Smith records that the preacher
excoriated the congregation, especially “the higher classes in this city, more especially by
persons connected with the government,” for their “desecration of this holy day, by their
devoting it to amusement—to visiting and parties.” Brackinridge then delivered a prophetic
289 "History," St. John's Church, accessed 23 February 2018. https://stjohns-dc.org/welcome-to-saint-johns- church/history/. 290 Adams and Adams, Memoirs, 11.169.
108 word, which stuck in Smith’s mind as she quoted it verbatim: “You, the law-givers, who are the cause of this crime, will in your public capacity suffer for it. Yes, it is the government that will be punished, and as, with Ninevah of old, it will not be the habitations of the people, but your temples and palaces that will be burned to the ground; for it is by fire that this sin has usually been punished.”291
James Madison declared war with Britain three weeks later. In August 1814, British forces burned many public buildings in Washington, including the Capitol and the presidential mansion. Smith records that after the destruction, First Lady Dolly Madison saw Mr.
Brackinridge walking and called out, “I little thought, Sir, when I heard that threatening sermon of yours, that its denunciation would soon be realized.” Brackinridge replied, “I trust this chastening of the Lord, may not be in vain.” But apparently it was. As Smith notes, "there was not for many, many years afterwards any change in the observance of the Sabbath."292 Any legislation restricting activities on Sunday was seen at the state level, and the city of Washington did not have any blue laws restricting Sabbath activities in place at the time.293
Instead of considering the tangible effects these services had on the life of the capital city, of greater use is in noting the influence of the services in promoting a national identity. These services allowed for an endorsement of a non-regulated, broadly Christian (but mostly
Protestant) ethos that, at the same time, celebrated the developing country. Two examples bear this out. The 22 February 1832 service involved more planning than other services, for it was a
Wednesday service with a special purpose: to commemorate the centennial of the birth of George
291 Smith and Hunt, First Forty Years, 16-17. 292 Ibid., 17. 293 See David N. Laband and Deborah Hendry Heinbuch, Blue Laws: The History, Economics, and Politics of Sunday-Closing Laws (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987).
109 Washington. A joint committee of both houses of Congress consisting of 22 members planned the gathering. John Quincy Adams records that there was some consternation over the structure of the event - should there be a sermon or an oration? While the oration was the first option, with the committee requesting it be delivered by the Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall; his declining of the request led to a plan for a “divine service” on that day, overseen by the chaplains. Also discussed was the transportation of the remains of George Washington to a crypt underneath the Capitol, but the President’s great-grand-nephew and owner of Mount Vernon,
John A. Washington, denied the request. At the service Reuben Post, Chaplain of the House, offered the prayer and John Price Durbin, Chaplain of the Senate, delivered the sermon. His text was from Revelation 4:11: “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for
Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.” Adams’ remarks on the sermon are worth reproducing in full.
The discourse was not written, nor was it composed to be preserved. It was extemporaneous, and yet well suited to the occasion. It exalted the character of Washington perhaps too much. There were close approaches to the expression of a belief that there was something supernatural in his existence. There seemed little wanting to bring out a theory that he was a second Saviour of mankind. That he had a charmed life, and was protected by a special Providence, was explicitly avowed as a belief. The religious character of Washington was dwelt on with great emphasis.294
In short: the service demonstrated a blending of religious identity with hero worship.
Washington’s status as a recipient of divine providence illustrates the blending of human action and divine blessing, one that led to a country that continued in its desire for continued divine providence. Allowing for services in the Capitol was one way to provide for that.
A second example purportedly comes from the life of Thomas Jefferson. An 1857 history entitled “Washington Parish, Washington City” by the Reverend Ethan Allen contains an
294 Adams and Adams, Memoirs, 8.468-70,79.
110 second-hand story from 1823, confirmed by two people (J.P. Ingle and a Mr. Underwood) that
describes Jefferson’s Sunday morning walk to church,
...with his large red prayer book under his arm when a friend querying him after their mutual good morning said which way are you walking Mr. Jefferson. To which he replied to Church Sir. You going to church Mr. J. You do not believe a word in it. Sir said Mr. J. No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir.295
Whether this quote is historically accurate or not is contested. The Thomas Jefferson encyclopedia include the work in its list of “spurious quotations,” arguing that it does not appear in any of Jefferson’s papers or other sources.296 James Hutson, in contrast, notes that Allen
records $50 given to McCormick, pastor of Christ Church, after New Year annually, which
accords with the records in Jefferson's account book. This “lends plausibility” to the anecdote -
according to Hutson, “While this colloquy may not be a literal transcription, it is uncannily close
in spirit to Jefferson's attitude and actions as president.”297 Accurate or not, the quote speaks
more to the elevation of Jefferson as an iconic founder and influencer of the early republic.
Though Jefferson had died 30 years before, his perspective still held sway and people wanted to
believe that the founding father accused by his political opponents of being opposed to
Christianity still found it necessary in the governing of the country.298
295 Ethan Allen, Washington Parish, Washington City, qtd. in Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, 96. 296 "No Nation Has Ever yet Existed or Been Governed without Religion...(Spurious Quotation)," Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, accessed 23 February 2018, https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/no- nation-has-ever-yet-existed-or-been-governed-without. 297 Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, 96. 298 This is to say nothing regarding if the event actually happened, let alone Jefferson’s own religious perspective. The latter issue is highly debated and frequently degenerates into partisan squabbling. For a useful article on the debate see Arthur Scherr, "Thomas Jefferson Versus the Historians: Christianity, Atheistic Morality, and the Afterlife," Church History 83, no. 1 (March 2014). Scherr persuasively argues that Jefferson “died, as he lived, as an Epicurean deistic pagan,” but beyond the argument, the article is useful for its encyclopedic compilation of sources.
111 Amidst the hero worship of the founding fathers bound up in Christian identity is a lack
of attraction to one particular denomination. John Quincy Adams is a prominent figure in this
chapter because of the length of his tenure in Washington. As noted earlier, Adams found it
among his “public duties” to attend a service at the Capitol. But Adams, like many others, were
not restricted by a particular service or denomination. In fact, the particular preacher was more
important than the religious affiliation. In 1824 Adams noted the lack of his membership at a
church in Washington (his work as Secretary of State had kept him busy), although there were
“numerous and diversified” churches in the city, including the “Independent Congregational
class to which I belong, the church to which I was bred, and in which I will die.” Still, he argued
that he could “attend without scruple the church of any other sect of Christians, and join with
cheerfulness in the social worship of all without subscribing implicitly to the doctrines of
any.”299 The flexibility of Adams parallels the attendees of services at the Capitol, whose
example allowed for a more accepting Protestantism that would have been anathema even fifty
years before. Such an accepting Protestantism could serve as a model for the nation.
These services provide a useful lens into the emerging civil religion of the early republic.
The concept of a civil religion has been fiercely debated since Robert Bellah’s 1967 article.300
But the utility of the concept is helpfully defended in Philip Gorski’s 2017 work American
Covenant: a History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present, wherein Gorski provides a clear distinction between civil religion and two countervailing forces of American religious nationalism and radical secularism. Gorski explains that the concept points to a “moral and spiritual core” in the nation, wherein people are “concerned that church and state not become too
299 Adams and Adams, Memoirs, 4.425. 300 Robert N. Bellah, "Civil Religion in America," Daedalus 96 (1967).
112 entangled in one another’s affairs,” but they “do not believe you can take religion entirely out of
politics, or vice versa.” Underlying all of this is an appreciation for “American culture and
institutions enough to cherish and defend them.”301 This idea of civil religion that Gorski
describes is exemplified by the religious services held in the US Capitol.
******
Early plans for the District of Columbia provided for a national church: a “grand church”
that would mark national events such as “public prayer, thanksgivings, funeral orations &c., and
assigned to no particular sect or denomination, but equally open to all.”302 The plan was not
acted upon for almost a century, until a 6 January 1893 charter by Congress began the work.
Even then, construction did not begin until 1907.303 Yet, while the country went for more than a
century without a central religious building, one cannot ignore the religious terminology that
infused the other buildings constructed in the district. In 1833 Representative Rufus Choate
noted, “We have built no national temple but the Capitol; we consult no common oracle but the
Constitution.”304 The introductory video shown to tour groups at the Capitol Visitor Center refers
to the building as a “temple of liberty.”
It is this “temple” that, on Sundays and special occasions, functioned for many decades as
a church. While the concept of a state church or even a state-sponsored religion was precluded
301 Philip S. Gorski, American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 2-3. On the meaning and utility of the term “civil religion,” see pp. 14-19. 302 Qtd. in Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God, 226. 303 Attempts to build the national church earlier existed. For example, see David Austin’s 11 January 1802 petition to congress in David Austin, The National "Barley Cake," or, the "Rock of Offence" into a "Glorious Holy Mountain" : In Discourses and Letters, Early American Imprints: Second Series No. 1791 (Washington, DC: Printed by Way and Groff, North E Street, 1802), 78-80. 304 Rufus Choate, “The Importance of Illustrating New-England History by a Series of Romances like the Waverley Novels,” a lecture delivered at Salem, Massachusetts (1833).
113 by the Establishment clause in the Bill of Rights, it did not, at least in the early republic, prohibit the use of government buildings for religious purposes. Worship services were regularly held in the U.S. Capitol building, at first when the District of Columbia was first being built, but even seventy years later when a number of other building options were available. The character of the religious services in the Capitol building sheds new light on the religiopolitical intent of the First
Amendment. Rather than continue the trends of religious intolerance and disunity, the services were part of a broader effort to forge a national identity. To do this, the doctrinal emphases of the services transcended denominational distinctives. Furthermore, the services were positive in calling elected officials to moral uprightness and progressive in their allowance of female preachers and a more liberal theology.
114 CHAPTER 4
FEDERAL CHAPLAINCY PROGRAMS IN THE MILITARY AND IN CONGRESS
The term chaplain has Christian origins. A Gaelic legend recalls the fourth-century Saint
Martin of Tours, then a soldier, giving up half of his cloak to a beggar out in the cold. According to the legend, Martin left his military career for religious service that night, and the other half of the cloak became a sacred relic for French kings in battle. The English term “chaplain” derives from the French term for cloak, “chapelain.”305
This legend illustrates a prime reason for the employment of chaplains. Whether looking for guidance, fighting by land, or exploring by sea, armies and navies have longed for their endeavors to be blessed by holy men. The position of chaplain was reified in Canon 2 of the decree by the Council of Regensburg (present-day Ratisbon) in 742:
We prohibit the servant of God in every way from bearing arms or fighting in the army or going against the enemy, except those alone who because of the sacred office, namely, for celebrating of mass and caring for the relics of the saints, have been designated for this office; that is to say, the leader may have with him one or two bishops with their priest chaplains, and each captain may have one priest, in order to hear confessions of the men and impose upon them the proper penance.306
Even before the creation of the chaplain, as Sir John Smyth writes, “up to the year 1300, no war was embarked upon, no was any army raised in England, which had not amongst its leaders many of the foremost ecclesiastics in the land.”307 Beginning with the reign of Edward I,
305 Clifford Merrill Drury, The History of the Chaplain Corps, United States Navy, 9 vols. (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1948), 1.2. Drury notes, “While the skeptic may question the authenticity of the legend, yet one can accept the spirit of mercy and compassion exemplified by Saint Martin… Today it is assumed that this attitude of brotherly love is one of the inherent characteristics of all chaplains.” El Greco’s 1599 painting Saint Martin and the Beggar is a depiction of the event. 306 Roy John Honeywell, Chaplains of the United States Army (Washington: Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Dept. of the Army, 1958), 7. 307 Sir John Smyth, In This Sign Conquer: The Story of the Army Chaplains (London: A. R. Mowbray & Co
115 chaplains appeared on the payroll of the English Army. Chaplain were commonly linked with
armies throughout Christendom.
The religious affiliation of the chaplain would generally concord with the established religion of the nation, though there was no particular oversight with regard to doctrinal fidelity.
For example, as Anne Laurence notes in her work on Parliamentary Army Chaplains in England from 1642-1651, “Many people passed through a bewildering number of different religious affiliations during the 1640s and 1650s,” when religious identity in England was in flux. In the midst of an otherwise tumultuous time in the political and religious history of England, clergy served as chaplains to “maintain the morale of their troops and to support the common sense of purpose of the army.”308 Another book on military matters from the time described the need for
“a well-governed and religious preacher in his regiment so that by his life and doctrine the
soldiers may be drawn to goodness.”309
The position was frequently encumbered by politics. Parker Thompson describes issues
within British ranks throughout the eighteenth century, including high rates of absenteeism (as
high as two-thirds during Queen Anne’s War in 1704) and a system focused on money rather
than service: “The selection of regimental chaplains was the perquisite of the colonel. He sold it
and the priest who bought it received the pay. But he did not necessarily do the work, which was
usually performed by a deputy whose stipend was fixed by mutual agreement.”310
Ltd, 1968), xvii. 308 Anne Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains, 1642-1651, Studies in History / Royal Historical Society, (Wolfeboro, NH: Boydell Press, 1990), 2. Laurence lists Baptists and Seekers amongst more moderate Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Independents. In addition to the difficulty of determining denomination, Laurence also notes that affiliation was not as important as doctrinal issues “which cut across denominations, especially millenarianism, Antinomianism and Arminianism” (ibid., 2-4.). 309 Smyth, 14. 310 Thompson, xiv.
116 For those who showed up, a key role the chaplain played was in the care of people who
could be far away from home. In this role, the denominational affiliation of the chaplain became
less important. A late seventeenth century description of clergy for the English army showed
signs of ecumenism: “The preacher, be he priest or minister whether Lutheran or Reformed or
Roman Catholic, his office is well enough known and there is much respect to be paid him. …
His duty is to have 'care of souls,' and it is well if he meddle with no other business, but make
that his only care.”311 The role of chaplain was seen as necessary for a religious establishment; such necessity did not disappear in a pluralistic society. Would the position remain in a disestablished state?
******
While much has been written about chaplaincy programs on their own, they are an understudied aspect of religion in American life: many texts on religion in American history fail to even mention chaplaincy programs. And yet, one of the most prominent and enduring connections between religion and government is the continuing existence and funding of chaplaincy programs for both the military and the Congress. Chaplaincy programs are distinct from other informal usages of the divine in Government (“under God,” “God save the court,” etc.) as well as the other facets of this dissertation. As Christopher Lund notes, the features of the chaplaincy - “official, institutional, clerical, paid, statutorily authorized, continuously operating, long-standing, and undeniably religious-make the chaplaincies a singular phenomenon in
American church-state relations. The other deviations from the neutrality principle are minor exceptions that, to some, almost prove the rule; the chaplaincies, on the other hand, create doubt
311 Albert Isaac Slomovitz, The Fighting Rabbis: Jewish Military Chaplains and American History (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 3.
117 about the rule itself.”312
An examination of chaplaincies shows one way the federal government navigated an
increasingly diverse religious environment and the religiously permissive nature of the First
Amendment. Chaplaincy programs reflect the cultural dominance of Protestant Christianity in
the early republic. Chaplains in both the military and congress were primarily Protestant and
exclusively Christian. Not until the Civil War did rabbis and African Americans serve as military
chaplains. Still, the increasingly diverse set of Protestant denominations utilized to fill
chaplaincy positions in the early republic reveals another facet of the church-state relationship.
Though they belonged to varying, and at times opposing, denominations, chaplains served the
country by consecrating legislative action and meeting the spiritual needs of men in the armed
services.
The role of the chaplain in a disestablished state is convoluted and contested. Richard
Budd notes, “There has never been consensus—within American society, within the military,
among the churches, or even among chaplains themselves—on what role and nature of the
military chaplain should be.”313 Such lack of consensus was especially true when the institutions
of federal governance were being worked out.
As will be seen, chaplaincies existed in two main areas of the federal government during
the early republic.314 Congressional chaplaincies were an innovation for the newly disestablished state. Previous governments could appeal to leaders of the established religious tradition to
312 Christopher C. Lund, "The Congressional Chaplaincies," William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 17, no. 4 (2009): 1172-73. Lund’s focus is on congressional chaplaincy programs, but the sentiments can be applied to military chaplaincy programs as well. 313 Richard M. Budd, Serving Two Masters: The Development of American Military Chaplaincy, 1860-1920 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), xi. 314 There are chaplains in national parks and hospitals today. This chapter delimits the discussion to chaplaincies that existed in the early republic.
118 imbue their actions with sacred purpose; without that establishment, the federal government had
to look elsewhere. In contrast, military chaplains continued a tradition common for other
countries throughout history. In supporting the military of a country without an established
religion, military chaplains functioned in the space between church and conflict, never fully
belonging to either. Both military and congressional chaplaincy programs provide a religiously
derived morale for the people under their care: guiding, encouraging, and at times, condemning
ways of life.
The utility of chaplains for supporting morale, combined with their inexpensiveness,
meant that the difficult question of whether the new U.S. government should support them, as
British and European governments did, was not addressed. Questions about the propriety of
Unitarian or Catholic chaplains commanded some public attention, overshadowing the
underlying issue. Meanwhile, chaplains proliferated and became minor fixtures of government.
Justification only emerged in the 1840s and 1850s, when northern evangelicals defended religion
(and chaplaincies) as essential ingredients of American patriotism. Both the military and
congressional chaplaincy programs were brought into question in the 1850s when groups
petitioned for the end of these programs. In the end, Congress determined that both chaplaincy
programs served important roles in the country and should remain.
An analysis of the two chaplaincy programs together provides insight into the broader
role of the institution. Chaplains operated in a space “Between Establishment and Secularism,” to borrow the subtitle from Julian River’s book on religion in England and Wales.315 Winnifred
Sullivan reflects this liminality between establishment and secularism: “The US chaplain, in
315 Julian Rivers, The Law of Organized Religions: Between Establishment and Secularism (Oxford University Press, 2010).
119 particular, has come to instantiate the peculiar and shifting religious terrain framed by the
religion clauses of the First Amendment to the US Constitution; she operates at the intersection
of the sacred and the secular.”316 This chapter aims to describe this liminality as English establishment became American disestablishment. Through it all, chaplaincy programs in
Congress and in the military persevered.
Congressional Chaplains
Jacob Duché’s prayer in the fall of 1774 before the Continental Congress was described in the introduction to this dissertation. Duché offered an extemporaneous prayer after some liturgical ones and the reading of Psalm 35. Though the original records do not include the prayer out of fear for the safety of the Anglican clergyman, a secret copy later came to light and is reproduced here in full.
O! Lord, our heavenly father, King of Kings and Lord of lords: who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth and reignest with power supreme & uncontrouled over all kingdoms, empires and governments, look down in mercy, we beseech thee, upon these our American states who have fled to thee from the rod of the oppressor and thrown themselves upon thy gracious protection, desiring henceforth to be dependent only on thee. To thee they have appealed for the righteousness of their Cause; to Thee do they look up, for that countenance & support which Thou alone canst give. Take them, therefore, Heavenly Father, under thy nurturing care: give them wisdom in council, valour in the field. Defeat the malicious designs of our cruel adversaries. Convince them of the unrighteousness of their cause. And if they persist in their sanguinary purposes, O! let the voice of thy unerring justice sounding in their hearts constrain them to drop the weapons of war from their enerved hands in the day of battle. Be thou present, O God of Wisdom and direct the counsels of this honourable Assembly. Enable them to settle things upon the best and surest foundation, that the scene of blood may be speedily closed; that harmony and peace may effectually be restored, and truth and justice, religion and piety prevail and flourish amongst thy people. Preserve the health of their bodies and the vigour of their minds; shower down upon them and the millions they represent such temporal blessings as Thou seest expedient for them in this world, and crown them with everlasting glory in the world to come. All this we ask in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ thy son, Our Saviour, Amen.317
316 Sullivan, A Ministry of Presence: Chaplaincy, Spiritual Care, and the Law, xi. 317 25 July 1789 letter from Charles Thomson to George Washington, in Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789, 25.551.
120 The choice of Duché was politically motivated. As John Adams wrote later, “[Joseph Reed] says
We never were guilty of a more Masterly Stroke of Policy, than in moving that Mr. Duché might
read Prayers.” The hope was that the selection of an Anglican might sway some of their
persuasion to the cause of the revolution. Samuel Adams notes in this regard, “As many of our
warmest friends are members of the Church of England, I thought it prudent, as well on that as
on some other accounts, to move that the service should be performed by a clergyman of that
denomination.”318 That Samuel Adams, a strict Congregationalist, would suggest an Anglican
makes the episode all the more distinctive.319
The majority-Anglican congress understood the benefit of rallying Anglican clergy to
their cause. Duché seemed to be a good choice for the cause, as he was strongly pro-American and omitted prayers to the King in his services, unlike most other Anglican priests. The clergyman’s powerful prayers led to his being invited back to give prayers and conduct funerals, and after the Declaration of Independence, his formal appointment as Chaplain for the
Continental Congress in 1776. John Hancock requested Duché’s service on account of his
“uniform and zealous attachment to the rights of America.”320 But Duché’s views changed. An 8
October 1777 letter from Duché to General Washington urged Washington to end the rebellion
and give up the war; this led to Duché’s conviction for high treason (Duché escaped to England).
Still, the Anglican was the first in what became a series of congressional chaplains.
The presence of a congressional chaplain giving prayers was not novel. Daily prayers
were offered in England’s House of Commons as early as 1558; a hundred years later Edward
318 Both quotes come from Lund, Congressional Chaplaincies, 1179-80. 319 For more on the political expediency of the first congressional prayer, see also Martin J. Medhurst, “From Duché to Provoost: The Birth of Inaugural Prayer,” Journal of Church and State 24, no. 3 (1982). 320 Letter from John Hancock to Jacob Duché, qtd. in ibid., 580.
121 Voyce was first to be named the official chaplain to offer those prayers. What is distinctive about
the new American arrangement is the free choice of religious denomination and the lack of
compensation. The English system, instead of payment, provided a promotion to a higher
position in the Anglican hierarchy.321
An Anglican, William White, and a Presbyterian, George Duffield, were appointed by
Congress as co-chaplains following the short tenure of Duché. Their terms were longer,
beginning 21 December 1776 and lasting throughout the remainder of the Revolutionary War
and for the first years of the Continental Congress, until 1784. As Derek Davis summarizes, their
tasks were varied: “offering prayer at each session, preparing and delivering sermons for days of
fast, humiliation, and thanksgiving, assisting in patriotic celebrations, supervising the preparation
and publication of an American Bible, and generally acting as the officially constituted
(sometimes spiritual) leaders of the nation's first national representative body.”322 Their tenure was followed by Daniel Jones, who was the first to be limited to an annual appointment.323
Davis’s work, focused on the Continental Congress, sees no real change from the
chaplaincies in the Confederation Congress to the chaplaincies of the first Congress under the
Constitution. In contrast, Christopher Lund sees something “markedly different” with regard to
chaplains and legislative prayer in 1787.324 The distinction in the accounts arises with the
absence of chaplains during the Constitutional Convention, which met from May to September.
321 "Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons," accessed 23 February 2018. http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/parliamentwork/offices-and- ceremonies/overview/speakers-office-staff/chaplain-to-the-speaker-of-the-house-of-commons/. 322 Derek Davis, Religion and the Continental Congress, 1774-1789: Contributions to Original Intent, Religion in America Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 76. 323 JCC 26.44; 27.693. Jones was nominated by Arthur Lee for his initial appointment. Jones was reelected on 17 December 1784, having been nominated by William Gibbons. The record notes that a second chaplain was to be chosen the following Tuesday, but no record of that decision exists. 324 Lund, Congressional Chaplaincies, 1183.
122 The absence is important to note because of the controversy surrounding the absence.
Surprisingly, Benjamin Franklin’s words to the Constitutional Convention on 28 June 1787 point to a desire to have religion present in the new government. Franklin pointed to a “want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it.” In the midst of a search for a political system appropriate for the American situation, Franklin asked, “how has it happened,
Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings?” He pointed to the frequent prayers offered during the war with
Great Britain and how they were “graciously answered.” By this time in his ninth decade of life,
Franklin noted that he had lived “a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth- that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?” Without help from above, Franklin argued, the project was a futile as building the tower Babel: “We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages.” He proposed that “henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this
Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that Service.”325
Thomas Kidd refers to this event as “the most remarkable religious episode of Franklin’s life,” because “Franklin was nearly alone among the delegates in wishing to bring prayer into the convention’s proceedings.”326 While Franklin’s motion was appreciated generally, issues
325 "Madison Debates, 28 June 1787," accessed 12 Dec 2017. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_628.asp. 326 Thomas S. Kidd, Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 229.
123 concerning appearance and pragmatics were raised. Regarding the former, Hamilton and others noted the “late day” of this request; in response others argued, in essence, that it was better late than never. The pragmatic issue was of costs. There were no funds. An amendment by Edmund
Randolph, seconded by Franklin, called for a sermon on the 4th of July and prayers to be offered each morning; there was never any vote on the motion. Franklin wrote on the bottom of his speech, “The Convention except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary!!”327
While this controversy is important to note, its connection to the existence and nature of the congressional chaplaincy is better understood as an exception rather than a new reality. The first Congress under the newly-adopted Constitution met on 6 April 1789; the following day, the
Senate formed three committees. In addition to “organizing the judiciary,” to prepare “rules for conducting the business of the Senate,” and rules to consider how conferences between the
House and Senate were to occur, the Senate also formed a committee to “take under consideration the manner of electing a Chaplains, and to confer with a a committee of the House of Representatives.”328 No debate is recorded regarding the propriety of the chaplaincy. On 15
April, the committee (Senators Ellsworth, Lee, Strong, Maclay, and Bassett worked with
Representatives Boudinot, Sherman, Tucker, Madison, and Bland) reported back with their recommendation: “That two chaplains, of different denominations, be appointed to Congress for the present session, the Senate to appoint one, and give notice thereof to the House of
Representatives, who shall, thereupon, appoint the other; which chaplains shall commence their services in the Houses that appoint them, but shall interchange weekly.”329 Again, no further debate is recorded.
327 Ibid. 328 1 AOC 18. 329 1 AOC 19.
124 The Senate chose Samuel Provost on 26 April 1789; five days later the House voted to
appoint William Linn as their chaplain.330 The 22 September 1789 act setting pay rates for
congress provided an annual rate of 500 dollars for each chaplain.331 The second session of the
first Congress was even more expedient in choosing chaplains than the first. The House of
Representatives reached its quorum on 7 January 1790; the first resolution was “That two
chaplains, of different denominations, be appointed to Congress for the present session, one by
each House.” The measure was taken to the Senate, which concurred the same day. Both houses
reappointed the same chaplain that served during the first session.332
The appointing of Provost and Linn as chaplains marked a continuation of past precedent.
Provost, the first Episcopal bishop of New York, had already served as chaplain since 1785.
Linn, a Presbyterian minister and teacher, had served as chaplain with the Continental Army
during the Revolutionary War.333 That Congress would desire chaplains of “different
denominations” reflected their understanding of denominational divisions in the country.334
Appointing chaplains from only one denomination would reek of exclusivity. Just as previous
chaplains derived from their local contexts, so too should the congressional chaplains reflect a
variety of traditions (noting, of course, that the position was part-time so the chaplains
330 1 AOC 207, 233. Of corresponding interest here is the debate over whether the inauguration of George Washington would include a divine service. On this Medhurst properly notes, “throughout the debate the issue was not separation of church and state. The issue was the relationship between the two houses of Congress.” See Medhurst, 583-85. 331 1 Stat. 70-71. 332 1 AOC 1039-40; 1043; 932. 333 Linn’s service as chaplain in the Revolutionary War may have increased his familiarity with members of the new government. His status as minister, teacher, and trustee (and later President pro tempore) of Queen’s College would also have increased his public profile and made him a good choice for chaplain. 334 Congress followed this prescription until 1853, when the two chaplains were both Methodist. The argument for this was that the position should be filled “without paying any regard whatever to the denomination to which the chaplain of the Senate might belong.” It was noted that, at this point, the same denomination meant little; a Methodist from the North had very different views when compared to a Methodist from the South. See the Congressional Globe, 30.30-31.
125 maintained their other responsibilities in New York).
Thus the appointment of congressional chaplains began. The same process continued
after the ratification and enactment of the First Amendment, with no recorded debate as
before.335 Little extant information concerning the selection of individual chaplains remains.336
Early records simply note the appointment of a particular chaplain based on a ballot; later vote
tallies are provided.337 From 1789 until 1860, the chaplain in each of the houses of Congress were always white male Christians, and with two exceptions, Protestant.338 Episcopalians held the Senate position from its beginning until 1808. For their first three chaplains the Senate drew from the presiding bishop of the location where Congress was meeting (New York, Philadelphia,
Maryland). Following them was a mix of Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists,
Congregationalists, and a lone Roman Catholic (to be discussed later). The House generally shunned Episcopalians (only two served) in favor of Presbyterians as well as Baptists,
Methodists, a Congregationalist, and a Unitarian (who will also be discussed later).
Chaplains seemed to be chosen based on their prestige and the corollary of familiarity with the members of Congress. The role of chaplain was highly desirable. Perhaps emblematic of the way many clerics desired the role, a 14 November 1801 leaflet entitled “The Clerical
Candidates” satirized nine chaplains angling to become chaplain. The legislature of the pamphlet proceeds to hear rather obsequious and self-serving poetry from an Episcopal bishop, two
335 See, for example, the records for 25 October 1792 in the House and 5 November 1792 in the Senate that used the same language as previously: 3 AOC 143, 606. 336 For lists of congressional chaplains, see Appendix B. 337 For example, the 1795 reappointment of Asbel Green garnered 63 of the 70 votes, with 18 others abstaining. Drawing conclusions from this information would be highly speculative, but it bears noting that a Presbyterian drew a 90% approval from votes cast and more than 70% of the entire House. 338 This number includes a Roman Catholic priest and a Unitarian. Whether or not a unitarian should be classified as a Protestant is disagreed upon. Early Unitarians went to great lengths to classify themselves as Christian; this changed as the 20th century progressed and Unitarians merged with Universalists.
126 additional Episcopal priests, a Methodist, a Baptist, and two Presbyterians. This is followed by an anthropomorphic Virginia Religious Bill. The pamphlet ends by hearing from two more candidates: another Presbyterian and a Millennianist, who provides a hopeful description of the future:
Far o’er our Western climes let Love and Peace, In undiminish’d bliss and Freedom reign, ‘Till all yon wheeling orbs to move shall cease: And old chaotic vacuum come again.
The pamphlet criticized the tendency in the new country to value the performance aspect of a sermon or a prayer instead of those “whose whole life, without intermission, has been devoted to the study of literature, virtue and religion.”339 Indeed, as Congress had the ability to choose whatever chaplains they desired, the scramble for the position became more a marketplace to sell oneself on their performative merits than the elevation of those with training and title. Some found this to be disturbing, but the practice persevered.340
Congressional records provide little reason to believe that the institution of the congressional chaplaincy was widely controversial. But some evidence of dissension remains elsewhere. In his 1813 remarks to the senior class of Yale College, President Theodore Dwight
(grandson of Jonathan Edwards and brother to Timothy Dwight) answered a question concerning religious tests for elected office that, “In our Congress… they sometimes set religion at naught.
339 W. Rev Knox, The Clerical Candidates: A Poem, Early American Imprints: Second Series No. 773 (Washington City: 1801). 340 Congressmen were critiquing the practice some forty years later. On 13 February 1856 Representative Jones of Tennessee argued against choosing a chaplain, “believing that it is a burlesque on the Christian religion to have this wild hunt after the chaplaincy of the House.” Representative Sandidge of Ohio argued similarly a week later. “At the opening of every session of Congress, the ministers, not only of this city, but of the surrounding country, come here, either in person or through their agents, and log-roll to obtain the position of Chaplain. I think that this system should be abolished” (Congressional Globe 34.411, 478). Sandidge is not arguing for the removal of the entire system of the chaplaincy here, just the process by which a chaplain is determined. His proposal for a different arrangement will be discussed in the Epilogue.
127 When a vote was taken for a chaplain a short time since, there were three votes given for
Mathew Lyon and one for Tom Paine.”341 Lyon was a notorious rabble-rouser who served as
congressional representative for Vermont, Kentucky, and narrowly lost a race in Arkansas.342 A vote for Paine had more irreligious resonance. If Dwight was telling of an event after June 1809,
Paine was already dead. Regardless, his role as a propagandist against institutional Christianity was well-known. A vote for Paine was surely a vote against the status quo in the congressional chaplaincy.343 Still, the votes reflected a small minority of congressmen.
Also of note is James Madison’s perspective on the chaplaincies. Considering Madison’s
strong stance against the intertwining of church and state, it would make sense for Madison to be
opposed to the congressional chaplaincies. Later writings point to this perspective. In an 1822
letter to Edward Livingston, Madison wrote, “I observe with particular pleasure the view you
have taken of the immunity of religion from civil jurisdiction. … This has always been a favorite
principle with me; and it was not with my approbation, that the deviation of it took place in
Congress when they appointed Chaplains, to be paid from the National Treasury.”344 Madison’s
Detatched Memoranda, published a century after his death, provide additional insight into
Madison’s perspective. His musings on the chaplaincy are reproduced in part:
Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by
341 Theodore Dwight, President Dwight's Decisions of Questions Discussed by the Senior Class in Yale College in 1813 and 1814 (New York: Jonathan Levitt, 1833), 114. 342 This defeat may have been the impetus for his nomination to chaplain. Lyon was also the only congressman to be elected while in jail, the first person prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the deciding vote for Thomas Jefferson’s election to the presidency. 343 Lund incorrectly mentions three votes for Paine - his second-hand source cites Dwight, who only mentions one vote. See Lund, Congressional Chaplaincies, 1184. 344 Qtd. in Davis, Religion and the Continental Congress, 77.
128 Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation. The establishment of the chaplainship to Congs is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship agst the members whose creeds & consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority. To say nothing of other sects, this is the case with that of Roman Catholics & Quakers who have always had members in one or both of the Legislative branches.345
Madison offered similar opposition to the military chaplaincies.346
These undated writings, probably written after his presidency, belie Madison’s actions
while a Representative and President. Madison served in the initial committee that recommended
the appointment of two chaplains, and he later voted in favor of payment for the chaplains. While
Andy Olree’s fuller treatment of the controversy of Madison and the chaplaincy is valuable,347
the import of Madison’s perspective is questionable. Madison is better understood as
representative of an undercurrent of dissension regarding the perceived improper entanglement
between church and state. Such dissension was not significant enough to challenge the institution
of the congressional chaplaincy, or even to include such debate in the Annals of Congress.348
Madison may have had private reservations about the chaplaincy, but other concerns were more important to bring to the public attention.
Debate over the propriety of congressional chaplaincies extended to other individuals
345 Elizabeth Fleet, "Madison's "Detatched Memoranda"," The William and Mary Quarterly 3, no. 4 (1946): 558. 346 Ibid., 559-62. 347 See Andy G. Olree, "James Madison and Legislative Chaplains," Northwestern University Law Review 102, no. 1 (January 2008). 348 Olree’s analysis reaches the opposite conclusion. To him, “it was an “open secret” that many in Congress were less than enthusiastic about the congressional chaplaincy, and some were outright opponents of it.” He marshals the same evidence as what is provided above; I find his analysis less than convincing. See ibid., 199- 201.
129 outside of Congress. Baptist leaders like John Leland and Isaac Backus spoke out at various
times against general assessments to support ministers, if not clearly against congressional
chaplaincies.349 Their advocacy for church/state separation may have had an influence at the
state level, but did not have any noticeable effect on the congressional chaplaincy.
The election of two chaplains drew the greatest amount of debate and controversy, the
former more focused on the individual and the later bringing into question the institution as a
whole: the House’s choice of Jared Sparks, a Unitarian, in 1821, and the Senate’s choice of
Charles Constantine Pise, a Roman Catholic priest, in 1832. The Unitarian’s election tapped into
a theological conflict that Thomas Jefferson incorrectly predicted would ultimately be victorious
for the “rational Christians” who had freed themselves from Trinitarian theology.350 The election of Jared Sparks occurred on 10 December 1821; four ballots were required before Sparks received the necessary majority (the first ballot gave Sparks a plurality of votes).
Sparks’ election was not enough to stem disagreement over a candidate with heterodox perspectives. Nine days later Representative Patterson called for the election of a new chaplain due to Sparks’ absence. Further discussion revealed that Sparks was never directly informed of his election! Representative Wright responded to the motion by noting the how “indecorous” it would be if the House would “show more respect for one religious profession than to another,
349 See ibid., 207-09. Of note is the fact that Leland preached in the House of Representatives at the invitation of Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps he was opposed to the financial support of a particular strand of religion, but not its proclamation in a public place. 350 In Jefferson’s 8 December 1822 letter to James Smith Jefferson writes, “I confidently expect that the present generation will see Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States.” See also Jefferson’s 2 November 1822 letter to Thomas Cooper. That a Unitarian could be elected with little controversy but a a Catholic would engender great controversy is of note and seems to be related to the perceived connection to Protestant Christianity. The Unitarians William Elery Channing and later Joseph Story argued that Unitarianism should be considered within the bounds of Christianity, whereas Catholicism should be excluded. This perspective has reversed, with Unitarian Universalists now having more affinity to Buddhism and Catholics more readily connected with Protestant Christians.
130 when the Constitution declares that all shall stand on equal footing.” Patterson withdrew his
resolution, and Sparks served out his one-year term.351 Sparks’ chaplaincy did not draw the
institution into question, but it did raise questions concerning the theological commitments of
those who filled the role. A Unitarian would not fill the position again until 1863.352
The election of a Roman Catholic, in contrast, aroused waves of anti-Catholic sentiment
that would only grow over the ensuing decades as Catholic immigrants flooded the shores of the
country. Pise was himself a defender of American Catholicism, writing what some consider the
“First American Catholic Novel,” Father Rowland: A North American Tale.353 The work offered
a more sympathetic portrait of American Catholicism.354 Pise won a majority of votes on the
fourth ballot.355 While Pise was able to be elected in 1832, the election of a Catholic chaplain
grew increasingly unlikely as the decades passed.356 People from around the country protested
the election of a Catholic chaplain. Thirteen clergymen in New York declined to offer prayers in
the New York Assembly, decrying how “the employment of Chaplains has met with-the
unpleasant discussions which it has given rise to, and which probably will be renewed from year
to year.” Others considered petitions against the Congressional chaplaincies more broadly.357 But
the widest-ranging arguments against the Congressional chaplaincies also criticized the military
351 38 AOC 533, 568-569. 352 William Henry Channing served as Chaplain of the House from 1863 to 1865. In the Senate two Unitarians, Edward Everett Hale and Ulysses Grant Baker Pierce, served from 1903-1909 and 1909-1913, respectively. 353 Charles Constantine Pise, Father Rowland: A North American Tale, Wright American Fiction (Baltimore: F. Lucas, 1829., 1970). 354 See Lund, Congressional Chaplaincies, 1188. 355 Debates 9.5-6 356 Another Catholic chaplain would not be elected until the year 2000, and even then the election was marred in controversy. See Lund, Congressional Chaplaincies, 1191-93. 357 Gettysburg Star & Republican Banner, 22 Jan 1833, 2; qtd. in ibid., 1189n90.
131 chaplaincies, to which we now turn.
Military Chaplains
Military chaplains exemplify the clear connection between church and state in nations with a religious establishment. Religious concerns were at the forefront of the concerns of the military. The 1642 publication Lawes and Ordinances of Warre, Established for the Better
Conduct of the Army listed religious requirements (against blasphemy and oaths, enforcing
attendance at worship) first, before the “duties in general.” Commanders were “straightly
charged to see Almighty God reverently served, and Sermons and Prayers duly frequented.”358
The Articles of War developed by Parliament in the 1660s described the role of the chaplain to read the prayers of the Church every day and to preach as often as he saw fit.359
European colonizers brought their priests and pastors with them to the New World on
missions of both spiritual maintenance and evangelistic marauding. In the English colonies,
Robert Hunt was declared the first chaplain of Jamestown within a year of landing. Samuel Stone
was the military chaplain designated during the Pequot War of 1637.360 In short, the patterns of
chaplaincy continued unabated in the colonies as they did in the homeland. The specifics of the
chaplaincies varied based on their context, as Richard Budd notes:
Clergy were attached to militia units, to volunteer colonial forces, to garrisons at frontier forts, and to the regular British Army units stationed in the colonies. Out of this diversity, however, there emerged two distinct patterns that influenced the organization of American chaplaincy into the twentieth century. The first was the assignment of chaplains to tactical units of troops, such as regiments and brigades, or in the case of the navy on board ships. The second was the assignment of chaplains to geographical posts, whether at forts along the frontiers and coastal defenses or at naval bases.361
358 Lawes and Ordinances of Warre, Established for the Better Conduct of the Army (London: Printed for John Wright, at the Kings Head in the Old-Bailey, 1642). 359 Smyth, In This Sign Conquer, 26. 360 Chaplains for commercial ventures as well - see Daniel O'Connor, The Chaplains of the East India Company, 1601-1858 (New York: Continuum, 2012). 361 Budd, Serving Two Masters, 8.
132
In the British Army, each regiment had its own chaplain. He was selected by the colonel and
considered a field officer. He would say prayers and preach sermons on a regular basis. This was
the norm in the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, when ministers accompanied militia units.
George Washington realized this need for the chaplaincy early on in his career. In a 23
September 1756 letter during the Seven Years War Washington wrote to the Virginia legislature,
“The want of a chaplain does, I humbly conceive, reflect dishonor upon this regiment. … The
gentlemen of the corps are sensible of this and did propose to support one at their private
expense. But I think it would have a more graceful appearance were he appointed as others have
been.”362
Albert Slomovitz helpfully identifies four roles Washington ascribed to the chaplaincy.
First, they inherited the traditional role of intercession: “Chaplains interceded with Providence to
secure protection and victory for the soldiers.” Second, they could act as a conscience for the
army, speaking out against things that weakened military cohesion (drinking, gambling, etc.).
Third, chaplains could provide for troop morale through spiritual encouragement. Finally,
chaplains were a source of unity and harmony even when there was division.363 In the North
American wars of the 18th century Roman Catholics and Jews, though in much smaller numbers,
fought alongside Protestant soldiers. Chaplains, through their messages and personal examples,
could promote harmony between otherwise divided groups.
Chaplains were clearly an appreciated aspect of American life in the colonial period. But
362 John C. Fitzpatrick, ed. The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1931-1934), 1.470. 363 Slomovitz, 4. It is interesting to note that the list does not include the administration of sacraments. The necessity and meaning of the sacraments varied depending on the denomination. No Protestant denomination found the sacraments as vital to life as Catholics did. Still, participating in the sacrament of communion was a common occurrence.
133 all was about to change both politically and religiously: it was “universally proclaimed”
throughout the colonies that “neither religious liberty nor civil liberty could exist without the
other, and an attack on one was an attack on the other.”364 Would military chaplains continue to be celebrated in an era of independence and disestablishment? The Revolutionary War provided an opportunity for a quick answer: yes.
Chaplains in the battle for independence joined the military for several reasons. Some reverends desired to join the battle as well as support fellow soldiers. Individual colonies passed resolutions calling for chaplains. The 1775 Rules and Regulations governing the Army included the requirement for soldiers to attend (without behaving “indecently or irreverently”) Divine
Services. Eventually chaplains within the united Continental forces, both in the Navy and in the
Army, received funding. Through it all, George Washington provided strong support which, at times, was in opposition to a congress that was consistently concerned with costs. Early military chaplains came from a variety of Christian denominations, which was necessary to reflect the religious diversity of the soldiers.
The transition from civilian religious life to armed resistance was, for many religious leaders, a natural one: they were ready to imbue the struggle with religious sanction. William
Gordon served as chaplain to Massachusetts Provincial Congress in 1774 and 1775; he was the
first to arrive to Concord. On 13 March 1775 Gordon preached at a general review of arms in
Concord citing divine sanction from 2 Chronicles 13:12— “Behold God himself is with us for
our Captain and his priests with sounding trumpets to cry alarm against you.” The Reverend
Benjamin Balch served as Lieutenant on Lexington Green during the 19 April 1775 battle; he
would later volunteer to be chaplain for Ephraim Doolittle’s regiment and was perhaps the first
364 Thompson, European Antecedents, 84.
134 naval chaplain on the frigate Boston. The Lutheran pastor John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg
preached a January 1776 sermon from Ecclesiastes 3:1— “To every thing there is a season, and a
time to every purpose under the heaven.” During the sermon Muhlenberg removed his black
clerical robes, under which was a military uniform; 162 men in his congregation enlisted that
same day.365
The army that gathered at Cambridge, Massachusetts in the summer of 1775 was,
according to General Washington, “little more than a well intentioned mob.” The need for
chaplains in the Revolutionary War was not lost in this new conflict against a much more
powerful foe, for a commitment to freedom was not enough. Washington was pleased by the
fifteen chaplains serving the twenty-three regiments gathered. As James Byrd noted, “Patriotism,
Washington knew, required commitment to virtuous discipline and sacrificial loyalty, and he
needed preachers who could command patriotic fervor from the Bible to the battlefield.”366
Indeed, chaplains would be used to provide morale and the strength to persevere, as Parker
Thompson explain s: “In the dark days of early 1777, when the national hope was flickering,
men garrisoning those forts, far from home, were kept steady on their course by the combination
of rum and religion.”367
Indeed, religious leaders could employ Biblical language to provide sacred sanction and
morale to their cause. A July 1775 sermon from John Martin, a reverend who fought at Bunker
Hill, used as its text Nehemiah 4:14— “Be not afraid of them: Remember the Lord which is
365 Ibid. There are many more stories of “solider-saints” like Jon Rosburgh, a 63-year-old Presbyterian minister who raised up a militia planning to be their chaplain but was asked to be their commander until he handed over command and became chaplain. He was probably the first chaplain killed in the war, falling on December 1776. See ibid., 148-52. 366 James P. Byrd, Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 7. 367 Thompson, European Antecedents, 155.
135 great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons and daughters, your wives and your
houses.” Other texts included 1 Timothy 6:2— “Fight ye the good fight of faith.” After the
British abandoned Boston, numerous sermons alluded to the fleeing utilizing biblical references
from Exodus 14, Isaiah 21, and 2 Kings 7368.
The sanctifying of the colonists’ cause was exemplified best by the actions of the
Reverend Samuel McClintock, a pastor from Greenland, New Hampshire who was present at the
Battle of Bunker Hill. It is said that he was out of the line of fire but close to the action. In that
position, “he remained in the ancient posture of prayer throughout the battle, standing erect with
arms outstretched toward Heaven. Like Moses, he cried out to the God of Battles while his
young Joshuas fought.” McClintock’s actions were immortalized in Jonathan Trumbull’s iconic
painting of the Battle of Bunker Hill.369
The Continental Congress was quick to formalize the position of chaplain in both the
Navy and the Army. The second article of Navy Regulations was adopted in 28 November 1775.
It states, “the Commanders of the ships of the thirteen United Colonies are to take care that divine services be performed twice a day on board and a sermon preached on Sundays, unless bad weather or other extraordinary accidents prevent.”370 A 6 January 1776 entry in the Journals
368 For a fuller description of the texts utilized during the Revolutionary War, see Byrd, Sacred Scripture. 369 Thompson, European Antecenents, 113; "Mcclintock, Samuel," in American Chaplains of the Revolution, ed. C Rogers McLane (Louisville, KY: The National Society Sons of the American Revolution, 1991), 13. 370 Little is known about the specific people in this position. An 11 February 1777 letter written by the officers of the Continental Frigate Warren includes in its signers “John Reed, Chaplain,” which may make him the first chaplain in the Continental Navy, though others argue that the first chaplain was Edward Brooks, for whom his April 1777 commission is extant. See the letter from the Officers of the Continental Frigate Warren to Robert Treat Paine, Taunton, in William James Morgan, ed. Naval Documents of the American Revolution (Washington, DC: Naval History Division, Department of the Navy, 1976), 7.1166-68. See also Joe, "Rev. John Reed, Chaplain," last modified 29 September 2011, accessed 18 October 2017. http://continentalnavy.com/archives/2011/rev-john-reed- chaplain/. This updates Drury’s claim that the first chaplain was Benjamin Balch, the “fighting parson” who reported to the frigate Boston on 28 October 1778. See Drury, History, 1.4-5.] Still, it seems that the position was assumed.
136 of the Continental Congress describes how to handle “prize money” taken from other vessels.
Included in the list of people to receive some of the money are chaplains.371 On 15 November
1776 Congress set base pay for chaplains serving in the Navy was set at $20 per month, a rate
only surpassed by the captain, lieutenant, master, and surgeon.372 The relatively small focus on
the Navy reflects the size of the Navy itself: while the Continental Congress in 1775 authorized
the construction of thirteen frigates, only eight made it to sea and were vastly outmatched by the
British. In 1781 the Continental Navy only had two frigates. By 1785, all the ships had been
sold.
The first resolution from Congress creating an Army on 16 June 1775 did not include a
chaplain in its ranks. A 29 July 1775 entry lists the pay for chaplains at $20 per month.373 All
that is listed there in the record is “Chaplain - 20” - no formal mechanism for the appointing of chaplains existed. As noted by Thompson, “there were chaplains appointed by the individual colonies, supplemented by pastors who came without official credentials, and visiting parsons coming for brief periods of time.”374 An April 1776 report provided six months’ back pay for a
Dr. Samuel Langdon who had been acting as chaplain for regiments in Cambridge without
compensation.375
While Congress recognized the vital role chaplains played in maintaining morale and
ethics, the position struggled under the same financial constraints the the rest of the war effort
dealt with. Washington wrote to the Continental Congress on 31 December 1775 that the pay
371 JCC 4.36 372 JCC 6.954 373 JCC 2.220 374 Thompson, European Antecedents, 107. 375 JCC 4.296
137 was “…too small to encourage men of abilities. Some of them who have left their flocks are obliged to pay the parson acting for the more than they receive. I need not point out the great utility of gentlemen, whose lives and conversation are unexceptionable, being employed in that service in this army.”376 Congress obliged his request, partially: pay for chaplains was increased to to $33.33 per month on 16 Jan 1776, but instead of having one chaplain per regiment, the later order provided for one chaplain for every two regiments.377 Pay was increased to $40 per month in April of the next year, but chaplains were spread thin - only one per brigade (which consisted of anywhere from three to six regiments).378
Providing only one chaplain per brigade engendered controversy over diversity in the chaplaincy. Washington wrote an 8 June 1777 letter to the President of Congress expressing the pragmatic need for more chaplains, including how utilizing a chaplain at the brigade level could
“introduce religious disputes into the Army, which above all things should be avoided, and in many instances would compel me to a mode of Worship which they do not profess.” Having only one chaplain at the brigade level would involve one religious leader with “so many different modes of Worship.” In contrast, providing a chaplain at the regimental level would allow for “a more generous toleration, and the choice of the Chaplains to officiate.”379
Washington was keenly aware of possibility of religious dissension to affect the overall cause. A 14 September 1775 note stated his desires clearly: “While we are contending for our own Liberty we should be very cautious of violating the Rights of Conscience in others,
376 Qtd in Thompson, European Antecedents, 108. 377 JCC 4.61. 378 George Washington sent a July 1776 note indicating that the Congress, “having been pleased to allow a chaplain to each regiment,” provided license to appoint more chaplains; the order was short-lived. Brigade-level chaplains were the most common apportion during the war. 379 Fitzpatrick, Writings of George Washington, 8.203-04.
138 considering that God alone is the Judge of the Hearts of Men and to him only in this Case, they
are answerable.”380 There were great concerns for freedom in this regard. A 16 August 1775 letter from Baptists to government of Virginia, for example, argued the need for dissenting opinions in religion: “However distinguished from the body of their countrymen, by appellatives
and sentiments of a religious nature, they nevertheless consider themselves as members of the
same community in respect to matters of a civil nature, and embarked in the same common
cause.” The Baptists desired that the commanding officers would “permit dissenting clergymen
to celebrate Divine worship, and to preach to the soldiers, or exhort, from time to time, as the
various operations of the military service may permit, for the ease of such scrupulous
consciences as may not choose to attend Divine service as celebrated by the chaplain.”381
Washington went a step further: instead of simply allowing outside clergymen to
participate, he endorsed as chaplains men from a wide variety of traditions, including Baptists,
Universalists, and perhaps even a Roman Catholic priest. One Baptist chaplain, John Gano,
claimed that he provided Washington with the “scriptural form” of Baptism.382 John Murray,
credited as the founder of Universalism in America, was appointed the chaplain of a Rhode
Island brigade by Washington, though not without controversy. Another Chaplain, John
Cleaveland, spoke against universalism more broadly and Murray specifically with a pamphlet,
“An Attempt to Nip in the Bud the Unscriptural Doctrine of Universal Salvation.” Murray did
serve the brigade as chaplain, though he did so without pay. A Catholic priest, Father Lotbiniere,
380 Ibid., 3.495-96. 381 Qtd in Thompson, European Antecedents, 130-31. 382 The story was substantiated by Gano’s grandchildren in the 1870s, but no confirming evidence exists. See Honeywell, Chaplains, 55-56; George Washington Digital Encyclopedia, s.v. "The Legend of George Washington's Baptism," http://www.mountvernon.org/digital-encyclopedia/article/the-legend-of-george- washingtons-baptism/.
139 was appointed chaplain of one of two regiments formed in Quebec in 1776. Both regiments were a fraction of their initial size when the Canada campaign failed and the regiments traveled to
New York. Still, Congress ratified his appointment and kept him on as a chaplain. There is reason to believe that, because he forfeited his allegiance to Canada, Congress kept him on the payroll, but never was assigned to another regiment or brigade. While he was officially employed, like many others, Lotbiniere was rarely paid, and never on time. Two letters to
Congress express his destitute situation without a home: Canada did not accept him, and
American Catholics shunned priests who embraced the revolutionary cause.383
During the War chaplains were desired, chaplains were appointed, and chaplains were
(sometimes) paid. What the chaplains were supposed to do was less determined. An extant commission to chaplain Hezekiah Smith illustrates the vague requirements. “You are therefore carefully and diligently to discharge the duty of a Chaplain, by doing and performing all manner of things hereunto belonging. And we do strictly charge and require all officers and soldiers under your command, to be obedient to your orders as their Chaplain.” In short: the chaplain was an officer, but without rank; he was to do “the duty of a Chaplain,” though what that means was not prescribed; and he was to be treated by the soldiers as their Chaplain, though what that meant is not clarified.384 Such is a good summary of the unstable government’s perspective on the chaplaincy. It was useful enough to provide financial support for (though not as much as
Washington desired), but the specifics of the position, including its place among the officers, was still unclear.
383 For more on Lotbiniere see Martin I. J. Griffin, "A Canadian Patriot Priest of the Eighteenth Cenutry: Father Lotbiniere the Chaplain of the "Rebel" Canadians Who Joine the American Army During the Revolutionary War. His Trials, Distresses and Piteous Appeals to Congress for His Pay," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 15, no. 1 (1904). 384 Thompson, European Antecedents, 164-65.
140 Two events at the end of the war summarize the confusion: the first chapel and
Washington’s reprimand. The army was encamped at the New Windsor Cantonment in
Newburgh, New York the winter of 1782-83. One of the chaplains, Israel Evans, petitioned
Washington to build a “temple” for public gatherings, including Sunday services. Washington approved on Christmas Day 1782; the building was completed and utilized some forty-five days later.385 Notably, the building was the site of the Washington’s speech that prevented the
Newburgh Conspiracy. About the same time Washington felt the need to admonish the chaplains
to perform their duties, as many chaplains had left at the same time leaving the wounded without
visitors.386 The Articles of War adopted in 1776 provided unique consequences for chaplains
absent without leave or due to sickness (discharge or a fine); apparently this did not prevent
excessive absences.
Roy Honeywell rightly argues that “The chaplains of the Revolution established a group
of precedents which never have been lost.”387 From a practical perspective, though, the
chaplaincy disappeared after the war. As the war ended, the soldiers went home; without a
national army, there was no need for chaplains. George William Van Cleve writes of the post-
war political situation of the 1780s as a “stalemate government,” one held together by a loose
alliance and heavily restricted from change.388 Any significant military legislation needed the
support of nine states to pass. Thus, any establishment of a military (and the corresponding
chaplains) was highly unlikely. George Washington’s 2 May 1783 proposal for a standing army
of 4 or 5 regiments, each with their own chaplain, was approved by the Congress, but no action
385 Honeywell, Chaplains, 61-65; Thompson, European Antecedents, 206-07. 386 See George Washington, The Papers of George Washington, 26.136. 387 Honeywell, 73. 388 George Van Cleve, We Have Not a Government: The Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017).
141 was taken. The fear of tyranny by a national army instead of state-level militias was strong. The
Secretary of War, Henry Knox, tried again to establish a standing army in 1786 but failed.
The new constitutional government created a standing army, and with it a chaplain. The
debate over the location of military authority (either with the states or with the federal
government) was one of the most controversial aspects of the Constitutional Convention.389 Even after, Congress contested Washington’s attempts to build a regular Army. Still, when Congress finally authorized the establishment of an additional army regiment on 3 March 1791 (the first was authorized on 30 April 1790), among the staff for the newly formed brigade was also a military chaplain. The position was to be appointed by the President “with the advice and consent of the Senate,” as long as the position was deemed to be “essential to the public interest.”390 While the pay for the the chaplain was defined, the actual role was not. Apparently
not taken into account was the Henry Knox’s 21 January 1791 plan to include a chaplain at the
“legionary staff” level who would be “of respectable talents and character, who, besides his
religious functions, should impress on the minds of the youth, at stated periods, in concise
discourses, the eminent advantages of free governments to the happiness of society, and that such
governments can only be supported by the knowledge, spirit, and virtuous conduct of the
youth—to be illustrated by the most conspicuous examples in history.”391 Also absent from the
record is any debate over the propriety of having a religious leader funded by a disestablished
state. On this Herman Norton notes, “The concern of Congress was a pragmatic one and the
question of a religious establishment was not raised.” Norton recognized the irony of authorizing
389 See William Hogeland, Autumn of the Black Snake: The Creation of the U.S. Army and the Invasion That Opened the West, First edition. ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), 134-37. 390 1 Stat. 222 391 ASP:MA 1.6-10. This proposal was designed for state militia, especially for new states, which may be why it was not heeded in the development of a national standing army.
142 a chaplaincy “when religious interest in the United States was at an unusually low ebb and spiritual deadness characterized the American churches.”392
The first decade of the newly-formed government witnessed the establishment of military chaplains, but the institution itself was small. Less than ten chaplains served both the Army and the Navy. Still, as Drury notes regarding the naval chaplaincy, “these were highly important years” because during this time “regulations were adopted, principles established, and traditions started which foreshadowed and moulded the subsequent history of the Chaplain Corps.”393
The role of the first military chaplain was filled by the Episcopalian Reverend John Hurt, who had also served in the Continental army. In fact, Hurt was already serving with the regiment created earlier, though in an informal capacity. At that time legislators believed the army was too small to have need of a chaplain. A 5 March 1792 act listed the chaplain among the “general staff” of the army, but only in the context of the pay to be received—no elucidation of duties is provided.394
A 27 March 1794 act authorized a chaplain to serve on each naval vessel that had forty- four guns. Included in this naval bill was the authorization to purchase the vessels; the purchase would not happen until a new act was passed in 1799. The impetus for a naval bill in 1799 was the Quasi-War with France, during which seven chaplains served on ships. The war prompted legislation for a much larger national army to include twenty thousand men and four chaplains, but it did not pass - the conflict did not come to pass, at least on the ground.395
The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed the rise and fall of chaplaincy levels in
392 Herman Albert Norton, Struggling for Recognition, The United States Army Chaplaincy (Washington: Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Dept. of the Army, 1977), 1. 393 Drury, History, 1.13. 394 1 Stat. 242. 395 Norton, Struggling for Recognition, 6.
143 the military that mirrored the size of the military itself. Generally speaking, the numbers were
small, the organization was unofficial, and the regulation was practically nonexistant. Of the 170
pages of Herman Norton’s work describing the United States Army Chaplaincy from 1791 to
1865, less than half discuss the creation of the Army to the outbreak of the Civil War.
Honeywell’s 1958 work on chaplains in the Army has one chapter, “from Washington to
Lincoln,” covering 1783 to 1860 in thirteen pages. Norton titled his work “Struggling for
Recognition” - an apt summary of the issues that surrounded the military chaplaincy programs at
this time.396
Of note here is, at least in the beginning, the absence of any sustained critique of the chaplaincy program as opposed to the principle of church-state separation. Instead, the issues are befell chaplaincy programs in the early decades of the 19th century were, as George Williams notes, those of “recruitment, of role, of rank, of renumeration, and, not least, of the religious affiliation of the chaplains in both services [which] were much under discussion and dispute.”397
Ideological issues were less prominent than the pragmatic realities of cost and practical needs of
the military. Thus, chaplains are prominent in two ways from 1800 to 1850: as participants in the
two major conflicts (the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War), and in frontier posts
which were removed from other avenues of religious support.
The War of 1812 renewed the need for chaplains in the military. In 1800 the chaplain was
removed from the general staff of the army; a single staff chaplain remained for the 5,000 man
396 Ibid. 397 George H. Williams, "The Chaplaincy in the Armed Forces of the United States of America in Historical and Ecclesiastical Perspective," in Military Chaplains: From Religious Military to a Military Religion, ed. Harvey Cox (New York: American Report Press, 1971), 23. Williams himself argues that the lack of chaplains was due to the “restraint imposed by the First Amendment,” but the contention is not supported.
144 army.398 No chaplain is mentioned in the military authorization bill of 16 March 1801, which also shrunk the army to 3,000 people. The authorization of a brigade chaplain for the army does not appear again until a 12 April 1808 bill.399 This bill, signed by Thomas Jefferson, was in
response to deteriorating relations with Britain and France; it called for three chaplains, one per
brigade, but the forces were not mobilized. At the outbreak of war with Great Britain, the regular
army was about a third of its authorized strength - 11,000 men instead of the 35,600 that could
have included as many as eight chaplains.400
While many chaplains saw service in the War of 1812, the relative numbers point to the
small influence of the army at the federal level. 13 chaplains served the regular army during the
war. In contrast, more than 200 chaplains served in the state militias.401 Kenneth Lawson’s
encyclopedic work on federal chaplains describes each of the chaplains who served, both with
the regular army and the state militia.402 Denominational distinctives were less likely to be
controversial than stances on slavery, which held up Cater Tarrant’s commission due to his
abolitionist views.403 One of the chaplains, the Baptist David Jones, was already famous for his
service as chaplain in the Revolutionary War.404 Even with the number of chaplains for both
398 2 Stat. 85. 399 2 Stat. 481. This is not to say that there was no support for religion. A 10 April 1806 act recommended attendance at Sunday services, stating that shops would not be open and profanity, gambling, and drinking was prohibited. The same act describes the absence of a chaplain from his duties as an offence. See 2 Stat. 1806. 400 Norton, Struggling for Recognition, 10. 401 State militias had some oversight by federal regulation (first in 1803), but in general their organization was accomplished at the state level. Precise information about the chaplains at the state militia level is unclear due to poor records. 402 Kenneth E. Lawson, Reliable and Religious: U.S. Army Chaplains in the War of 1812 (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Department of the Army, 2012). His compiling of information shows federal chaplains coming from Vermont, Connecticut, South Carolina, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Delaware, Virginia Kentucky, from varied denominations including Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Baptist, and Dutch Reformed groups. 403 Ibid., 36-38. 404 Jones had a unique preaching technique: he would have drummers stand in front of him as he preached, first to summon the troops, and then to tap quickly “whenever David felt the men might be lapsing into sleep or
145 federal and state troops, at times no military chaplain was present, and civilian clergymen would minister to the troops.405
The conclusion of the war led to the shrinking of the military and, again, chaplaincy programs. Drury notes a “discernible trend toward providing official chaplains only in those situations where servicemen could not otherwise enlist the services of a parish clergymen.”406
While a 3 March 1815 act for military peace establishment did not provide for chaplains, a 24
April 1816 act called for four brigade chaplains in the Army. The position was eliminated completely in 1818. At this point, the only chaplain in the Regular Army was at West Point, a fact that would remain until 1825. Chaplains were still appointed by the Navy, but at smaller numbers than the large ships that were being produced.
Chaplains were important, especially in wartime, but how important was unclear. For much of the first decades of the 19th century, chaplains had other roles as well, be it teachers or secretaries. An April 1818 naval regulation assigned the chaplain, when required, to “the duties of secretary to a commodore.”407 It was more common to see chaplains as teachers as well.
Naval regulations from 25 January 1802 describe the role of chaplain, including prayers and presiding over funeral ceremonies, but also to
perform the duty of a school master; and to that end he shall instruct the midshipmen and volunteers, in writing, arithmetic and navigation, and in whatsoever may contribute to render them proficients. He is likewise to teach other youths of the ship, according to such orders as he shall receive from the captain.408
disinterestedness.” See ibid., 31. 405 For more on chaplains in the War of 1812, see William Gribbin, The Churches Militant: The War of 1812 and American Religion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), 61-103. 406 Drury, History, 1.20. 407 Ibid., 1.24. 408 Ibid., 1.17. There are great similarities here to British rules concerning schoolmasters. Also of note is the lack of any focus on Divine Worship, preaching, and compulsory attendance.
146 The Army chaplain at West Point from 1813-1817, Adam Empie, was officially known as a
professor in the Department of Geography, History, and Ethics.409 According to Richard Budd,
the chaplain served “a dual purpose: to improve the lax moral and religious atmosphere that the
superintendent felt existed at the academy and to raise academic instruction to levels more akin
to those in the better New England colleges.”410 A later instructor at West Point, Thomas Picton,
noted the merging of roles: “As a minister, my chief duty is to preach on Sundays; as teacher… I
am trying to teach them World Geography, World History, Morality and Law among nations.”411
Chaplains taught navigation at the Washington Navy Yard as early as 1805. Naval chaplain
George Jones petitioned for a naval school in 1839, and it came to fruition in 1845; Jones served as chaplain as well as head of the Department of English Studies. In 1850 the school became the
Naval Academy and Jones became the full-time chaplain. Educational duties for some chaplains continued until 1896, though a Senate bill tried (and failed) to separate the rolls in 1838.
Occasionally chaplains also served as medical personnel, perhaps even as surgeons.
Reorganization in 1825 allowed provisions for two chaplains in the Army—one in the
Department of the East and one in the Department of the West.412 Still, this only allowed for two
chaplains throughout the entirety of the country (outside of West Point), a situation that lasted
until 1837. The lack of chaplains reflected a failure to provide for the spiritual welfare of the
soldier—at least to Lewis Cass, the Secretary of War who said as much in his annual report to
409 For more on Empie see Lawson, Reliable and Religious, 22-25. 410 Budd, Serving Two Masters, 14. That is not to say that all chaplains went along with the dual arrangement. In 1807 Chaplain Robert Thompson spoke disparagingly about the role as “Captains’ clerks.” 411 Slomovitz, Fighting Rabbis, 5. 412 This change furthered an 1813 realignment of the military into districts. The first realignment had nine districts, each with a chaplain, but the chaplains were assigned to headquarters rather than units. They arranged for ministerial services to particular groups. Functionally during the war this did not work, as six of the nine groups did not have chaplains at all. See Norton, Struggling for Recognition, 15.
147 the president:
The American soldier is well paid; fed, and clothed; but his moral culture is wholly neglected. There is no arrangement in our service for his mental or religious improvement. And there is perhaps no similar service in which such a measure is more necessary. I am satisfied that the appointment of chaplains, and their employment at such of our military posts as, from their position and the strength of the garrisons, may seem to call for such a measure, would be productive of great advantages to the service; and to the soldiers individually the measure would be equally beneficial. Reproof and exhortations in life, and the consolations of religion in death would be freely offered them. The experiment, I think, is worthy of trial; and the expense can scarcely be placed in fair competition with an object which promises such useful results for the present improvement and future happiness of the soldier.413
In 1836 another Secretary of War, Benjamin F. Butler, also called for the provision of chaplains for the Army, following the 3 March 1836 request by Senator John Davis to “inquire into the expediency of providing for the appointment of chaplains for the Army of the United States.”414
Butler notably referenced the First Amendment in his statement, but he continued, “this cannot
lessen the obligation of Congress to furnish the officers and men employed in the military
service such opportunities of religious worship and moral culture as may be compatible with
appropriate duties of the army.”415
Chaplains were thought of as essentially unnecessary during peacetime when civilian
clergy could provide for the religious needs of soldiers. Such was not the case for frontier posts.
As the country expanded westward, the military outpost would be a source of strength and
security against Indian attacks. Religious services led by unofficial chaplains began in these
outposts as early as 1819, where clergy would also serve as teachers for the children of military
personnel. These positions became official first through voluntary contributions rather than from
413 Qtd. in John Thomas Axton, Brief History of Chaplains in U.S. Army (Fort Leavenworth, KS: General Service Schools, 1925), 7. 414 Qtd. in Norton, Struggling for Recognition 48. 415 ASP:MA 6.812
148 the War Department, mimicking the support-raising necessary for missionaries. A 5 July 1838
act allowed for each post to “employ a person as they may think proper to officiate as chaplain,
who shall also perform the duties of schoolmaster at such posts.”416 While the act passed,
Congress quickly balked at the cost of employing a chaplain for each of the seventy posts. Two
days after the first act was passed, the number of chaplains were limited to twenty, to be
approved by the Secretary of War for locations “most destitute of instruction.” Apparently
having a chaplain was not controversial, but shouldering the cost to do so was. Even though
twenty chaplains were permitted, only fifteen were authorized by the War Department in 1838.
The number would fluctuate until the limit increased to thirty in a 2 March 1849 act.
The reauthorization of chaplains for the army did little to change the ambiguity of the
position. The General Regulations of the Army of the United States, released in 1841, note the appointment and responsibilities of chaplains, but specifics are vague. Chaplains were to oversee a divine service on Sundays for which officers and soldiers are encouraged to attend. Each service was to “be closed with a short practical sermon, suited to the habits and understandings of soldiers.” Besides this, chaplains were “to visit, occasionally, the sick in hospital, or in quarters, in order to afford religious advice and instruction.”417
Also unclear were the requirements for such a position. Instead of skills or formal
training, as Richard Budd notes, “Friendships, personal acquaintance, and political influence
were the ruling factors in chaplain selection.”418 Naval regulations required ordination or
licensure in 1841, but no such requirement existed in the Army. There were no restrictions on
416 Qtd. in Norton, Struggling for Recognition, 49. 417 United States War Department, General Regulations for the Army of the United States, 1841 (Washington, DC: J. and G. S. Gideon, printers, 1841), 33-35. 418 Budd, Serving Two Masters, 22.
149 age, so chaplain ages ranged from 18 to 70. From 1838 until the Civil War, all but two chaplains
were Protestant (two Catholics, Samuel Milley and Ignacio Ramirez, served as post chaplains in
Monterey, California), half of which were Episcopalians, with Presbyterians, Baptists, and
Methodists also represented.
A military conflict again highlighted the need for chaplains, though their inclusion was
both distinct and delayed. The armies that marched into Mexico under Zachery Taylor as well as
Stephen Kearney’s troops that moved westward both did so without the benefit of chaplains. The
thirteen chaplains (twelve at posts, one at West Point) did not join the forces, which were
primarily from the Regular Army rather than state militias419. Herman Norton sees two reasons
for this: current legislation did not provide for chaplains with tactical units, and the call for
soldiers was for individual volunteers, not militia units (which had been a source of problems in
the War of 1812).420
At the same time, Mexican propaganda framed the war as a religious conflict - one where
“vandals and heretics” were trying to destroy Catholicism. Such propaganda could affect the
Catholics serving as Regulars, which was as large as one-fourth of the army. Considering that army regulations required attendance at Protestant religious services, in opposition to their beliefs, the rhetorical strategy could very well have paid off.
To head off any suspicion of the army’s Protestant aims, at the suggestion of Secretary of
State James Buchanan, President Polk decided on a two-pronged strategy: to not make any provision for Protestant chaplains, and to provide the army with Catholic priests. Under the
419 State militias still employed as many as eighty-five chaplains at this time. 420 Norton, Struggling for Recognition, 65-75. Norton is used throughout this section; see also John C. Pinheiro, Missionaries of Republicanism: A Religious History of the Mexican-American War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 73-78, 83-84, 100-01.
150 guidance of Catholic bishops, two were chosen: John McElroy, a priest at Holy Trinity Church in
Washington, and Anthony Rey, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown College. While Polk
did not have the legal ability to appoint chaplains, he issued both men commissions that directed
them to function as Army chaplains.
General reaction to this move was much more muted than Polk and others feared.
Catholics cheered the move; Protestant periodicals reported the event without comment. One
exception to this was William McCalla, a Presbyterian who had served as an army chaplain from
1816 to 1818. The minister first applied to be a chaplain himself and then, when denied, engaged
in a vicious newspaper campaign to discredit the administration. Polk was clear in his
perspective of McCalla, as seen by his diary entry: “I have met with no man during my
administration, among numerous office-seekers who have beset me, for who I have so profound
a contempt.” Polk knew that McCalla’s newspaper accusations were false, but ultimately did not
respond believing that it was not prudent for a man in his position to do so. He wrote,
I cannot adequately express the horrors I feel for a man who can be so base as to veil his hypocrasy under the cloak of religion, and state the base falsehood he has done. If I were a private citizen I should have no hesitation in exposing him to the world, but it is doubted whether, as President of the U.S., I should descend from my station to notice him at all. His object is to produce a religious controversy in the country.
McCalla’s petition had little immediate effect, and both McElroy and Rey headed to the war.
Polk’s diary celebrated the disestablished state: “Thank God,” he wrote, that “under our
Constitution there was no connection between church and state and…as President of the United
States I recognized no distinction of creeds in my appointments to office.”421
McElroy and Rey engaged in their work with vigor: Rey with the combat troops and
421 James K. Polk, The Diary of James K. Polk During His Presidency, 1845 to 1849., 4 vols., Chicago Historical Society's Collections (Chicago: Published for the Society by A.C. McClurg, 1910), II.187, III.03-05.
151 McElroy with the sick and wounded in the hospital. They offered Catholic services that were attended by Protestants as well. One Methodist officer, Henry Lane, noted in his journal his approval of the circumstance: “He is the best informed man whom I have met in Mexico. … I think [he] will do much good in his present position. If all Catholic priests were like him there would be not half as much prejudice against Catholicism.422” Rey was known for his lack of fear in the midst of battle and was killed by Mexican guerillas.
The poor morals of soldiers on the front lines led Congress to debate the inclusion of chaplains with tactical units. While the inclusion of chaplains was thought to be necessary, the issues debated concerned pay and the number of chaplains.423 The final act, passed on 11
February 1847, provided for a chaplain for each brigade and also provided for post chaplains to serve with tactical units.424 While the act permitted the appointment of as many as fourteen chaplains, less than half were commissioned, and no chaplains from posts joined the tactical units. The system reverted back to post chaplains after the war with a 2 March 1849 act that increased the number of post positions to thirty.425
The role and importance of the military chaplaincy was essentially as unclear in 1849 as it was in 1783. An 1847 bill placed the job of appointing chaplains in the hands of “officers composing the councils of administration of the several regiments constituting a brigade;” their role was to find a “proper person to officiate as chaplain.”426 Naval chaplains were limited to twenty-four, but their appointment was also unclear.427 Organization of the chaplaincy was
422 Henry Lane’s diary, qtd. in Norton, Struggling for Recognition, 69-70. 423 On the debates see Congressional Globe, 29th congress, 2nd session, 216-222. 424 9 Stat. 124 425 9 Stat. 351 426 9 Stat. 124 427 The Naval Regulations of 1841 state the clearest requirements for chaplains: “No person shall be
152 nonexistent because their numbers were so small. They were responsible to the commanders who
had arranged for their appointment, but there were no official reports or plan for rotation. All this
would change in the conflagration of the Civil War, but before the outbreak of physical conflict,
the 1850s witnessed ideological conflict in the strongest questioning of chaplaincy programs,
both in the military and in congress.
******
The focus of this chapter has been on federal chaplaincies from the Revolutionary War to
the Mexican-American War. While the role of the chaplaincy program was defined in the decades from the Civil War to the first World War, its origins and related controversies were established in the previous decades. As will be seen in the epilogue, chaplaincies were occasionally contested, especially in the 1850s. Even with attacks against the institution, chaplaincy programs in Congress and the military ultimately remained.
Should the chaplaincy programs be understood as “federally-funded fanaticism” and a
“departure from a clear reading of the Constitution,” as one legal scholar suggests?428 Are the
chaplaincy programs, as Steven Green argues, “a constitutional train-wreck waiting to
happen”?429 In the modern juridical environment, perhaps. The chaplaincy programs are an
obvious church-state issue: as Christopher Lund notes, congressional chaplaincies are “the
appointed a chaplain in the Navy, who shall not be a regularly ordained or licensed clergyman, of unimpeached moral character, not exceeding thirty years of age.” These regulations were challenged in 1853 by the Attorney General who ruled that the Naval Department did not have the authority to issue such general regulations. See Drury, History, 1.63. 428 Kenneth J. Schweiker, "Military Chaplains: Federally Funded Fanaticism and the United States Air Force Academy," Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion 8 (2006). 429 Steven K. Green, "Reconciling the Irreconcilable: Military Chaplains and the First Amendment," West Virginia Law Review 110, no. 1 (2007): 168. Green is focused here on the military chaplaincy, arguing that the program is “a unique benefit that is not provided to other government workers” - the congressional chaplaincy program is not discussed. See ibid., 167.
153 closest thing we have ever had to a national religious establishment.”430 Ed Waggoner argues
similarly concerning military chaplaincies, “The design and management of military chaplaincies
is a distinctively creative, reiterative, and public act, by which religion becomes a strategic asset
for the projection, defense, and increase of national power.” In utilizing chaplains, “the United
States formally entwines religion in the military’s brute power, fiscal muscle, and geographic
range.”431 Because of this clear connection between church and the state, as religious adherence
diversified, the institution was bound to generate numerous legal challenges.432
More to the point, the transition from an established religion to a disestablished state did not affect the desire or need for chaplains both in the military and in the legislative branch.
Though not without conflict, both facets of government found use for chaplains to be a source of moral guidance, unity, and divine sanction for the activities of the young independent country.
Chaplains are a clear instantiation of the federal government navigating between the poles of
establishment and secularism.
430 Lund, Congressional Chaplaincies, 1174 431 Ed Waggoner, "Taking Religion Seriously in the U.S. Military: The Chaplaincy as a National Strategic Asset," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82, no. 3 (2014): 703. 432 The courts have consistently decided in favor of chaplaincy programs. While their numbers have varied based on the needs of the groups they served, the chaplaincy programs have persevered unabated since before the United States existed as an independent nation. This points to a disjunction between Green's criticism of the practice and more than 250 years of history and jurisprudence surrounding governmental chaplaincies. Controversial? Yes. A “constitutional train wreck?” This is hard to find support for from the founding fathers and the first 60 years of governance.
154 CHAPTER 5
FUNDING AND FORGING IDENTITY AND EMPIRE: GOVERNMENTAL SUPPORT FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
On 8 May 1778, the Continental Congress released “An Address of the Congress to the
Inhabitants of the United States of America.” The address provided an update on the status of the conflict with England, making it clear who was on the side of good and who was, in their words, perpetuating “a system of deliberate malice, stamped with the concurrence of the British legislature, and sanctioned with all the formalities of law.” The colonies, though woefully outmatched against a stronger foe, believed “that God of battles, in whom was our trust, hath conducted us through the paths of danger and distress to the thresholds of security.” The battle was not yet won, but with continued effort even amidst a more powerful enemy, “the power and the happiness of these sovereign, free and independent states, founded on the virtue of their citizens, increase, extend, and endure, until the Almighty shall blot out all the empire of the earth.”433
Of note here is the method the Congress used to disseminate the work. It was “Resolved,
That it be recommended to ministers of the gospel of all denominations to read or cause to be read, immediately after divine service, the above address to the inhabitants of the United States of America, in their respective churches and chapels, and other places of religious worship.”434
Congress found an efficient way to spread political propaganda: through the church. This was not the first time to use the churches in such a way. When on 12 June 1775 Congress announced a day of “public humiliation, fasting and prayer” on 20 July of that year, it spread that
433 JCC 11.476-7, 481 434 JCC 11.481
155 information through newspapers as well as churches.435 It was the case, as James Hutson notes,
that “the clergy became the political auxiliaries of Congress.”436
******
The federal government has consistently viewed institutional religion as a means to
accomplish its purposes. The Continental Congress utilized churches and pastors to spread
information about the fate of the nation. As Philip Davidson noted, “The most powerful social
institution in eighteenth-century America was the church, and it, of all, could be the most
effective in dissemination of propaganda.”437
Was the use of churches to spread a message to the whole nation indicative of a government supporting a specific religion? No. The Continental Congress recognized that churches were an effective and efficient way to disseminate information. It was possible to utilize networks of churches to reach the largest share of the population possible. Considering that in many communities the church functioned as a gathering place for public business, this was not surprising.
This arrangement—using institutional religion as a tool to accomplish particular goals—
did not end with the passage of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Indeed, the new
government found use in supporting Christian missionaries in their work among Native
American groups. It is notable that the use of governmental funds for faith-based initiatives was
practically devoid of controversy regarding the constitutionality of such an action.
435 JCC 2.87-88 436 James H. Hutson, Church and State in America: The First Two Centuries, Cambridge Essential Histories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 97. 437 Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution, 83, qtd. in Parker C. Thompson, From Its European Antecedents to 1791, The United States Army Chaplaincy (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Department of the Army, 1978), 84.
156 Disestablishment was the order of the day for the young republic, but the federal government did
not shy away from using money for religious purposes when it served their overall goals—in this
case, navigating the tense relationship between the new county and the Native groups whose
lands they desired.
The aim of what follows is to show how the federal government, in the early nineteenth
century, used and manipulated Christian evangelization efforts for the benefit of their overall
Indian strategy. While missionary efforts fell on different points of a spectrum between cultural synthesis and cultural replacement, government involvement pushed the focus of missions toward the latter. Missionary responses ranged from willing compliance to outright rejection,
including advocacy on behalf of some Indian tribes.
******
The Indian strategies embraced by the federal government at the beginning of the
nineteenth century were distinctive from those employed by European powers. In the colonial
period, North American Indian tribes were seen as pawns in the larger games of foreign
diplomacy occurring between England, France, Spain, and later, the British colonies. Tribes were
useful players on the geopolitical chessboard, and occasionally would use their intermediary
position to their advantage. Generally speaking, if one imperial power did not want to provide a particular commodity or charged too much, the tribe had the ability to ally with the competing power, who would be happy for the added leverage.
This is not to say that all was well with the Indian tribes. While tribes like the Iroquois were able to play the British, French, and Americans against each other to their own benefit in the years leading up to the Seven Years War, European colonization was disastrous for Native
Americans. Disease decimated groups throughout the 16th century, and from the early 17th
157 century battles in the Anglo-Powhattan Wars to Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774, Native groups
pitted themselves against the colonizers as well as each other and declined drastically.438
The Indians’ ability to use contesting European nations to their advantage declined first
in the aftermath of the Seven Years War as France ceded practically all of North America to
Great Britain, then again as the treaty concluding the Revolutionary War gave all the land east of
the Mississippi River to the new United States.439 Foreign diplomacy was replaced by national
policy as the nascent country became responsible for the complicated relations between itself and
myriad Indian tribes.440 It was clear that conflict over land would continue. As a sign of what
was to come, Iroquois land was given to soldiers in the Continental Army for their service in the
Revolutionary War.
Early interactions between the United States and Indian tribes mimicked what European
nations had done previously, but could not remain that way for long. As the relations changed, so
did the focus: Indians, previously occasional allies for strategic purposes, became impediments
to expansion. The lands west of the Appalachian Mountains, stretching to the Mississippi River
and beyond, were too enticing for some frontier-going Americans to pass up. Thus, from a broad
perspective, “U.S. Indian policy during the early decades of the American Republic evolved as a
jumble of humanitarian rhetoric, military incursions in the name of defending white settlers, and
438 For some of the literature on this topic, see Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Vintage, 1999); Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); and Joel W. Martin and Mark A. Nicholas, eds., Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010). 439 The colonial confederation began creating their own policy as early as 1776, when the Continental Congress passed the following resolution: “a friendly commerce between the people of the United Colonies and the Indians, and the propagation of the gospel, and the cultivation of the civil arts among the latter, may produce inestimable advantages to both.” Qtd. in Prucha, American Indian Policy, 214. 440 Henry Warner Bowden, American Indians and Christian Missions: Studies in Cultural Conflict, Chicago History of American Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 163.
158 the eventual extinction of Native Ways of life.”441
As the United States began to formulate its own policy vis-à-vis native groups, Christian citizens of the new country also began to consider their role in the overall goal of world evangelization. This desire stemmed from the growing millennialism that envisioned the soon-to-
be-coming end of the world. Unusual religious activity was an indication of this, as a New
England Baptist noted: “the glorious revivals of religion we have witnessed in our own happy
land, and the news of the triumphs of grace which have saluted our ears from foreign climes, are
auspicious precursors of the Son of Man.”442 If Christ’s return was soon, the impetus for
evangelization to unreached peoples was even stronger. Religious groups were very optimistic
concerning their evangelistic goals, as an 1827 report evinces:
The object of missionary exertions is no less than the moral renovation of a world; that the base passions, which have so long and so deplorably tyrannized over the noble faculties of man, are to be subdued; that all that is oppressive in governments, all that is refractory and seditious among the people, all that is fierce, overbearing and unjust in the conduct of nations toward each other, is to give place to the law of love carried equally into the greatest and least transactions. Wars are to cease. All the domestic relations are to be sanctified. Every village is to have its school and church; every family its Bible and the morning and evening prayer. The tabernacle of God is to be pitched among men.443
Prior to the Revolutionary War, groups like the Church of England’s Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts were heavily involved in Native missionary
movements, but the battle for independence removed England’s political and religious
involvement from the new country. As a result, between 1787 and 1820 eleven different groups
441 Rachel Wheeler, "Hendrick Aupaumut: Christian-Mahican Prophet," in Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape, ed. Joel W. Martin and Mark A. Nicholas (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 232. 442 William Collier, Sanctuary Waters; or, the Spread of the Gospel, 19, qtd. in Clifton Jackson Phillips, Protestant America and the Pagan World: The First Half Century of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1810-1860, Harvard East Asian Monographs. No.32 (Cambridge, MA: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1969), 8. 443 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Eighteenth Annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, October 1827 (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1827), 159.
159 were formed for the sake of furthering home-grown missionary efforts.444 One of the early groups, the American Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others in North
America, was distinctly political in origin. The original act, passed by the Massachusetts House and Senate on 17 November and 19 November 1787, respectively, was signed into law by governor John Hancock. The act created a self-perpetuating group of no more than fifty people who could purchase land for the sake of profit and receive donations to be “applied to the purposes of propagating the gospel among the said Indians … and also among other people.” The reason for this propagation was to meet the perceived needs of the targeted groups, “who through poverty or other circumstances, are destitute of the means of religious instruction.”445
The creation of this group as well as others that followed is illustrative of two facts: first, that government entities were involved in the funding of Christian missionary efforts, and second, that there was a concomitant purpose of missions based on the assumption of religious leaders: “one set of cultural standards--the one shared by churchmen and politicians--promoted both spiritual progress and national stability.”446 This assumption is vital in understanding the shared efforts of religious and political groups. As this assumption is challenged by increasing religious diversity through the nineteenth century, subsidized missions endeavors diminish in importance and eventually cease.
An overarching concern of the new country was what Bowden calls “homogeneous nationalism” – the need for a national identity that could transcend colonial, geographical, and even religious distinctions. Forging a national identity that would dispel notions of division
444 Bowden, American Indians, 167. 445 Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In the Year of Our Lord, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty- Seven. An Act to Incorporate Certain Persons, by the Name of the Society, for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others, in North-America (Boston: Printed by Adams and Nourse, 1787). 446 Bowden, American Indians, 164.
160 necessarily included the prevalent religion of the time, however fractured and problem-laden it
was.
Efforts to spread Christian civilization with support from the state level continued at the
federal level after the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. An early example
occurred during the tenure of Thomas Jefferson. In the summer of 1803 William Henry Harrison,
governor of the Indiana Territory and future President of the United States, negotiated a treaty
with the Kaskaskia Indians to sell some of their land to the United States. While this action was
similar to deals brokered with other Indian tribes, article three highlights the religious support.
And whereas, The greater part of the said tribe have been baptised and received into the Catholic church to which they are much attached, the United States will give annually for seven years one hundred dollars towards the support of a priest of that religion, who will engage to perform for the said tribe the duties of his office and also to instruct as many of their children as possible in the rudiments of literature. And the United States will further give the sum of three hundred dollars to assist the said tribe in the erection of a church.447
One should note that much of the money never changed hands: the tribe had to pay the United
States back for “procuring some necessary articles, and to relieve them from debts which they
have heretofore contracted.”448 Indeed, Thomas Jefferson envisioned the imposition of
indebtedness as a method to obtain additional lands from the various tribes.449 It is also an interesting fact that the provision was for the continuation of Catholic beliefs. Indian missions was a competitive field between Protestants and Catholics. The federal government had little
447 Charles J. Kappler, ed. Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 67-68. 448 Ibid., 68. 449 For example, in an 1802 letter to Henry Dearborn, Jefferson wrote, “If we could furnish goods enough to supply all their [the Indians’] wants, and sell them goods so cheap that no private trader could enter into competition with us, we should thus get rid of those traders who are the principal fomenters of the uneasiness of the Indians: and by being so essentially useful to the Indians we should of course become objects of affection to them. There is perhaps no method more irresistible of obtaining lands from them than by letting them get in debt, which when too heavy to be paid, they are always willing to lop off by a cession of land.” See J.P. Boyd and B.B. Obrerg, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: 1 July to 12 November 1802, vol. 38 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 210.
161 interest in the religious particulars of the groups they were utilizing. Because the Kaskaskia
Indians had already been evangelized by Catholics, it was most convenient to continue in that vein.450
Strategies like Harrison’s with the Kaskaskia Indians continued throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Indian tribes and culture, to the leaders of the fledgling government, filled the role of the outside group from which the new country could be distinguished; indeed,
Natives had been the perceived outsiders since Europeans first arrived in the New World.
Governmental policy in this area could be split into two broad themes, as Henry Bowden explains: “either assimilate to the body politic, with its white standards of civilization and religion, or continue their traditional practices somewhere else, without threatening the nation’s prevailing ideology.”451 While the first goal aligned with missionary endeavors, at least in the beginning, attempts to quarantine resulted in resistance from missionary groups and the curtailing of missionary support.
******
Attempts to assimilate Indian tribes into American culture met with various levels of efficacy. Two primary methods of assimilation were used: agricultural training and education.
An 1818 House Committee on Indian affairs report sums up the goals of assimilation:
Put into the hand of their children the primer and the hoe, and they will naturally, in time, take hold of the plow; and as their minds become enlightened and expand, the Bible will be their book, and they will grow up in habits of morality and industry, leave the chase to those of minds less cultured, and become useful members of society.452
450 Jennifer Graber’s forthcoming book explores the competition between Protestants and Catholics as they work to evangelize Native groups. See Jennifer Graber, The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). While this chapter focuses on groups like the ABCFM, Catholic priests like Edward Fenwick also advocated for funding from the federal government for their Native outreach. 451 Bowden, American Indians, 164. 452 William Addison Blakely et al., American State Papers Bearing on Sunday Legislation, Rev. and enl.
162 Such goals at the governmental level concurred with the aims of missionary agencies, like these from the United Foreign Missionary Society in 1823.
Missionary Institutions, established to convey…the benefits of civilization and the blessings of Christianity…may look forward to the period when the savage shall be converted into the citizen; when the hunter shall be transformed into the mechanic; when the farm, the work shop, the School-house, and the Church shall adorn every village; when the fruits of Industry, good order, and sound morals, shall bless every Indian dwelling.453
This correspondence of purpose provides a clear rationale for the government to provide funds for the missionary endeavors.
The motivations of the U.S. government were, at the same time, benevolent and selfish.
A benevolent outlook recognized the need for civilizing the Indians so as to stem the tide of death and even distinction. For example, a 3 March 1819 act of Congress provided $10,000 annually
…for the purpose of providing against the further decline and final extinction of the Indian tribes, adjoining to the frontier settlements of the United States, and for introducing among them the habits and arts of civilization… [the president shall] employ capable persons, of good moral character, to instruct them in the mode of agriculture suited to their situation; and for teaching their children in reading, writing, and arithmetic.454
Ironically enough, the goal seen here was to use funds to sustain the Indian tribes amidst the perceived harmful imposition of Western culture upon Native Americans.
But the goals of the government’s Indian policy were motivated by selfish ends as well.
As Wheeler put it, this policy “sought at once to ‘civilize’ the Indians by encouraging them to
ed. (Washington, DC: Religious Liberty Association, 1911), 2.185. 453 Qtd. in Bowden, American Indians, 169. The citation in Bowden’s book appears to be inaccurate as it points to pages in Berkhofer’s Salvation and the Savage that do not contain the quote. Williams attributes this quote to the Board of Managers of the United Foreign Missionary Society, noting its similarity to a 1573 proclamation by the Spanish King Philip II. 454 3 Stat. 516-517
163 abandon their traditional gendered economy in favor of the European model of individual
ownership, male agricultural labor, and female domestic labor.” Doing so may ‘civilize’ the
natives, but it would also cause Indians to live on small family farms. As a result, “Indians would
need less land, thereby making more available for European settlement.”455 The perceived
benefit for the Indians coincided with the desire of frontiersmen to gain more land for
themselves. The colonizers wanted the federal government to help them do so.
Indeed, the missions endeavors can be appropriately understood as “settler colonies.”
Rather than moving in to an area for a short period of time, American evangelicals were, as
Emily Conroy-Krutz notes, “staying put, and teaching other how to live like them.” It
represented a unique form of empire: instead of extracting goods or labor, the missionaries could
assist in the process of “claiming land for expatriates to populate and change.” The work of
missionaries was distinct here, for while others were more interested in simply removing native
people, the evangelical impulse led missionaries to work with native groups, “transforming those
people into something new through conversion.”456
The need for government support for such evangelistic endeavors is evident enough:
mission agencies and missionaries dream lofty goals and thus are constantly in need of more
resources to accomplish their objectives. So at a time when few other options presented
themselves, “financially hard pressed missionary societies had to take seriously any potential
arrangement that might alleviate the monetary burdens of educational provision.”457
Furthermore, influence from the government was, at least in the beginning, in keeping with the
455 Wheeler, in Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape, 233. 456 Conroy-Krutz, Christian Imperialism, 104. 457 Clayton G. Mackenzie, "Demythologising the Missionaries: A Reassessment of the Functions and Relationships of Christian Missionary Education under Colonialism," Comparative Education 29, no. 1 (1993): 52.
164 missionaries’ goals. These goals were exemplified in missionary Cyrus Kingsbury’s letter to the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), as seen in their 1817 report:
“we opened our doors to receive children into our family, to teach them the rudiments of the
English language, the principles of the Christian religion, and the industry and arts of civilized
life.”458 This was true regardless of the level of support the missionaries received from the
government, for “Not all evangelists enjoyed a federal civilization-fund subsidy in the early national period, but their efforts generally conformed to the dominant pattern it inspired.”459
While the goals were similar, the emphases of the government and missionaries were different. Common goals were bound up in the notions that Christianity and civilization were one and the same, and that true Christianity was found in the English language rather than in the
Indian tongue. But the government was more interested in cultural assimilation, whereas, generally speaking, the missionaries were more focused on cultural synthesis.460 Nevertheless,
the pursuit of common goals served both constituencies and, for the missionaries, “there was
little hope of Christianizing the savages without first building a foundation of stable civilized
existence.” Thus, “The missionaries were agricultural agents as well as messengers of Christ’s
Gospel and their centers were model establishments and practical schools which augmented the
work of the government.”461 Both physical and spiritual needs were recognized and addressed
458 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Report of the American Board of Commissioners, for Foreign Missions; Compiled from Documents Laid before the Board, at the Eighth Annual Meeting, Which Was Held at Northampton, Mass. Sept. 18, 19, and 20, 1817, Early American Imprints (Boston: Printed by Samuel T. Armstrong, no. 50, Cornhill, 1817), 16. 459 Bowden, American Indians, 167. 460 To some this is a controversial statement. How could teachers using Western methods, pedagogies, and values not affect the indigenous culture, especially if proselyting is at the heart of their endeavor? This charge is dependent on the content of the proselytizing. If the missionary’s gospel does not necessarily imply cultural transformation, it is possible that "a given society will draw the gospel into its own particular cultural encomium," affording a neutral position to the Bible, though it is difficult to see this from an absolute perspective. See Mackenzie, Demythologising, 54. 461 Prucha, American Indian Policy, 219.
165 through missionary endeavors.
If the goal of the U.S. government was to avoid conflict with the native tribes, Indian policy programs had to be positive: the efforts needed to convince tribes that their white neighbors would improve their livelihood. Furthermore, such efforts could go a long way toward convincing natives that a “civilized” way of life was desirable.
One clear method used by the federal government was to move native groups away from a traditional lifestyle of nomadic hunting towards the more civilized notion of settlement farming. An agrarian lifestyle was much more appealing, at least from an American mindset, and embracing the farmer’s trade contained the added benefit of leading to other Western-style advances such as private property.
To people like Henry Knox, Secretary of War for President Washington, missionaries would be useful appointees to disseminate agricultural goods. With the encouragement of
Washington, congress passed the Intercourse Act of 1793, providing tribes with “useful domestic animals, and the implements of husbandry” along with money and agents to teach the tribes how to use the materials. The success of the project led Congress to renew it in 1796, 1799, and
1802.462 In addition, specific treaties were made with individual tribes such as the Creeks (1790), the Cherokees (1791), the Six Nations (1794), and the Delawares (1804).463 The Intercourse
Acts, while furthering agricultural development, were at the same time a prohibition against
Whites for the purpose of treating Indians fairly, ensuring rights, lands, trade, and legal justice were handled fairly. The Acts also regulated and eventually prohibited liquor traffic. Promoting agriculture complemented the notion of a Protestant work ethic. “The fulfillment of each
462 Ibid., 214-15. 463 Ibid., 218.
166 individual’s worldly duties was the highest moral activity of that individual,” it was argued, and
for missionaries, that duty was farming. Agriculture was ideal work because it encouraged
private property, industry, and an organized society, the aspects of rural living that could be “the
proper social foundation for their ultimate goal of the self-sustaining church.”464 Having the
Indians reside in one place removed a barrier from regular school and church attendance.
Fighting was wrong and hunting was migratory and a leisure pursuit and, as a Presbyterian
minister noted in 1819 before the United Foreign Missionary Society, “In mercy to the poor
hunter, whose deer have fled or fallen, we ought to take him into our fields and teach him to
cultivate the ground.”465
Concurrent with agricultural practices, in the missionary’s mind, was the correcting of
wayward gender roles. In many Indian communities women were responsible for building a
home or tending to fields, while the men focused on hunting, war, or political discussions. An
agricultural society would make the man into a farmer and the woman into a housewife. This met
with great resistance from tribes who mocked men that would do “the woman’s work.” But the
role of a housewife was, according to missionary thought, an estimable one and indicative of
“the line of discrimination between civilized society and barbarism.”466
Any attempt to discuss missionary education endeavors, whether with native groups or
elsewhere, can easily fall into the trap of being categorical in its positive or negative perspective.
Clayton Mackenzie’s work on Christian missionary education, while primarily focused on
colonial efforts elsewhere, applies well to the efforts of missionary schools to Indian groups.
464 Robert F. Berkhofer, Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protestant Missions and American Indian Response, 1787-1862 (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1965), 70. 465 Qtd. in Phillips, Protestant America, 58. 466 Berkhofer, Salvation, 75-76.
167 Mackenzie notes that the danger of examining these institutions is absolute praise or criticism:
While the instigation of Westernised education procedures through missionary initiatives has been regarded favourably by some politicians and educationists in former colonial territories, there persists considerable scepticism about the circumstances surrounding the initial development of missionary education. This is perhaps symptomatic of a general unease about institutions whose evolution has been concomitant with the imposition of foreign rule.467
Mackenzie’s point is all the more important when the concept of “foreign rule” is not nearly as clear, as in the case of the Indian tribes. Missionary educators worked in a system where tribal governance was at times independent and at others imposed. The nature of imposed Christian education is also unclear, for “The history of mission schools is a troubling one in which stories of benevolent, self-sacrificing missionaries contend with accounts of relentlessly rigid discipline, ethnocentrism, and desperately unhappy children.”468 Completely positive or negative descriptions of education are incomplete.
Positive or not, government-funded, missionary-led education proved to be “the primary means of enticing young Native Americans to reject tradition and seek conversion.” From the perspective of the government, change could happen over time if the Indian children were exposed to a different way of life. Missionaries likewise joined in because of their positive perception of the process. For them, “the abandonment of native ways for Western ones was a creative rather than destructive process that made new Christian citizens out of savages. School, missionaries hoped, was a way to change Indians from ‘others’ into dusky versions of themselves.”469
More than just building a school, missionaries established communities that would be an
467 Mackenzie, Demythologising, 45. 468 Carol Devens, ""If We Get the Girls, We Get the Race": Missionary Education of Native American Girls," Journal of World History 3, no. 2 (1992): 220. 469 Ibid., 223.
168 example for the Indians:
…the missionaries organized a complete community at each outpost, with farms, schools, and chapels. Not only ordained preachers, but physicians, farmers, and blacksmiths and other artisans composed the “missionary families” … conceived as pilot plants of the Christian society into which all the Indians of the continent would some day be initiated.470
Some of the most notable work was done with schools established by ABCFM missionaries in
the Cherokee and Choctaw Nations. When missionary Cyrus Kingsbury embarked on a fact- finding trip to the tribes in Tennessee, he included a stop in Washington to try and gain financial assistance, which was promised. The Brainerd School was established shortly thereafter, named after the previous century’s heralded missionary to native groups. President James Monroe visited the school in May 1819 and, liking what he saw, provided further funds for the expansion of the school.471
******
Did the efforts to assimilate Indian tribes through agricultural reforms and education achieve their intended aims? Certainly the results varied, and the work did not progress as quickly as some would have liked. This in hindsight is not surprising since the programs were attempting to remake the cultural foundations of Indian life.
The efforts of the ABCFM with the Cherokee by 1828 are just one example of, in the
view of the missionaries, a “pinnacle of successful acculturation.” After just ten years of
involvement, the tribe’s situation would rival a well-to-do American city:
In the aggregate they owned 22,000 cattle, 46,000 swine, 7,600 horses, and 2,500 sheep. They used innumerable plows, wagons, and spinning wheels and operated 762 looms, 31 gristmills, 61 blacksmith shops, and a powder mill. They had built many churches, 18 schools, long stretches of public road, and 18 ferries. Sequoya's alphabet made it possible for natives of all ages to master reading in a short time, and the Cherokee Phoenix did its
470 Phillips, Protestant America, 63. 471 Ibid., 61-64.
169 part to create an enlightened citizenry.472
The periodical was a clear sign of acculturation, perhaps even surpassing their civilizing hosts: the Cherokee Phoenix was printed by the Cherokee and was bi-lingual, with articles in both
English and the newly-developed alphabet to codify their native language. The Cherokee at this
point had acquired 600 slaves as well, in keeping with the habits of their Southern neighbors.473
Their goals for education had reached similar heights with the Cherokee. Article 24 of the
Cherokee Constitution (passed 24 July 1827 and itself a statement of enculturation) reads,
“Religion, Morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the preservation of
liberty, and the happiness of Mankind Schools and the means of education, shall forever, be
encouraged in this nation.” The wording followed the call for education seen in the 1787
Northwest Ordinance (a guiding document for present-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan,
Wisconsin, and Minnesota) and also appears in the constitutions of Mississippi (1817), Kansas
(1858), and Nebraska (1875). For at least these reasons, the assimilation project undertaken by
Christian missionaries and partially funded by the federal government among the Cherokee
nation should have been a success.
And yet, difficulties with the experiment in Indian assimilation stemmed from flawed
assumptions. The first flawed assumption was that the Christian religion and a civilized culture
and lifestyle were the same thing. A prime example against this was the Mohegan Reverend
Samson Occom (1723-1792). Occom’s conversion to Christianity led him into a life as a
preacher and a missionary to his own people, yet he resisted the notion that “religious conversion
472 Bowden, American Indians, 165-66. 473 On the issue of the acceptance of the Cherokee’s slaveholding by the ABCFM with many abolitionist donors, see Molly Oshatz, "No Ordinary Sin: Antislavery Protestants and the Discovery of the Social Nature of Morality," Church History 79, no. 2 (2010): 339-50.
170 was complete only if it was accompanied by cultural transformation.” For Occam, “there need be no contradiction between his Christian and Indian identities.”474 But tensions existed, and
Christians and Indians alike shunned him. Occam is just one example of the cultural synthesis
between Christianity and Indian culture that was not conducive to the goals of the U.S.
Government.
The second flawed assumption was the notion that the overall goal was, in fact, cultural
assimilation. Even when cultural assimilation occurred, as in the case of the Cherokee Indians in
the 1820s, their desire to maintain some sort of Indian identity persevered. In fact, the
assimilation project did more to strengthen the cause of Cherokee nationalism by providing an
example in white American nationalism that they could emulate in their own way. Furthermore,
the insatiable desire for more land and riches on the part of the United States contributed to
viewing the Indian as second-class people, regardless of how much they had assimilated Western
culture. Indians were quarantined away from civilization when the desire for wealth was too
enticing to ignore. This push for relocating Indian tribes was very much at odds with the goals of
the missionary groups and caused tension between them and the U.S. Government.
******
Not everyone was convinced that cultural assimilation was the proper policy to pursue for
the native groups of North America. Others believed that the removal of Indian tribes to less
populated areas would make the issue go away. This followed the same pattern set by Spain with
the relocation of the Timucua to Cuba in the 1760s, as well as the British expulsion of the
Acadians from Canada during the French and Indian War. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase
474 Keely McCarthy, "Conversion, Identity, and the Indian Missionary," Early American Literature 36, no. 3 (2001): 354.
171 provided vast lands with a clear dividing line in the Mississippi River, an easy answer for those
eyeing valuable tribal land west of the Appalachian Mountains. “Most of the pioneers beyond the
mountains shared their opinion that different cultures required separate territories,” though the
view was not as prevalent in the more heavily-populated coastal areas.475
David Brown, a student at Andover Theological Seminary, was a missionary who sided
with the plight of the Indians. While still in school, He was enlisted by ABCFM to promote
missions to Native Americans and raise funds through a speaking tour. As Joel Martin notes,
Brown “deliberately sought to enlist missionaries and a larger non-Native public in the urgent
political cause of defending the rights of Cherokee people. His project, then, was primarily a
Cherokee-centric one, and it existed in negotiated tension with the different project of the
missionaries.”476 The goal was one with the best interests of native groups in mind rather than
the aims of the federal government.
It is interesting to note that, at least in the opening decades of the nineteenth century, the
federal government recognized Indian tribes as self-governing, independent political communities. Cyrus Kingsbury’s 1817 report talked about his “arrival in the nation” to start a school, which occurred only after he had obtained permission from the tribal leaders.477 The
negative aspect of this recognition is seen in the 1824 creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Because the governmental organization was placed under the authority of the War Department
and worked closely with the Army to enforce Indian policy, the Bureau marked a shift away
475 Bowden, American Indians, 166. 476 Joel W. Martin and Mark A. Nicholas, Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 67. 477 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Report of the American Board of Commissioners, for Foreign Missions; Compiled from Documents Laid before the Board, at the Eighth Annual Meeting, Which Was Held at Northampton, Mass. Sept. 18, 19, and 20, 1817, 1740.
172 from surreptitious use of religion and represented an evolving Indian policy.
What was the rationale for a shift of thought from enculturation to relocation? Though at first an extreme position, calls for Indian relocation existed in the days of the early republic for various reasons.478 Some believed that this was ultimately favorable for the Indians, especially after decades of interactions had taken their toll. Carol Devins notes the developing perspective:
“The combined influences of the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening and heightened nationalism following the War of 1812 added a further goal to the missionary effort: rescuing Indians from destruction by the inexorable march of Anglo-American progress.”479
Protection might be accomplished by moving groups away from harmful exposure, though nothing would (or did) prevent American civilization from its continual westward march.480
This perspective continued to grow and reached into higher levels of government. A 29
April 1828 letter from James Barbour, Secretary of War, to Congressman William McLean thought that moving the tribes west of the Mississippi
…contains elements of their preservation; and will tend, if faithfully carried into effect, to produce the happiest benefits upon the Indian race. I have not been able to perceive in any other policy, principles which combine our own obligations to the Indians, in all that is human and just, with effects so favorable to them, as is contained in this plan.481
The motive was pure, though short-sighted: moving the Indians away from settled areas would accordingly prevent the “anglicize, Christianize, civilize” goals that missionaries had been engaged in at the expense of more traditional Indian culture. This benevolent view of relocation
478 For example, Thomas Jefferson in 1802 promised the eventual removal of Indians from Georgia if, in turn, the state would give up western territory that later became Alabama. Georgia agreed, but prospects of peaceable removal seemed increasingly unlikely as the years passed. 479 Devens, Missionary Education, 222. 480 This debate occurred as the United States was also debating the notion of social sin as it concerned the role of slavery in society. See Oshatz, No Ordinary Sin, 350-55. 481 Qtd. in Prucha, American Indian Policy, 213.
173 overlapped the growing number of frontiersmen and their “peculiar Indian-hating mentality,”
desiring their land and enlisting the military to support their aims.482 But for others, the
motivation for taking Indian land was nothing more than money. A discovery of gold in northern
Georgia made the land too irresistible for some, who enlisted the government to free up the resources for their taking.
Another factor in the shift in policy was the perceived deficiencies in enculturation endeavors. Some education initiatives had quickly shown results, like the work done with the
Cherokees. But when Thomas L. McKenney travelled to various Indian tribes from 1827-1830
under the auspices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the optimistic perspective he had at the
movement’s beginning waned, and for good reason. He perceived the Florida Indians to be, in
his words, “…truly deplorable. It is not known that they have advanced a single step in any sort
of improvement,” as many groups resisted any efforts at imposing outside education. Northwest
Indians “pretend to nothing more than to maintain all the characteristic traits of their race.”
Education had helped some Choctaws, “But these were, to my eye, like green spots in the desert.
The rest was cheerless and hopeless enough.” His conclusion: “A sight of their condition, and the
prospect of the collisions which have since taken place, and which have grown out of the
anomalous relations which they bear to the States, produced a sudden change in my opinion and
my hopes.”483 McKenney, who thought the Indians were on equal footing with Americans both
intellectually and morally (the perspective that led to his firing by Andrew Jackson this), too
became a proponent of relocation.
Some took the debate a step further and began to publicly denounce the work of
482 Ibid., 224. 483 Ibid., 225.
174 missionaries in the Indian tribes. James Barbour’s successor as Secretary of War under James
Quincy Adams, Peter B. Porter, accused them in a session of Congress to be motivated by self-
interest: “having acquired, principally by the aid of this [education] fund, very comfortable
establishments, are unwilling to be deprived of them by the removal of the Indians.” This is why,
Porter declared, “agents are operating, more secretly to be sure, but not with less zeal and effort,
to prevent such [Indian] emigration.”484 Porter argued that missionaries had grown comfortable
in their government-subsidized living, which was the only reason they fought against removal
policies.
Murmurs of Indian removal during the Adams administration grew into one of the
distinguishing characteristics of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, as any personal choice on the part
of the Indians (seen in a colonization bill during Adams’ tenure) was lost in Jackson’s
perspective, who viewed the natives as “savages” and conquered foes.485 Because Jackson was
more strident in his perspective, his 1830 Indian Removal Act was among the most controversial
acts of his time in office, and was contentiously debated in congress. Many Indian tribes had
already been relocated before 1829, some through treaties negotiated by Jackson, but the effects
of the Act were severe. Their relocation was exemplified by the 1830’s “Trail of Tears” travelled
by Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Indians to reservations in
Oklahoma, which is distinctive for the military force used and the number of deaths that occurred
along the route.
Jackson argued that removal would continue the same beneficent aims of the federal
484 Qtd. in William Gerald McLoughlin, Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789-1839 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 240. 485 Onuf make the intriguing argument that Jackson’s actions to expel Indians west of the Mississippi find their rationale in Jefferson’s philanthropy towards them: seen as equals, they were to either embrace American civilization or be set aside in favor of “progress.” See Peter S. Onuf, “ ‘We Shall All Be Americans’: Thomas Jefferson and the Indians," Indiana Magazine of History 95, no. 2 (1999): 103-41.
175 government. He said as much in his 1830 message to Congress: “The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves. … [Removal] will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in the own way and … to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.”486
Denunciations against missionaries who supported the Indians were even stronger at this
time (one spoke of “the wicked influence of designing men veiled in the garb of philanthropy
and Christian benevolence”) as the leanings of the missionaries became increasingly clear. David
Brown spoke out strongly against Jackson’s Removal Act, though he died of tuberculosis on 15
September 1829, three months before the bill was introduced. Another missionary and travelling
companion of Brown, Jeremiah Evarts, picked up the mantle and fought against the bill. He
made the public aware of the bill through articles published in the National Intelligencer, which
he did pseudonymously to protect the mission board.487 On New Years Day, 1831, the board
released a public manifesto in support of the rights of the Cherokee people, who were in the
middle of particular persecution in Georgia.
The issue escalated when ABCFM missionaries, in defiance of a new Georgia law (the
“oath law”) prohibiting whites from being on Cherokee land, were thrown into jail. The
treatment they received engendered support for their cause. Their now infamous case (Worcester
v. Georgia) eventually went before the Supreme Court, and Chief Justice John Marshall’s
decision was completely in favor of the missionaries and Indians. The Cherokee Nation was
486 Debates 11.118 487 McLoughlin, 251-52.
176 viewed as a nation, so their treaties could stand, and Georgia law did not have bearing over them.
This was a momentous decision, but also one that was caught up in Federalist sentiment that led
leaders from Georgia to deny the case’s outcome and for President Jackson to declare, “John
Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”
As the U.S. government became more firmly committed to a policy of Indian removal, missionary agencies too applied their experiences from the past decades and worked on focusing their endeavors for the sake of greater results. For example, the ABCFM had twenty years of experience when new Brethren leadership took over in 1830 and began to create policy in contradistinction to the previously held goal of Anglicization, Christianization, and civilization.
The 1832 Annual Report evidences this with new instructions to Sherman Hall and William T.
Boutwell, recently commissioned missionaries heading to the Ojibwa in the Northwest Territory.
“The mission you contemplate will differ in many of its circumstances from any of those heretofore established by the Board among the Indians.”488 Specifically, the great agricultural
and mechanical projects funded by the government were no more:
These establishments, generally, in cases where they have been connected with the stations, have contributed little to the diminution of expense, while they have rendered large mission families necessary, given to the stations an appearance of wealth and show, occasioned much perplexity and labor, and not unfrequently have been the occasion of reproach and objection on the part of opposers.489
Large secular establishments were no longer an option, for they came with great costs and little
in the way of results. In this way, both the government and the missionaries wanted to move
away from that which Porter denounced, showing that Porter’s characterization of the
488 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Read at the Twenty-Third Annual Meeting: Which Was Held in the City of New York, Oct. 3, 4, and 5, 1832 (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1832), 163. 489 Ibid., 164.
177 missionaries’ motives was wrong.
In essence, the agency desired to bring its focus back to its foundational aim: “The great
object of your mission, the object never to be for a moment lost sight of, is to preach the gospel
of Christ directly to old and young, with the intention and earnest desire of being made the
instruments of their speedy conversion.”490 There was one goal: the proclamation of the Gospel,
divorced from any attached notions of civilization that were required for evangelization.
The missionary shift reemphasized the lack of a cohesive identity. While Americans were used to fusing religion and government and didn't stop after disestablishment, the aims of the government did not consistently align with those of the missionaries. As William McLaughlin put it, the missionaries could rise above politics, having the ability to “ask not whether removal was expedient, feasible, desirable as a matter of national welfare or the welfare of the Cherokees, but whether it was right and wrong.”491 Many struggled with considerations of what belonged to
Caesar and what belonged to God, and individual missionaries also had to take into consideration
the position held by their sending board. But their primary focus was on the Indians, the people
whom they had dedicated their lives to serve.492
******
Early policy regarding Native Americans reflected concurrent goals in the federal
government and missionary groups, so coordination was natural and efficacious. As federal
strategy began to shift, missionary groups generally did not agree with the change, and
cooperation turned into competing aims. Amidst all of this, it is clear that federal action echoed
490 Ibid., 165. 491 McLoughlin, Cherokees and Missionaries, 242. 492 McLoughlin is not as positive in his appraisal of the missionary’s response. He sees them too confused by the issues to make a decision and publicly not making any choice. The example of Worchester and Butler, though only two, speak against this and are representative of missionaries’ Indian-focused advocacy. Cf. Ibid., 242-46.
178 the underlying ethos that saw anglo Christianity and civilization as one and the same.
The use of federal funds to promote Christian missionary work occurred at a time when the
young nation was trying to establish its own identity. Gone was the easy reliance on imperial
powers. There was an urgency about this, for the success of the United States as a country was far from clear, and citizens needed to rally around a common goal. Holding up the U.S. as a beacon of both Christianity and civilization to the world, including to their native neighbors, was a useful method by which the country could consider their work as good through the assimilation and even expulsion of Native Americans from their lands.
179 EPILOGUE
This project has shown how the federal government, in the development of its
institutions, interpreted the concept of disestablishment from the ratification of the Constitution to the middle of the nineteenth century. Generally speaking, both church and state found that
when their aims were the same, it was appropriate to support the other. Disagreements over the
inclusion of a wider variety of religious traditions led to narrow challenges rather than larger
arguments against programs as a whole. It was not until the 1850s that political disagreement led
to a sustained attack against federal support for religion and the clearest instantiation of such
support: chaplaincy programs.
The 1832 election of the Catholic priest Charles Pise as chaplain to the Senate started a
wave of resistance against the congressional chaplaincy that, when coupled with the appointment
of Catholic chaplains McElroy and Rey to the crusading army in Mexico a decade later, became
an assault against all federally-funded chaplaincies. From 1849 to 1854, Congress received
numerous petitions opposing the institution of the chaplaincy both in the military and in
Congress. Christopher Lund identifies sixty-one mentions of petitions sent to the House of
Representatives and eighteen mentions of petitions sent to the Senate, as seen in each body’s
journal. Each mention could refer to more than one petition; one example mentions sixty
petitions.493
In general, claims from more narrow groups like the Baptists or secularists were joined
with anti-Catholic sentiment and the broader, increasingly divisive issue of slavery. Indeed,
congressional chaplains used their position to wage proxy battles both for and against slavery.
Many felt that using the position to argue over the contested issue diminished the role of the
493 Lund, Congressional Chaplaincies, 1196-97n126-128.
180 chaplaincy, especially if the chaplain was criticizing one’s own position. This also explains why
a majority of the petitions critical of the chaplaincy came from slave-holding states.494
Petitioners used the First Amendment to the Constitution as they criticized the
appropriateness of the chaplaincies. One such petition in 1850 contended “that the office of
chaplain in the army, navy, at West Point, at Indian stations, and in both houses of Congress be
abolished,” arguing that the chaplaincy violates the constitutional principle of the separation of
church and state.495 Besides ideology, general arguments against the chaplaincy programs
included the ever-present issue of cost. Employing thirty chaplains for the Army, twenty-four for
the Navy, and two for Congress added up to an annual cost of more than a quarter of a million
dollars each year.
While a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the petitions against the chaplaincy is
deserving of more in-depth research, of greater interest here is the responses from Congress.496
Formal reaction came in the form of three congressional reports: from the House Committee on
the Judiciary, the Thompson Report in 1850 and the Meacham Report in 1854; and from the
Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the Badger Report in 1853.497 Each report explores the issue
494 This also speaks to the true rationale for the criticism. While some believed that those who were opposed to the chaplaincy were “avowed their disbelief in all revealed religion,” a modern analysis by Herman Norton sees in the memorialists “the continuing activity of those who opposed war, and especially ‘Mr. Polk and his war.’” (Norton, 78.) Norton notes that the same groups opposed the Military Academy before the war, and that the strongest memorials came from Tennessee, where Whig groups tried to discredit the former President and his party. 495 Slomovitz, Fighting Rabbis, 6. 496 One should also note the great disagreements on the issue in the general public. Perhaps the most prominent defender of the chaplancy programs was the Episopalian layman Lorenzo Dow Johnson. Johnson wrote a number of pamphlets in support of the chaplaincy including Chaplains of the General Government, with Objections to their Employment Considered (1856) and An Address to the Pastors and People of these United States on the Chaplaincy of the General Government Viewed in its Connection with Extending the Redeemer’s Name in the World (1857). Johnson recognized the problems inherent in the chaplaincy. For example, “a naval chaplain can do all that the ship’s rules require of him, and yet have very little love for doing good. He can make himself an acceptable chaplain without being acceptable to God.” Johnson’s support was tireless nonetheless. 497 H.R. REP. No. 31-171 (1850); H.R. REP. No. 33-124 (1854); S. REP. No. 32-376 (1853).
181 differently, but all three come to the same conclusion: there is no constitutional violation in the employment of clergy and funding of the chaplaincies.
The Thompson report argued that it was right for Congress to provide for the appointment of chaplains for the military just as they make provisions for surgeons or medical
staff. It also provided an interpretation of the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment. In
essence, the Clause did not infer the removal of religion. Instead, it stood against an established
religion: “…something defined, distinctive, and wearing the same form and peculiarities
everywhere, and by whomsoever administered. It admits of no diversity in feature or substance.”
According to the committee, the employment of chaplains did not match the characteristics of a
religious establishment. The report also spoke highly of the need for Christian chaplains for their
good effects:
The spirit of Christianity has ever had a tendency to mitigate the rigor of war, if as yet it has not been entirely able to prevent it; to lead to acts of charity and kindness; and to humanize the heart. It was true philanthropy, therefore, to introduce this mitigating influence where, of all other places, its fruits were to be more beneficially realized, namely into the Army and Navy; and to abolish it, in this Christian age of the world, would seem like retrograding rather than advancing civilization.
The report also found no issue with the employment of chaplains for the houses of Congress. “A
due regard for religion,” the report stated, “is the sentiment of our country; and in accordance
with this sentiment, an acknowledgment … of their gratitude for Divine Providence … at the
instance of some eminently spiritual and good man, chosen by their representatives, has received
their sanction for many years, as peculiarly proper and right.” It was also determined that cost
was not a true concern: “As a burden on the treasury, it is certainly very light, and could not, if
182 apportioned among the people, be more than the two-h'undredth part of a cent to each one of them.”498
That the report assumes a “Christian age of the world” deserves additional consideration.
In an era when westward expansion and millennial fervor were bound together into the cause of manifest destiny, not open for debate was the influence of Christianity upon the nation and its civilizing influence on the world. If American was going to grow its empire, this report argued,
Christianity was assumed to be a fundamental part of that expansion.
The Badger Report focused on congressional chaplains and took a more philosophical tact, analyzing the phrase “establishment of religion.” For the authors, the phrase was not intended “to spread over all the public authorities and the whole public action of the nation the dead and revolting spectacle of atheistical apathy.” The conclusion was clear: “It is not seen, therefore, how the institution of chaplains is justly obnoxious to the reproach of invading religious liberty in the widest sense of that term. … there is no establishment of religion in creating the office of chaplain.” It is true that the chaplains were all from Christian denominations, but “that is not in consequence of any legal right or privilege, but by the voluntary choice of those who have the power of appointment.”499
The Meacham report was the longest (the first two were both less than five pages; this report, ten) and again addressed chaplaincies in Congress, the military, and at Indian Stations
(referring to the frontier forts). The report addresses a distinct argument: instead of appealing only to the Establishment clause, the petitioners pointed to the prohibition of a religious test for elected politicians (article 6, section 3). The report dismissed this claim quickly: “Every one
498 H.R. REP. No. 31-171 (1850), 2-5. 499 S. REP. No. 32-376 (1853), 4, 2.
183 must perceive that this refers to a class of persons entirely distinct from chaplains.” Addressing
the issue of establishment once again, the work provides a historical account of chaplains in the
military and in Congress. In support they pointed to both Madison and Monroe, who never
“uttered a word or gave a vote to indicate that the appointment of chaplains was
unconstitutional.” The report concluded by arguing against the union of church and state as “one of the worst for the religious and political interests of the nation that could possibly overtake us.”
But there was no union of church and state: the report noted the many different denominations in the country as well as the move away from the union of church and state at the state level.
According to the committee, chaplains did not challenge disestablishment.500
If the petitioners expected support from their congressmen, they were sorely
disappointed. An act passed on 3 March 1855 included chaplains with other members of the
military who were given additional pay and 160 acres of land. James Shields, a Senator from
Illinois (he served three different states as their senator) spoke in favor of the motion: “I can
testify from my own knowledge that some of these chaplains hazarded their lives as much as any
soldier in the army… They are as meritorious as any class to whom the benefits of the bill are to
be extended.”501 The office of the chaplaincy appeared to be even more firmly established after
the wave of petitions.
In the wake of such support, it is notable that the end of the 1850s marked the only time
that Congress did not employ chaplains. Apparently, the Constitutional question of the
chaplaincy was much clearer than the political reality. Generally speaking, the chaplain for each
house would be chosen within the first week of a session. The Thirty-Fourth Congress met
500 H.R. REP. No. 33-124 (1854), 1, 5. 501 Qtd. in Norton, Struggling for Recognition, 79.
184 beginning December 3, 1855, but nothing was discussed until January. On 23 January 1856
Representative Dowdell made a resolution, “First, that the daily sessions of this House be opened
with prayer; and Second, that the ministers of the gospel in this city are hereby requested to
attend, and alternately perform this solemn duty.”502 The resolution passed, but the chaplaincy
was restored the following month when Daniel Waldo, a ninety-three year old veteran of the
Revolutionary War, was chosen. The Thirty-fifth Congress had no chaplains for either the House
or the Senate; both used local ministers for the opening prayers. But the Thirty-sixth Congress readopted the institutional chaplaincy model, and from 1860 on the position has remained.
Considering strong statements in support of the institution just years before, what is to be made of this abrupt turn both away from and then back towards the chaplaincy? This event makes more sense in light of the broader dysfunction in Congress. The Thirty-Fourth Congress
required 122 votes and more than a month to choose a Speaker; even using local ministers for
prayer was controversial because, as Representative Stevens argued, “I do not think we can do
anything in the way of business before we organize.”503 When the chaplaincy was seen as a
proxy forum to debate the issue of slavery, to function without was considered to be the easier
route.
With the restoration of the congressional chaplaincies in 1860, all federal chaplaincies
were firmly established in their support from Congress, and all the more after the criticisms of
the 1850s. This does not mean that they were organized. It was not until the Civil War that
organizational standards and requirements for service as a military chaplain were put in place. To
Budd, “the evidence points to a sixty-year period from the Civil War through World War I as
502 Congressional Globe 34.282. 503 Congressional Globe 34.282.
185 being the most critical time for chaplain professionalization. All that went before was primarily
prolegomenon; all since has been largely postscript.”504 The Civil War was also a time of
theological crisis as both North and South claimed the mantle of God being on their side.505
Army chaplains were not formally part of the military organization by 1860; Navy
chaplains were commissioned but had little real authority or organizational backing. But the
exponential growth of regiments in the Civil War required additional chaplains. Lincoln’s
General Orders 15 and 16 on 4 May 1861 authorized the appointment of a chaplain for each
regiment, with congressional acts later that summer that provided for their pay. Chaplaincy
gained all the more relevance during the Civil War because of the underlying religious issues
surrounding slavery.
Greater diversity (outside of white Protestantism) in the chaplain corps also began in the
Civil War. During the conflict three Jewish rabbis served as chaplains either at military hospitals
or with a regiment. Other minority groups were included as well: Henry M. Turner, paster of
Israel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., was appointed as the first black
chaplain in November 1863.506 The Civil War was also unique for its first female chaplain, Ella
Elvira Hobart Gibson, a minister with the Religio-Philosophical Society of St.Charles, Illinois
(though she was not officially commissioned as a chaplain until her posthumous appointment by
George W. Bush in 2001).507 Greater diversity is seen in the chaplaincy programs over the
504 Budd, xii. 505 For more on this see Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, The Steven and Janice Brose Lectures in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 506 Slomovitz, 23. 507 Stephen W. Stathis and Daniel Canfield Strizek, Ella Elvira Hobart Gibson: Nineteenth-Century Teacher, Lecturer, Author, Poet, Feminist, Spiritualist, Free Thinker, and America's First Woman Military Chaplain, vol. 58 (Oxford University Press, 2016).
186 ensuing century.508
508 On religious diversity in the modern chaplain corps, see Ronit Yael Stahl, Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
187 APPENDIX A
CHURCH SERVICES IN THE U.S. CAPITOL
Date Speaker(s) Sermon Subject/Title Source 19 June Mr. Ralph n/a Service mentioned in the 1795 Federal Orrey on 2 July 1795; seen on 19 June in Impartial Observer and Washington Advisor 11 Jan 1801 Thomas Linking Biblical prophecy to Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: Claggett, the French Revolution; The Art of Power, 333 Episcopal according to Roger Griswold, Thomas Claggett wrote in a bishop of MD was criticizing the French 18 Feb 1801 letter to James philosophers (and thus Camp about "a course of Jefferson) Sermons which I have delivered on Sundays in the Capitol on the truth of the Divine system." 4 Jul 1801 David Austin, https://founders.archives.gov/ congregational documents/Jefferson/01-34- minister 02-0297 03 Jan 1802 John Leland, Invited by Jefferson to speak Pasley, "The Cheese and the Baptist minister Words," 31-36 Dreisbach, “Mr. Jefferson, a Mammoth Cheese . . .,” 737- 738, 741-744. The information about the text for Leland’s sermon comes from Federalist U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts, Manasseh Cutler. See Manasseh Cutler to Dr. Joseph Torrey, 4 January 1802, in William Parker Cutler and Julia Perkins Cutler, Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev Manasseh Cutler, LL D, 2:66-67. 10 Jan 1802 Mr. Austin Cutler, 59
188 Date Speaker(s) Sermon Subject/Title Source
17 Jan 1802 Mr. Parkinson Cutler, 60 24 Jan 1802 Mr. Parkinson Cutler, 60 31 Jan 1802 Mr. McCormick Forebearance Cutler, 61 7 Feb 1802 Mr. McCormick Cutler, 72 14 Feb 1802 Mr. Gant Cutler, 72 21 Mar 1802 Mr. Gant "By the terrors of the law we Cutler, 104 persuade men" 4 Apr 1802 Mr. Parkinson Cutler, 105 11 Apr 1802 Dr. Smith Cutler, 106 18 Apr 1802 Mr. McCormick Cutler, 106 25 Apr 1802 Mr. Parkinson Cutler, 106 2 May 1802 Mr. Parkinson Lot's leaving Sodom - "Flee Cutler, 107 for thy life, look not back, nor tarry in all the plain" 12 Dec 1802 Mr. Gant (AM) Cutler, 113 Mr. McCormick (PM) 26 Dec 1802 Mr. Hargrove, Cutler, 113 Swedenborgian from Baltimore 27 Dec 1802 Mr. Hargrove Cutler, 114 (Mon PM) 9 Jan 1803 Mr. Laurie Cutler, 116 30 Jan 1803 Mr. Willard, Cutler, 116-7 Episcopalian from Portsmouth NH 27 Feb 1803 Mr. Campbell, "Perfecting Holiness in the Cutler, 118 Carlisle, PA fear of the Lord" 23 Oct 1803 Dr. Gant JQA, 1.265 Cutler, 137
189 Date Speaker(s) Sermon Subject/Title Source 30 Oct 1803 Mr. Rattoon JQA, 1.268 (JQA) or Cutler, 141 Latoone, an Episcopalian clergyman from Baltimore 20 Nov 1803 Mr. Laurie (at Cutler, p143 Treasury) 15 Jan 1804 Mr. Lawrie (at JQA, 1.289 Treasury) 5 Feb 1804 Walter Addison, Elizabeth Murray, Two Episcopal Hundred Years Ago of the clergyman Life and Times of the Rev. Walter Dulany Addison 1769- 1848, 146-149; JQA memoirs, 5 Feb 1804 (in microfilm) 26 Feb 1804 Bishop Coke, "foolishness of preaching" Cutler, p155 "head man of Methodists" 25 Mar 1804 Mr. Parkinson JQA, 1.311 11 Nov 1804 Mr. McCormick McCormick: Charity - good Cutler, 171-2 (AM) samaritan Mr. Spear (3pm, Spear - remembering the court room, Sabbath from Greensburg WV) 2 Dec 1804 Mr. McCormick Cutler, 172 9 Dec 1804 Mr. McCormick Profane Swearing - "Thou Cutler, 173 shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" 16 Dec 1804 Mr. Glendy, Live peaceably as much as Cutler, 173-4 Presbyterian possible with all men from Baltimore 23 Dec 1804 Mr. Laurie (in Cutler, 174 the Treasury)
190 Date Speaker(s) Sermon Subject/Title Source 25 Dec 1804 John Hargrove, A Sermon on the Second Baltimore Coming of Christ, and on the Swedenborgian Last Judgment Minister 30 Dec 1804 Mr. Laurie Cutler, 175 27 Jan 1805 Mr. Laurie Cutler, 182 10 Feb 1805 Mr. McCormick Cutler, 183 17 Feb 1805 Mr. Laurie Cutler, 183 12 Jan 1806 Dorothy Ripley, Dorothy Ripley, The Bank of British Faith and Works United, 2nd Methodist ed., 244-247 missionary
29 May James Observance of the Sabbath Smith, First 40 Years, 16-17. 1812 Breckenridge, The "cloths of the Jews on Diary of Augustus John pastor of First their leaving Egypt lasted 40 Foster Presbyterian years" Church, DC 13 Feb 1820 Mr. Edward 1 Cor 7:29 JQA 4.525 Everett, Professor of Greek at Harvard 12 Mar 1820 Dr. Allison Acts 24:25 JQA 5.18 7 Jan 1821 Mr. McIlvaine, Matt 16:26 JQA 5.230-231 from an Episcopalian church in Georgetown 23 Dec 1821 Jared Sparks, JQA 5.458-9 Unitarian minister 8 Jan 1826 John England, The works of the Right Rev. RC bishop John England, 4:172-190; JQA 7.101-102
191 Date Speaker(s) Sermon Subject/Title Source 7 Jan 1827 Harriet 2 Sam 23.3-4 13 Jan 1827 article in Livermore National Intelligencer 17 Feb 1828 Mr. Gallaudet, Rom 15:21 JQA 7.437 founder of the schools for deaf and dumb 9 Mar 1828 Elizabeth Eph 5:1-2 JQA 7.470-471 Robson 22 Feb 1832 Mr. Durbin Rev 4:11 JQA 8.479 12 Apr 1840 Mr. Cookman Acts 5:29-32 JQA 10.258-259 26 Apr 1840 Mr. Cookman Psalm 72.16-20 JQA 10.275-276 19 Jul 1840 Mr. Cookman Ecc 9:11 JQA 10.338
28 Feb 1841 Mr. Cookman, Rev 20:11-13 JQA 10.434-435 Methodist 23 Jan 1842 Mr. Maffitt Job 11:7-9 - the necessity of JQA 11.69-70 divine revelation 3 Apr 1842 Dr. Elaphalet Matt 16:26 JQA 11.120-21 Nott, President of the Methodist Union College of Schenectady, New York 10 Apr 1842 Mr. Maffitt sermon on humanity and JQA 11.121 divinity of Christ 22 May Mr. Maffitt Luke 15:7 JQA 11.160 1842 29 May Mr. Maffitt Phil 3:20 JQA 11.164 1842 5 Jun 1842 Mr. Talmage, 1 John 2:15 JQA 11.169 president of a college in GA
192 Date Speaker(s) Sermon Subject/Title Source 19 Jun 1842 Rev. Mr. Edgar Matt 6:6 JQA 11.180-181 of Nashville, TN 3 Jul 1842 Unnamed Heb 10:9 JQA 11.196 10 Jul 1842 Mr Maffitt Rev 19:6 JQA 11.202 14 Aug 1842 Mr. Maffitt Luke 10:42 JQA 11.236 Dec 13 1857 Rev. Dr. George Deut 33:29 Cummins “the hand of God in the history of this country”
12 Feb 1865 Henry Highland Henry Highland Garnet, Garnet, pastor of Memorial Discourse, 73 the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC 1865-1868 First http://www.firstuccdc.org/our Congregational -history/ Church
193 APPENDIX B
CONGRESSIONAL CHAPLAINS UP TO THE YEAR 1860
Senate Chaplains
Appointment Chaplain Denomination Notes 25 Apr 1789 Samuel Provoost Episcopalian First Bishop of NY 9 Dec 1790 William White Episcopalian First Bishop of PA 27 Nov 1800 Thomas John Claggett Episcopalian First Bishop of MD 9 Dec 1801 Edward Gantt Episcopalian 7 Nov 1804 Alexander Thomas Episcopalian McCormick 4 Dec 1805 Edward Gantt Episcopalian 3 Dec 1806 John Johnson Sayrs Episcopalian 10 Nov 1807 A.T. McCormick Episcopalian On 29 Oct 1807 Edward Gantt was elected but declined to serve. 10 Nov 1808 Robert Elliott Presbyterian 24 May 1809 James Jones Wilmer Episcopalian 5 Dec 1809 Obadiah Bruen Brown Baptist 12 Dec 1810 Walter Dulaney Addison Episcopalian 13 Nov 1811 John Brackenridge Presbyterian 27 Sept 1814 Jesse Lee Methodist 8 Dec 1815 John Glendy Presbyterian 16 Dec 1816 Sereno Edward Dwight Congregationalist On 6 Dec 1816 John Glendie was elected but declined to serve. 9 Dec 1817 William Dickinson Episcopalian Hawley 19 Nov 1818 John Clark Presbyterian
194 Appointment Chaplain Denomination Notes 9 Dec 1819 Reuben Post Presbyterian 17 Nov 1820 William Ryland Methodist 9 Dec 1822 Charles Petit McIlvaine Episcopalian 10 Dec 1823 William Staughton Baptist 14 Dec 1824 Charles Petit McIlvaine Episcopalian 12 Dec 1825 William Staughton Baptist 8 Dec 1826 William Ryland Methodist 14 Dec 1829 Henry Van Dyke Johns Episcopalian 19 Dec 1831 John Price Durbin Methodist 11 Dec 1832 Charles Constantine Pise Roman Catholic 10 Dec 1833 Frederick Winslow Episcopalian Hatch 23 Dec 1835 Edward Young Higbee Episcopalian 28 Dec 1836 John Reinhard Goodman Episcopalian 11 Sept 1837 Henry Slicer Methodist 31 Dec 1839 George Grimston Methodist Cookman 12 June 1841 Septimus Tustin Presbyterian 16 Dec 1846 Henry Slicer Methodist 9 Jan 1850 Clement Moore Butler Episcopalian There being a tie vote, Vice President Millard Fillmore voted for C.M. Butler and broke the tie. 7 Dec 1853 Henry Slicer Methodist 4 Dec 1855 Henry Clay Dean Methodist 8 Dec 1856 Stephen P. Hill Baptist 15 Dec 1859 Phineas Densmore Presbyterian Gurley
195 House Chaplains
Appointment Chaplain Denomination Notes 1 May 1789 William Linn Presbyterian 4 Jan 1790 Samuel Blair Presbyterian 5 Nov 1792 Ashbel Green Presbyterian 17 Nov 1800 Thomas Lyell Methodist 7 Dec 1801 William Parkinson Baptist 5 Nov 1804 James Laurie Presbyterian 1 Dec 1806 Robert Elliot Presbyterian 26 Oct 1807 Obadiah Bruen Brown Baptist 22 May 1809 Jesse Lee Methodist 4 Nov 1811 Nicholas Snethen Methodist 2 Nov 1812 Jesse Lee Methodist 19 Sept 1814 Obadiah Bruen Brown Baptist 4 Dec 1815 Spencer Houghton Cone Baptist 2 Dec 1816 Burgess Allison Baptist 18 Nov 1820 John Nicholson Campbell Presbyterian 3 Dec 1821 Jared Sparks Unitarian 2 Dec 1822 John Brackenridge Presbyterian 1 Dec 1823 Henry Biddleman Bascom Methodist 6 Dec 1824 Reuben Post Presbyterian 6 Dec 1830 Ralph Randolph Gurley Presbyterian 5 Dec 1831 Reuben Post Presbyterian 3 Dec 1832 William Hammett Methodist 2 Dec 1833 Thomas H. Stockton Methodist 1 Dec 1834 Edward Dunlap Smith Presbyterian 7 Dec 1835 Thomas H. Stockton Methodist 5 Dec 1836 Oliver C. Comstock Baptist
196 Appointment Chaplain Denomination Notes 4 Sept 1837 Septimus Tustin Presbyterian 4 Dec 1837 Levi R. Reese Methodist 2 Dec 1839 Joshua Bates Congregationalist 7 Dec 1840 Thomas W. Braxton Baptist 31 May 1841 John W. French Episcopalian 6 Dec 1841 John Newland Maffit Methodist 5 Dec 1842 Frederick T. Tiffany Episcopalian 4 Dec 1843 Isaac S. Tinsley Baptist 4 Dec 1844 William M. Daily Methodist 1 Dec 1845 William Henry Milburn Methodist 7 Dec 1846 William T.S. Sprole Presbyterian 6 Dec 1847 Ralph Gurley Presbyterian 1 Dec 1851 Littleton F. Morgan Methodist 6 Dec 1852 James Gallagher Presbyterian 5 Dec 1853 William Henry Milburn Methodist 21 Feb 1856 Daniel Waldo Waldo was chosen after a month when local ministers would offer the opening prayer in the absence of a chaplain.
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215 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Daniel Roeber studies the religious and intellectual history of the United States. His
particular interests include the intersection of religion and politics; modern global
evangelicalism; and the pedagogy of world religions courses. In addition to his studies at Florida
State University, Daniel has earned degrees from Cedarville University (B.A., 2005) and Dallas
Theological Seminary (Th.M., 2012). Daniel has taught students at the middle school, high school, undergraduate, and adult continuing education levels. Previous teaching locations include
Chengdu International School, the Dallas Theological Seminary Lay Institute, Tallahassee
Community College, Florida State Unviersity, and Kaplan Test Prep.
216