Free Exercise Quotes
This is the first American ordinance of freedom of conscience. Note that it only provided freedom of religion for Christians. However, that was an important first step as different sects of Christianity had been persecuting each other whenever the opportunity arose.
The Confederacy was looking to develop sympathy for the their cause, even within the Catholic Church which many Southern Protestants were very prejudiced against. Davis, himself, however, had attended Catholic schools as a youth and almost converted to Catholicism. Reading this letter today we are fascinated by the fact that Davis could ensure the Pope that “everyone” in the Confederacy could enjoy “temorial” rights and also the “free exercise of his religion.” Blacks, a very large proportion of the Southern population, could of course enjoy neither. Davis did not even cover himself by saying :every citizen”. He said “everyone” an absurdity even then, but Jefferson, an otherwise intelligent man, was so prejudiced that he did not consciously realize that he was lying to the Pope whom he respected greatly.
This is one of the key documents showing the “wall of separation of church and state” was in use in early America. Almost 200 years later the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court seemed ignorant of this communications. See William Rehnquist: {373663}
Note that early constitutional experts assumed that one of the President’s roles was to be non partisan and control partisanship. Note the phrase ‘prevent the artifices of party’. The early founders were very wary of political parties of ‘factions’ as Madison called them. However, most were extremely partisan although in the Presidency partisanship was toned down by George Washington but after him, partisan ship became the norm.
This was one of the strongest statements of religious freedom in America prior to the Bill of Rights which came over a decade later.
