Freedom Of Religion Quotes
This is a very Jeffersonian type statement.
Later, as President in 1811, Madison vetoed a bill granting Federal land to build a Baptist church in the Mississippi territory.
Opponents of the strict separation of church and state use this quotation to support their view. However, Story herein describes public sentiment, not what was passed and ratified in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. See {614309} and {614310} for his statements from the same work that show that there was no question in his mind but that church and state are separated by the Constitution and the First Amendment.
Falwell was a religious fundamentalist who advocated religion vigerously participating in politics.
Throughout the history of American Slavery, the Southern apologists for slavery have accused abolitionists and anyone opposed to slavery of being Communists, Atheists, or any other group that was generally unpopular in the day. This is one of the early instances where that heinous practice was started. However it continued and became especially virulent, in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s where anyone who opposed segregation was accused by Southern Segregationists of being Communists and Atheists as well as other unpleasant epithets. Most religious Americans opposed slavery in the 1850s but there are some in the South, like this Preacher, who seemed totally ignorant of the strong pro abolitionist views of the many religious leader abolitionists in the North and a few in the South.
