TJ and the Liberties: That infamous letter
A letter such as the one sent by the Danbury Baptist Association to a sitting president needed to be answered. When I first read it, I was a little confused because the letter doesn't seem to indicate that the writers knew anything about the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment, which were ratified a decade before they contacted President Jefferson. Now I wonder if they were testing the President. How committed was he to religious freedom? After all, his politics trended to a "states' rights" perspective. Now that he held the president, would he commit to defending religious rights for everyone as part of the duties of his office, or might he side with states that had enacted establishment legislation and defer to them in the hopes that they, like his home state, might see the light and disestablish their Christian denominations? I've not read widely enough to settle these questions. But keep them in mind when you consider the contents of the letter. Take a min