One Nation, Under Gods

by Manseau, Peter

  “The Atheist is a man who doubts of the King’s Right”: “Of Spurious and Genuine Devotion,” Boston Evening Post, August 17, 1752.

  “Historians Roger Finke and Rodney Stark put the percentage of religious adherence among residents of the North American English colonies at just 17%”: See Finke and Stark, The Churching of America, 1776–2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 16. This accounting of religious adherents is also cited by Noll, America’s God, 166.

  “the whole country would soon be Unitarian”: Thomas Jefferson, letter to Timothy Pickering, Esq., Monticello, February 27, 1821.

  “All sects are mixed as well as all nations”: J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (New York: Fox, Duffield & Company, 1904), 66.

  “the first periodical in the colonies”; “is determined to proceed inawed”: Sedgwick, 74–75.

  “monster tyranny”: William Livingston, quoted Milton Klein’s introduction to Livingston’s collected essays, The Independent Reflector Or, Weekly Essays on Sundry Important Subjects More Particularly Adapted to the Province of New York. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 26.

  “A printer ought not publish every thing offered him”: The Journals of Hugh Gaine, Printer: Biography and bibliography (New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1902), 12.

  “The importance attached to this journal”: Sedgwick, 76.

  “Some think him a Tindal”: Edwin Brockholst Livingston, The Livingstons of Livingston Manor (New York: Knickerbock Press, 1910), 169.

  “an Atheist, others as a Deist, and a third sort as a Presbyterian”; “I believe the Scriptures”: Sedgwick, 86.

  “the wicked triumvirate of New York”: Rev. Samuel Johnson, quoted in The Livingstons of Livingston Manor, 168.

  “with a rancor, a malevolence, and an acrimony”: Thomas Jones, quoted in “Presbyterianism and the American Revolution in the Middle Colonies,” Joseph S. Tiedemann, Church History 74, no. 2 (June 2005): 306–44.

  “the applause of the mob”: Cadwallader Colden, Colden Letter Books, Volume 9 (New York: New York Historical Society, 1877), 187.

  “The right of self defence is not a donation of law”: Livingston, quoted in Woodbridge Riley, American Philosophy: The Early Schools, Volume 1 (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1907), 28.

  “viciously radical in his rhetoric:” John M. Mulder, “William Livingston: Propagandist against Episcopacy,” Journal of Presbyterian History 54 (spring 1976): 83.

  “Clamour is at present our best policy”: Livingston, quoted in Sedgwick, 136.

  Notes to Chapter 9

  “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God”: In common usage in the years before and after the Revolution, the phrase was taken as a slogan by both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who proposed it as the motto of the nation.

  “my mind is my own church”: Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (New York: Truth Seeker Company, 1898), 6.

  “with a few phrases excepted”: Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (New York: G. N. Devries, 1827), 18.

  “Is it not a species of blasphemy”: Thomas Paine, “Examination of the Prophecies,” in Life and Writings of Thomas Paine, Volume 7 (New York: Vincent Parke and Company), 252.

  “A situation, similar to present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now”: Paine, Common Sense, quoted in Noll, America’s God, 84.

  “dirty little atheist”: Theodore Roosevelt, Gouverneur Morris (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1888), 289.

  “disinfectant”: Noll, America’s God, 83.

  “I have examined the major Part of the Carolina Indico entered this year”: Moses Lindo, South Carolina Gazette, August 19, 1756, quoted in Barnat Elzas, A Sketch of the Most Prominent Jew in Charleston in Provincial Days (Charleston: Charleston News and Courier, 1903), 1.

  “are dispersed over the whole world”; “keep up correspondence with one another”: Sir John Barnard, quoted in Sheldon J. Godfrey and Judy Godfrey, Search Out the Land: The Jews and the Growth of Equality in British Colonial America, 1740–1867 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 1995), 53.

  “horror and execration”: Charles Daly, The Settlement of the Jews in North America (New York: Philip Cohen, 1893), 153.

  “All city and country gentlemen”: advertisement, New-York Mercury, January 26, 1761.

  “Beaver and Deerskins, Smal fur at New York Market price”: advertisement, The New-York Gazette, August 17, 1761.

  “a young negro wench of good character”: advertisement, The New-York Gazette, February 9, 1767.

  “Peace to my beloved master” and subsequent lines from the Phillips letter: Jacob Marcus, “Jews and American Revolution: A Bicentennial Documentary,” American Jewish Archives 27, no. 2 (November 1975), 130–32.

  “The kindness of our little friend”: James Madison, quoted in J. H. Hollander’s notes to Herbert Adams and Jared Sparks, “A Sketch of Haym Solomon,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society (1894), 10.

  “We have therefore to desire”: Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789: October 1, 1779–March 31 1780, Volume 14, (Washington: Library of Congress, 1987), 264.

  “as sudden as a clap of thunder”; “The riches of St. Eustachius”; “a vast magazine of military stores of all kinds”: J. F. Jameson, “St Eustatius in the American Revolution”, The American Historical Review 8 (1903): 683.

  “You can have no idea, sir”: John Adams to Robert Livingston, February 21, 1782, The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Volume 3 (Washington: John C. Rives, 1857).

  “What blockheads”; “Upon every dispatch we receive”: Godfrey Basil Mundy, Life of Rodney (London: James Carpenter & Son, 1836), 149.

  “nest of villains”; “Commerce, commerce alone”: Sir George Rodney to Philip Stephens, Barbados, June 29, 1781, The Life and Correspondence of the Late Admiral Lord Rodney, edited by Godfrey Basil Mundy (London: J. Murray, 1830), 117.

  “one of the people called Jews of the City of Philadelphia”: Jonas Phillips to President and Members of the Convention, available online at http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a6_3s11.html.

  Notes to Chapter 10

  “he kept his troops impeccably in order”: Federal Republican, August 30, 1814.

  “tremendous and unusual”: Description of the day’s weather can be found in the Boston Daily Advertiser, September 1, 1814.

  “magnificent black horse”: Jon Latimer, 1812: War with America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 328.

  “hogshead of rum”: Hallowell Gazette, October 5, 1814.

  “Such a war God considers as his own cause”: John H. Stevens, “The duty of union in a just war,” online at http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark%3A%2F13960%2Ft50g43w9r;page=root;view=image;size=100;seq=11;num=5.

  “At this moment… your minds are harassed and your bosoms tortured”: David Osgood, A solemn protest against the late declaration of war, in a discourse, delivered on the next Lord’s day after the tidings of it were received (Cambridge, MA: Hilliard and Metcalf, 1812), 3.

  “the law of nature and nations”: Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Baldwin, quoted in William Dawson Johnston, History of the Library of Congress: Volume I, 1800–1864 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1904), 36.

  “I learn from the newspapers that the Vandalism”: Thomas Jefferson to Samuel H. Smith, September 21, 1814.

  “something analytical, something chronological”; Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, quoted in Johnston, 148.

  “From these three fountains… flow these three emanations”: Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 97.

  “a blueprint of his own mind”: Arthur Bestor, quoted in Thomas Jefferson’s Library: A Catalogue with the Entries in His Own Order, edited by James Gilreath and Douglas L. Wilson (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1989), 3.

  “because of the medley it presents
to the mind”: Johnston, 144.

  For more information on the “copy of the Quran that he had purchased”: See Kevin Hayes, “How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur’an,” Early American Literature 39, no. 2 (2004): 247–61.

  “Providence has reserved”: George Sale, The Koran: Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammad (London: L. Hawes, W. Clarke, R. Collins, 1764), viii.

  “The idolatry of the Arabs”: Ibid., 20.

  “Mr. Jefferson’s Library”: Federal Republican, October 11, 1814.

  “Congress are about purchasing”: Salem Gazette, October 21, 1814.

  “To be acquainted with the various laws and constitutions of civilized nations”: George Sale’s introduction to The Koran: Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammed (Philadelphia: J. W. Moore, 1856), iv.

  “We understand that Mr. Jefferson’s invaluable collection”: “Jefferson’s Library,” Portland Gazette and Maine Advertiser, November 7, 1814.

  “abounded with productions of atheistical, irreligious, and immoral character”: Federal Republican, January 31, 1815.

  “which bye the bye would be the largest”: Alexandria Gazette, November 17, 1814.

  “make the most of the bad bargain”: Alexandria Gazette Commercial and Political, November 17, 1814.

  “To Thomas Jefferson, esquire”: Georgetown Daily Federal Republican, October 18, 1814, quoted in Johnston, 91–95.

  “English works of progress and speculative freedom”: Ibid., 74.

  “a number of negroes, horses, and cattle”; “neither shows himself to be the heir”: American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States, Issue 36 (Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1834), 448.

  “many books of irreligious and immoral tendency” and subsequent quotations from the Congressional debate: “Mr. Jefferson’s Library,” Virginia Patriot, February 8, 1815.

  “the friends of the bill replied with fact, wit, and argument”: Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 13th Congress, 3rd Session: 1105–6.

  “The next generation will, we confidently predict, blush at the objections made in Congress to the purchase of Mr. Jefferson’s library”: Washington City Weekly Gazette, July 12, 1817, quoted in Johnston, 90.

  “God and a religious president, or… Jefferson and no god”: The Gazette of the United States, September 13, 1800.

  “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest”: Jenks’ Portland Gazette, October 13, 1800.

  “a sect by myself”: Jefferson, letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819, available online at http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-0542.

  “oracle”; “Divest yourself of all bias”; “Shake off all the fears”: Jefferson, letter to

  Peter Carr, August 10, 1787, available online at http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0021

  “the several sects”; “Let us reflect”; “It does me no injury”: Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (London: John Stockdale, 1787), 265–67.

  Notes to Chapter 11

  “great houses”: Omar ibn Said, quoted in Ala Alryyes, A Muslim American Slave (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 89.

  “Then there came to our country”; “weak, small, evil man called Johnson”: Ibid., 62–63.

  “I have faith in Him who lights up the darkness”: The earliest translation of Omar ibn Said’s brief autobiography refers specifically to his recapture occurring on a new moon (Alryyes, 89), which calls for recitation of the text known as “His Supplication When He Looked at the New Crescent Moon,” available online at www.al-islam.org/sahifa-al-kamilah-sajjadiyya-imam-zain-ul-abideen/43-his-supplication-when-he-looked-new-crescent.

  “Run-Away”: Raleigh Star, November 1, 1810.

  “Passing himself as a free man”: The Star (Raleigh, NC), October 18, 1810.

  “negroes, moores, molatoes”: Virginia law of 1682, quoted in John Brown Dillon and Benjamin Douglass, Oddities of Colonial Legislation in America (Indianapolis: Robert Douglass, 1879), 200–1.

  “The introduction of Mohammedan slaves”: Elizabeth Donnan, Documents illustrative of the history of the slave trade to America (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, Division of Historical Research, 1930), 358.

  “The conferring of baptisme”: James Kirke Paulding, Slavery in the United States (Harper & Brothers, 1836), 147.

  “No other God but Money, nor Religion but Profit”; “Talk to a Planter of the Soul of a Negro”: W. M. Jernegan, “Slavery and Conversion in the Colonies,” American Historical Review 21 (1916): 516.

  “greatly to be pitied”: Peter Kalm, Travels into North America, Volume 1 (London: Printed for T. Lowndes, 1773), 311.

  “the religious instruction of the negroes”; “I am perfectly satisfied, from long observation”; “plantations under religious instruction”: Proceedings of the meeting in Charleston, S. C., May 13–15, 1845, on the religious instruction of the Negroes: together with the report of the committee, and the address to the public (Charleston: B. Jenkins, 1845), 19, 21–22, 26.

  “The Negro, like other men, is innately religious”: Haven Perkins, “Religion for Slaves: Difficulties and Methods,” Church History 10, no. 3 (September 1941): 228–45.

  “My long-crushed spirit rose”: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (London: H. G. Collins, 1851), 68.

  “I saw white spirits and black spirits”: The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va. (Baltimore: Thomas R. Gray, 1831), 10–11.

  “He told me, with great solemnity”: Douglass, 65.

  “Laboring in the field”: The Confessions of Nat Turner, 10.

  “Job would often leave the Cattle, and withdraw into the Woods to pray”: Thomas Bluett, Some Memoirs of the Life of Job, the Son of Solomon, the High Priest of Boonda in Africa; Who was a Slave About Two Years in Maryland; and Afterwards Being Brought to England, was Set Free, and Sent to His Native Land in the Year 1734 (London: Richard Ford, 1734), 19–20.

  “could not speak one Word of English”: Bluett, 21.

  “As to his Religion”: Ibid., 51.

  “though sixty-five years of age”; “Prince was educated and perhaps is still nominally at least a Mahomedian”: Commercial Advertiser, April 4, 1828.

  “The Mohammedan Africans”: Charles Colock Jones, The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States (Savannah: Thomas Purse, 1842), 125.

  “dreams, visions, trances, voices”: Ibid., 125.

  “In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate”: Alryyes, 51.

  “perfect allusion to slavery”: Ibid., 18.

  “Blessed be He in whose hand is the mulk”: Ibid., 51.

  “To pray, I said: Praise be to Allah”; “And now I pray”: Ibid., 75.

  “earlier pages of the manuscript”: John Franklin Jameson, quoted in Alryyes, 87.

  “Among these are the Moors or Morescos, who were driven out of Spain about the end of the sixteenth century”: History of the captivity and sufferings of Mrs. Maria Martin: who was six years a slave in Algiers, two of which she was confined in a dark and dismal dungeon, loaded with irons for refusing to comply with the brutal request of a Turkish officer (W. Crary, 1807), 9.

  “Mohammedan Forbearance”: New-Hampshire Patriot, October 30, 1810.

  “Treatment of Negro slaves in Morocco”; “The Moors, or Moselmen, purchase their slaves from Tombuctoo”; “Being in the daily habit”; “While we contrast”; “Now that the abominable slave trade”: Connecticut Courant, June 17, 1817.

  “A Convert from Mohammedanism”: Boston Reporter, September 1, 1837.

  “venerable coloured man”: North Carolina University 3 (1854): 307; this early magazine profile of Omar ibn Said is also included in Alryyes, 209–11.

  “On the morning of the 25th of January”: “Further Particulars from Bahia,” Gloucester Telegraph, April 11, 1835.

  “Being of feeble constitution”: 1837 description of Omar ibn Said, found in A
lryyes, 217.

  “Mohammedanism has been supplanted in his heart”: Ibid., 211.

  “Since I cannot leave a guard to hold it,” Sherman to Ulysses S Grant; “the nights were made hideous with smoke”: Fayetteville resident Alice Campbell, quoted in Emily Farrington Smith, Fayetteville, North Carolina: An All-American History (Charleston: History Press, 2011), 85.

  “O people of America”: Ibid., 71.

  “Are you confident that He who is in heaven”: Ibid., 53.

  Notes to Chapter 12

  “A modest building, somewhat gray”: Thomas Buchanan Read, The Poetical Works of Thomas Buchanan Read: Lyric poems. Sylvia; or, the last shepherd. Miscellaneous. Airs from Alpland (1894), 44.

  “never was solitude better personified”: Mary Moody Emerson, The Selected Letters of Mary Moody Emerson, edited by Nancy Craig Simmons (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993), 149.

  “never to put that ring on”: Mary Moody Emerson, quoted in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s remembrance of her, published in The Complete Works of 1904, Volume 10, Lectures and Biographical Sketches, online at http://www.bartleby.com/90/1015.html.

  “Her blue eyes flashed like steel and stabbed like swords”; “She was thought to have the power of saying more disagreeable things”: Quoted in the notes of F. B. Sanborn, The Personality of Emerson (Boston: The Merrymount Press, 1903), 29.

  “Our Stranger”: The Selected Letters of Mary Moody Emerson, 152.

  “If you sail to India, you may see sixty millions of people bowing to thirty millions of gods”: Elijah Parish, Sermons, Practical and Doctrinal (Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1826), 61.

  “Noah foretold”: Elijah Parrish, Sacred Geography: Or, A Gazetteer of the Bible (Boston: Samuel T. Armstrong, 1813). Parrish borrowed liberally in his “gazetteer” and made no distinction between his words and those of others. Much of this description, for example, is originally from Robert Orme’s A History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan (1763).

  “My Dear Waldo”; “I will send some of those he gave to me, if you have not met them”: The Selected Letters of Mary Moody Emerson, 152.