Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His mercy, to implore His protection and favor
... That great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or
that ever will be, that we may then unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks
for His kind care and protection of the people.'
There were, to be sure, powerful non- or even anti-religious forces at work among Americans
at this time, as a result of the teachings of Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, and, above all, Tom Paine.
Paine did not see himself as anti-religious, needless to say. He professed his faith in One god- and no more.' This wasthe religion of humanity.' The doctrine he formulated in The Age of
Reason (1794-5) was My country is the world and my religion is to do good." This work was widely read at the time, in many of the colleges, alongside Jefferson's translation of Volney's skeptical Ruines ou Meditations sur les revolutions des empires (1791), and similar works by Elihu Palmer, John Fitch, John Fellows, and Ethan Allen. The Age o f Reason was even read by some farmers, artisans, and shopkeepers, as well as students. As one Massachusetts lawyer observed, it washighly thought of by many who knew neither what the age they lived in, nor
reason, was.' With characteristic hyperbole and venom, John Adams wrote of Paine: I do not know whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine. There can be no severer satire on the age. For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief. Call it then The Age of Paine.' As it happened, by the time Adams wrote this (1805), Paine's day was done. Hisage' had
been the 1780s and the early 1790s. Then the reaction set in. When Paine returned to America in
1802 after his disastrous experiences in Revolutionary France, he noticed the difference. The
religious tide was returning fast. People found him an irritating, repetitive figure from the past, a
bore. Even Jefferson, once his friend, now president, gave him the brush-off. And Jefferson, as
president, gave his final gloss on the First Amendment to a Presbyterian clergyman, who asked
him why, unlike Washington and Adams (and later Madison), he did not issue a Thanksgiving
proclamation. Religion, said Jefferson, was a matter for the states: `I consider the government of
the United States as interdicted from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines,
disciplines, or exercises. This results from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the
establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof, but also from that which reserves to the
states the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly no power over religious discipline
has been delegated to the general government. It must thus rest with the states as far as it can be
in any human authority.' The wall of separation between church and state, then, if it existed at all,
was not between government and the public, but between the federal government and the states.
And the states, after the First Amendment, continued to make religious provision when they
thought fit, as they always had done.
With the enactment of the Bill of Rights, the process of constitution-making was completed and
it now remained to operate it. That had begun on the first Wednesday in January 1789, when
presidential electors were chosen in the different states. They met on the first Wednesday in
February to elect, and the first Wednesday in March was chosen `for commencing proceedings
under the said Constitution.' New York was the chosen place and that is where the first
permanent government of the new nation began. Electors were chosen on the assumption that
they would cast their votes for Washington, and that he was prepared to accept the duty. Where
contests were staged they were for Congressional seats. The anti-federalists did not oppose