George Washington and Religious Liberty

Abstract

the fight against in George Washington played a role second to none. Both as commander in chief the Continental Army and as president, he used his immense prestige and influence to encourage mutual tolerance and good will among American Protestants, Catholics, and Jews and to create a climate opinion in which citizen shall, as he phrased it, sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.' In private letters and in public statements the first President voiced his utter detestation intolerance, prejudice, and every species religious persecution and often expressed the hope that bigotry and superstition would be overcome by truth and reason in the United States.2 The fact is that Washington was firmly committed to religious liberty and freedom conscience. Like Jefferson and Madison, he looked upon the new nation as a pluralistic society in which people with varied religious persuasions and national backgrounds learned to live peacefully and rationally together instead resorting to force and violence. What was unique about the United States, in addition to cheapness land, was the existence civil and religious liberty, which stand perhaps unrivalled by any civilized nation earth.3 In his general orders for April I8, 1783, announcing the cessation hostilities with Great Britain, he congratulated his soldiers, of whatever condition they may be, for having assisted in protecting the rights human nature and establishing an Asylum for the poor and oppressed all nations and religions . ..4 The bosom America, Washington declared a few months later, was open to receive