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.Even at orthodoxYale, most students were skeptical, wrote Lyman Beecher of his student yearof 1795. That was the day of the infidelity of the Tom Paine school.Boys thatdressed flax in the barn, as I used to, read Tom Paine and believed him; I readand fought him all the way. Orthodox clergy saw attacks on Christianity fromall sides.16The foreign and domestic threats became more real with the revelationsabout the XYZ Affair and the Bavarian Illuminati, the latter an enigmaticsecret society reputedly bent on destroying Christianity.The Illuminati, withtheir atheistic or deistic and Masonic connections in America (increasinglyassociated with the emerging Jeffersonian Republicans), were inundat[ing]the country with books replete with infidelity, irreligion, immorality, andobscenity. They sought nothing less than the overthrow of religion, govern-ment, and human society civil and domestic, wrote Yale president Timothy 88 T HE A NTEBELLUM S ETTLEMENTDwight in his widely circulated sermon The Duty of Americans, at the PresentCrisis. If our religion were gone, our state of society would perish with it, Dwight declared, and nothing would be left, which would be worth defend-ing. These threats, real and imagined, only increased the clergy s apocalypticoutlook, further eroding confidence in America s constitutional system as asafeguard.17This increasingly negative view of the nation s religious character was par-ticularly evident during Thomas Jefferson s presidential bid in 1800.Orthodoxclergy, including Timothy Dwight and John Mason, actively opposed Jefferson scandidacy, proclaiming that his infidel beliefs would reflect on the nation asa whole and invite God s wrath.In The Voice of Warning (1800), Masoncharged that Jefferson s writings insulted the Bible and called for a civil societyas founded on Atheism. A Jeffersonian administration promised a govern-ment administered without any religious principles and would indicate anational disregard to the religion of Jesus Christ. 18 Mason was joined byDutch Reformed minister William Linn, who only nine years earlier hadembraced the secular nature of the government.Now, he feared for the irreli-gious character of the nation under Jefferson s leadership.In a widely circu-lated pamphlet, Linn attacked Jefferson s statements from his Notes on the Stateof Virginia, where the latter reputedly disputed the necessity of religion fordemocratic government. If there be no God, there is no law; [and] no futureaccount, Linn wrote. [G]overnment then is an ordinance of man only, and wecannot be subject for conscience[ s] sake. The issue of whether the nation hada religious or secular character, apparently unimportant ten years earlier, wasnow of utmost consequence with the prospect of a manifest enemy of thereligion of Christ at the helm.The election of an infidel like Jefferson wouldbe an awful symptom of the degeneracy of that nation, and.a rebellionagainst God. 19One fact upon which orthodox Christians seized during the election andafterward was the lack of an acknowledgment of God in the federal Constitu-tion.The absence of a reference to a deity had elicited minor criticism duringratification, but with matters now deteriorating, the omission grew in signifi-cance.Calvinist clergy, with their covenantal heritage, were particularly trou-bled by the lack of an acknowledgment, which came to represent a nationalrejection of God s authority.In his attack on Jefferson s candidacy, John Masonrestated his earlier lament that the Federal Constitution makes no acknowl-edgement of that God who gave us our national existence. In the pride of ourcitizenship, Mason declared, the founders had forgotten our Christianity. Mason was not alone in his criticism.In an 1803 sermon, Reformed Presbyte-rian minister Samuel Brown Wylie derided the Constitution for not even R ESISTANCE AND R EVISIONISM 89recogniz[ing] the existence of God, the King of nations. Wylie interpreted theomission as a purposeful affront to the Almighty: the framers had acted as ifthere had been no divine revelation of the supreme standard of their conduct[and] as if there had been no God. The nation had thus rebelled against God by refusing to recognize divine law and by allowing Deists, even atheists, [to]be the chief magistrate[s]. The only way to wipe off the reproach of irreligion,and to avert the descending vengeance, Mason echoed, was to prove, by ournational acts, that the Constitution had not, in this instance, done justice topublic sentiment. 20Criticism of the nation s irreligious character continued after Jefferson spresidency.The Reverend Samuel Austin, president of the University of Ver-mont, expressed a view similar to those of Mason and Wylie in an 1811 fast daysermon.The Constitution had one capital defect which would issue inevita-bly in its destruction, Austin maintained. It is entirely disconnected fromChristianity.It is not founded upon the Christian religion.Its object is not,more or less, to subserve it.It is therefore, I am constrained to say it, an unchris-tian government. 21With the advent of the War of 1812, feelings only intensified that the nationwas being held accountable for having turned its back on God in its constitu-tional formation.On one level, New England clergy willingly parroted the Fed-eralist Party s opposition to Mr.Madison s war. Orthodox Protestants and,to a lesser extent, evangelicals had associated themselves with conservativeFederalist policies ever since the 1800 election and Alexander Hamilton s polit-ically transparent recommendation in 1802 to create a Christian Constitu-tional Society. 22 But some clergy also expressed genuine theological concernsabout the war.Yale s Timothy Dwight attributed the war in part to the lack of anexpress religious acknowledgment, which indicated the sinful character of thenation and the wickedness of the land. We formed our Constitution with-out any acknowledgment of God; without any recognition of his mercies to us,as a people, of his government, or even of his existence, Dwight wrote in 1813. Thus we commenced our national existence under the present system, with-out God. 23 New England divine Chauncey Lee, also writing during the war,placed similar blame for the nation s woes on the government s irreligiousfoundations:Can we pause, and reflect for a moment, without the mingledemotions of wonder and regret; that that publick instrument, whichguarantees our political rights of freedom and independence ourConstitution of national government, framed by such an august,learned and able body of men.has not the impress of religion 90 T HE A NTEBELLUM S ETTLEMENTupon it, not the smallest recognition of the government, or the beingof GOD, or of the dependence and accountability of man.Beastonished, O earth! Nothing, by which a foreigner might withcertainty decide, whether we believe in the one true God, or in anyGod; [or] whether we are a nation of Christians
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