James Schouler (March 20, 1839-1920) American lawyer, historian and lecturer at Boston University School of Law, the National University Law School, Washington, DC, and at Johns Hopkins University. He was president of the American Historical Association, 1896- 1897. He is best know for writing History of the United States under the Constitution, 1789-1865 (Washington, DC: William H. Morrison, 1887), in which stated:
<The Barbary powers were for a time overawed, and the United States thus set the first example among Christian nations of making reprisal instead of ransom the rule of security against these commercial marauders. In this respect Jefferson's conduct was applauded at home by men of all parties; Federalists exulting, moreover, in the exploits of a navy which was their own creation; Republicans, because their President had put this navy to a novel and practical use.> 1839JS001
<In a country professing ceremonious Christianity, Jefferson's religious views were liable to the grossest misconception. Both he and had been scorched more or less by French rationalism; Jefferson at the inflammable period.> 1839JS002
<As to Religion, Education, and Penal Discipline. The distinguishing feature of religion in the United States as compared with other countries, Pagan, Jewish, Mohammedan, or Christian, has been its early severances from the State. Three popular elements combine at the present period to make that severance complete: the irreligious; the religious whose particular sect must needs suffer should the State prefer another; the tolerant.
All these elements had found their widest expression under the Jefferson administration, which, however suspected of infidelity, firmly upheld the rights of conscience. Religion in this country was, nevertheless, a subject of State and not National regulation.
The Federal Constitution made no mention of God or Christianity; and, as if even this were insufficient proof of neutrality, the first in order of those amendments of 1789 whose immediate adoption was found obligatory, prohibited Congress from ever making laws respecting an establishment of religion, or to prevent its free exercise.
Each State was left, therefore, to its own course, States differing in creeds as Colonies had differed before. In New England, Congregationalism was from the very outset the favored church; in New York, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, it had been the Church of England, until hostility to the mother country and the desire for religious freedom procured ecclesiastical overthrow.
The constitutions of new States, that of Ohio for instance, and new constitutional changes generally forbade human authority to interfere with the rights of conscience.
We were a religious people, nevertheless, from habit and reflection; the most intelligently religious, perhaps, in proportion to numbers, of any great nation on earth. But with great intelligence there was likewise the greatest diversity in forms of belief.
Christianity had been the prevailing religion from the earliest settlement of America, and, except for the Louisiana region, Protestant Christianity.
Protestantism, when warmed by toleration, hatches and multiplies sects, until, the ideal of Church sanctity failing, there is the danger that religion my run in individualism, to an indifference as regards the things future, and to an easy benevolence with faintly discriminates between right and the coveted wrong.> 1839JS003
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1839JS001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). James Schouler. History of the United States under the Constitution, 1789-1865 (Washington, DC: William H. Morrison, 1887).
1839JS002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). James Schouler. History of the United States under the Constitution, 1789-1865 (Washington, DC: William H. Morrison, 1887).
1839JS003. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). James Schouler. History of the United States under the Constitution, 1789-1865 (Washington, DC: William H. Morrison, 1887), Chapter VII, p. 280.