John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) is, along with his Second Treatise of Government, one of the Western Canon’s most robust arguments for religious liberty and natural rights. Less well-known, but of perhaps greater importance to Americans, is George Washington’s Letter to the Jews of Newport (1790), a missive infused with the Lockean spirit, uniquely addressed to the concerns of a young country, and, on account of our current troubles, much in need of repass.

A year into his presidency, Washington, with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, undertook a kind of listening tour throughout New England. On August 17th, 1790, he visited Rhode Island, the last of the original colonies to ratify the U.S. Constitution. The significance of the new president’s arrival was not lost on the town fathers. Nor did it escape, in particular, the attention of Moses Seixas, an official of Yeshuat Israel, the first Jewish congregation in the state, who delivered the following public letter to Washington:

…Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People — a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance — but generously affording to all Liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship…

Religious persecution—and therewith religious toleration—worried, I suspect, greater numbers of American citizens in 1790 than it does today. After all, the country, newly formed, had yet even to adopt the First Amendment. But it had to have worried, to a far great extent than Christians of any denomination, the Jews, for whom systematic persecution had sadly never been a question of if, only when. For Seixas and his fellow congregants, belief in the success of the “American experiment” likely depended on more than just the fine-tuning of republican democracy; our new Abraham himself would need to be a beacon of righteousness.

Washington’s response, delivered the next day, gave something for the “children of the stock of Abraham” to take heart. The new president’s promise, that “every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid,” manifested a universal covenant, not just with American Jews, but all Americans, protecting against religious persecution. It is important to observe that this covenant of toleration was no longer “by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights,” but backed by the full faith and credit of the “Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requir[ing] only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

For Washington, though the “days of difficulty and danger” were past, “the days of uncommon prosperity and security” were before the land, “if,” of course, Americans had the “wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored.” One of the advantages a fledgling America had was the philosophic wisdom of its founders to sound, again and again, the language of “inherent natural rights.” This recognition of the equality and dignity human beings each possess is incompatible with a policy of religious intolerance.

But here is where I think the unique political wisdom of our first president—and, I think, Moses Seixas!—is really exemplified. It is one thing to speak frequently and universally of natural rights. It is another thing, however, to specifically address perhaps the most persecuted religious group in history and promise America would forever afford them “liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.” According to Neil Rogachevsky of Yeshiva University, Washington’s letter, as well as subsequent ones he addressed to other Jewish communities, set him apart from other founders as a patron of religious liberty. “Many other founders, particularly Jefferson, wrote eloquently of religious liberty,” Rogachevsky recently told me, “but Jefferson, for instance, did not like actual Jews. By personally writing to the ‘children of the stock of Abraham’ and inviting them to take full part in the country even while remaining Jews, he set a precedent for religious freedom as an American practice as well as an American idea.” Washington’s letter, like his decision to manumit his slaves upon his death (the only founding father to do so), was a symbolically charged act meant to set a precedent.

Today, Americans are the heirs of the Seixas and Washington letter. But it is an inheritance that must be protected, and to be protected, remembered.

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