In church of the Holy Trinity v. the United States of 1892, Supreme Court Justice David Brewer wrote for a unanimous court that “no purpose of action against religion can be attributed to legislation, whether state or national, because it is a religious people.” [D]his is a Christian nation. [94] The struggle for freedom led some Americans to manipulate their enslaved workers, and most of the new northern states quickly passed progressive emancipation laws. Some maneuvers also took place in the Upper South, but in the Lower South, some plaintiffs revoked their offers of freedom of service, and others freed were forced to return to slavery. The equality rhetoric of the revolution created a “revolutionary generation” of slaves and free black Americans who would eventually promote the anti-slavery movement. Slave uprisings began to integrate demands for freedom on the basis of revolutionary ideals. In the long run, the revolution failed to reconcile slavery with these new egalitarian republican societies, a tension that eventually exploded in the 1830s and 1840s, effectively dividing the nation into two parts in the 1850s and 1860s.52 Black Americans, slave and free, also influenced (and were influenced by) the revolution. The British were the first to recruit black (or “Ethiopian”) regiments, already in the Dunmore Proclamation in Virginia of 1775, which promised freedom to any slave person who escaped their slaves and joined the British cause. At first, Washington, itself a slave, refused to allow black men to join the Continental Army, but eventually relented. In 1775, Peter Salem`s slavery freed him to fight with the militia. Salem met British regulars at the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill, where he fought valiantly with about three dozen other black Americans.
Salem not only contributed to the cause, he also acquired the ability to determine his own life after his conscription ended. Salem was not alone, but many other slaves took advantage of the turmoil of the war to flee and directly secure their own freedom. Historians estimate that between thirty thousand and one hundred thousand people once enslaved left their slaves during the war.47 The revolution built institutions and codified the language and ideas that still define the image Americans have of themselves. Moreover, revolutionaries justified their new nation with radically new ideals that changed the course of history and unleashed an era of global revolution. But the revolution was as paradoxical as it was unpredictable. A revolution carried out in the name of freedom allowed slavery to persist. Resistance to centralized authority linked different colonies more and more closely under new governments. The revolution created politicians who sought to promote republican altruism and protect the public good, but also promoted self-interest and personal gain. The “Founding Fathers” founded and fought a revolution to gain independence from Britain, but they did not fight against this revolution to create a “democracy.” To succeed in rebelling against Britain, however, more than a few dozen “founding fathers” were needed. Ordinary settlers joined the struggle, liberating the popular forces that shaped the revolution itself, often in a way that was not well received by elite leaders.
But once liberated, these popular forces continued to shape the new nation and, indeed, the rest of American history. He said that the mixture of church and state corrupts the church, that when you mix religion and politics, you get politics. Then and there, in London, in the midst of the civil war, he pleaded for what he called the “freedom of the soul.” Williams attracted a large number [followers].â Both tasks seemed impossible. Williams had to convince the legislature to allow Rhode Island to divorce the church and state. But the legislature at the time was no more receptive to the idea than Massachusetts. In fact, civil war was largely fought for state control over the Church of England, and the European intellectual tradition then rejected religious freedom. As historian Henry Lea noted in 1887, “universal public opinion from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century” demanded death for heretics. By 1643, hundreds of thousands of Christians had been massacred by other Christians for the way they worshipped Christ. Historian W. K. Jordan noted: “No voice had yet been raised in parliament for the tolerance of all Protestant groups, let alone Catholics, who were considered heretical traitors. Both the king and parliament wanted a national church that would not allow dissent.
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