Religious Liberty: The End of Pope's Day

The following article was written by Robert G. Morrison. At the time of it's publishing Morrison was the Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at Family Research Council (I do not know if he still holds that position). It is a five-part overview on the perspective and history of the impact of faith on the Founders.

I.N.A.F.I.A.S,

Lee

Psalm 91

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What the Founders Really Did on Religious Liberty: “Deeds not Words”

BY ROBERT G. MORRISON

Dispatch No. 1.His Excellency Ends Pope’s Day

THE CONTINENTAL ARMY was besieging Bos­ton in the fall of 1775. His Excellency, Gen­eral George Washington, had come up from Philadelphia in June to take command of this force comprised primarily of New England­ers. Gen. Washington had sent a portion of his army to Canada in the hope of enlisting the French-speaking Que­beckers as allies of the new American Union.

As winter approached, however, Washington got word of a New England custom about to be played out in full view of the surrounded British Army. New England Protestants for more than a century had celebrated “Pope’s Day,” a combination of our modern Halloween and Fourth of July events. Bonfires, firecrackers, and masked boys playing mischievous pranks were high­lights of the day; it was all harmless fun–ex­cept for the conclusion. Effigies of the Pope were stuffed with straw and live cats. These would then be set afire. The yowling of the poor cats was intended to convey the scream­ing of the Popes in hell.

His Excellency was having none of it. He is­sued a stern General Order from his head­quarters on November 5, 1775. He warned against “the observance of that ridiculous and childish custom” anywhere in his Army. More than that, he condemned the holiday outright, expressing his surprise that “there should be Officers or Soldiers in this army so void of common sense as not to see the impropriety of such a step at this Juncture.” Washington was daily awaiting word that the Quebeckers would join us. How we could be so unwise, he asked, “to be insulting their religion? [It] is so monstrous as not to be suf­fered or excused.” 1

The Continental Congress had sent messag­es to Quebec imploring the French Catholics there not to trust the British for their religious freedom: “What is offered to you by the late Parliament? …Liberty of conscience in your religion? No. God gave it to you…” 2

Although His Excellency and the Continen­tal Congress were to be disappointed in the failure of the Quebeckers to join the revolu­tion, Washington also had in mind his own troops. The units from Pennsylvania and Maryland “fairly teemed” with Catholic sol­diers. Maryland had been founded originally as a Catholic refuge. And Pennsylvania fa­mously attracted people of all denominations because of the original Quaker settlers’ com­mitment to religious tolerance.

Washington’s troops did not celebrate Pope’s Day that year. Nor, after that, did anyone else. So great was George Washington’s prestige and moral authority that Americans turned away from such “childish and ridicu­lous” celebrations. Despite the French Canadians’ unwillingness to join the Americans, France did join. First to arrive was the young Marquis de Lafayette. He started off as a private in Washington’s army. Within a year, the brave twenty-year old was a Major General, having earned his advancement.

Then, in 1778, France formally aligned with the United States. His Most Christian Majesty, King Louis XVI, sent General Ro­chambeau and 5,000 French regular soldiers to fight alongside Washington’s Continen­tals. These troops arrived in Newport, Rhode Island in 1780. They remained loyal to the Alliance all the way to final victory at York­town, in Virginia, in 1781.

It would have placed intolerable strains on our Alliance with the Catholic French if Pope’s Day was still being celebrated by the Americans. In this instance, good fellowship proved to be good politics. His Excellency’s good judgment was also good strategy.

This enlightened spirit would be seen in the Continental Congress, in Philadelphia, when Catholic layman Charles Carroll of Carroll­ton, a wealthy Maryland landowner, and Rev. John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian clergyman from New Jersey, both signed the Declara­tion of Independence. They pledged to each other and their fellow Signers, “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.” No­where else on earth in 1776 could one have found such a document.

It was also the spirit that prompted the Con­stitutional Convention in 1787 to include a provision in Article VI, Clause 3, saying “…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification for any office or public Trust under the United States.”3 This was the most advanced statement of religious freedom in the world.

No wonder Thomas Jefferson could say of George Washington: “The moderation and virtue of a single character probably prevent­ed this Revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by the subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish.”

NEXT POST: Dispatch No. 2.–Mr. Madison and “that nest of Dutchmen”

“The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreeably to their conscience, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights” (George Washington, message to the Annual Meeting of Quakers, 1789)

ROBERT G. MORRISON is Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at Family Research Council. He is a former teacher of American history at the high school and college levels. He served in the U.S. Department of Education and as the Washington repre­sentative of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. He re­searched Bill Bennett’s two-volume history of the U.S., America: The Last Best Hope.