"I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion — for who can search the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions.”
This observation from nineteenth-century French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville mimics the convictions held by most of the Americans tasked with shaping national and state governments in the newly established United States of 1776. After all, when European settlers first came to America in the seventeenth century, many were seeking a new home where they would be able to worship God as they saw fit.
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