Washington expresses religious tolerance, August 18, 1790
On August 18, 1790 George Washington proved his mettle in religious toleration by penning a letter to a Jewish congregation in Newport, R.I., expressing his opinion as to their citizenship and freedom from persecution.
Obviously this was no ordinary correspondence — even in its day the letter went on to be published in papers such as the October 8 edition of the Connecticut Gazette.
The whole episode began when Washington, Thomas Jefferson and several other statesmen made a visit to Rhode Island, which the president had bypassed in a tour of New England the previous fall since it had not called a state convention to ratify the Constitution. The town and Christian clergy of Newport handed off addresses to the president on the morning of August 18th, at which point Moses Seixas, warden of the Congregation Yeshuat Israel, likely did the same.
In responding to Seixas in a letter written the same day, Washington assures him that the nascent country was one “which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance” and also a nation where “all possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.”
Although Judaism was not abundantly common in colonial America, fifteen Sephardic Jewish families had arrived in Newport in 1658, after being tossed about various international locales after Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella kicked them out of the country for refusing to convert to Catholicism.
By the time of Washington’s visit in Newport, the Jewish community there had flourished, and the Touro Synagogue, which was dedicated in 1763 and still stands today, had already been established.
A commemorative, annual reading of Washington’s letter will be held there Saturday, July 22. To check out Washington’s actual correspondence and that of Seixas, see the University of Virginia’s The Papers of George Washington.
