Washington's letter to the Newport congregation: "to bigotry no sanction"
The president was answering the congregation's address of welcome—and wrote the sentence that became the American formula for freedom of conscience.
In August 1790 George Washington came to Newport to persuade Rhode Island to adopt the Bill of Rights. Moses Seixas, the congregation's warden, handed him a written address calling the new government one "which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance".
Washington answered by letter, taking up the phrase as his own and adding what mattered: "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it were by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights." Toleration is granted and can be withdrawn; a right is not granted. He closed with Micah: "Every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid."
The contrast with Europe is plain. France would emancipate its Jews a year later, in September 1791, with Clermont-Tonnerre's condition: "To the Jews as a nation, nothing; to the Jews as individuals, everything." Washington set no such condition: the congregation addressed him as a congregation, and he answered it as one.
The letter has been quoted at every turning since—from the quota debates to the Pittsburgh killings. In America it is not a dead document but a measure people return to.
Sources
Documents of the period
- Address of Yeshuat Israel congregation, Moses Seixas, August 1790 — the phrase «to bigotry no sanction» is the congregation's, not the president's
- George Washington's reply to the Newport congregation, 18 August 1790 — the rejection of the word «toleration» and the verse from Micah 4:4
Basis: documents and evidence.