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THE WALL OF SEPARATION LETTER (JEFFERSON, THOMAS.) Aurora General Advertiser... Monday, February 1, 1802. 4 pages. Folio, disbound; minor browning.
THE WALL OF SEPARATION LETTER (JEFFERSON, THOMAS.) Aurora General Advertiser... Monday, February 1, 1802. 4 pages. Folio, disbound; minor browning. Philadelphia: William Duane, 1 February 1802
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Notes: a contemporary newspaper printing of the famous letter to the danbury baptist association regarding the separation of church and state: "... Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties..."
Duane's General Advertiser was the leading Jeffersonian paper in America, and it seems likely that the text of the letter was submitted by Jefferson himself. Indeed, Jefferson intended the letter (a reply to the Association's congratulations on his election) to be a political statement, proven by his seeking advice from Levi Lincoln on a draft of the and by judiciously editing out a paragraph from the draft relating to Federal days of Thanksgiving. The final version of the letter, sent to the Association on 1 January 1802, appears in this issue on page 2. After this (and one other known Massachusetts newspaper printing) the text of the letter was not published until 1853 in a collected edition of Jefferson's writings. The phrase "wall of separation between Church & State" remains the first, best and most enduring explanation of the establishment clause.
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