These Truths: A History of the United States

by Jill Lepore

Republicans attacked Adams for abuses of office. Federalists attacked Jefferson for his slaveholding—Americans will not “learn the principles of liberty from the slave-holders of Virginia,” cried one—and especially for his views on religion. In Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson had stated his commitment to religious toleration. “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god,” he’d written. “It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” From their pulpits, Federalist clergymen preached that such an opinion could lead to nothing but unchecked vice, crime, and depravity. One New York minister answered Jefferson: “Let my neighbor once perceive himself that there is no God, and he will soon pick my pocket and break not only my leg but my neck.” And a Federalist newspaper, Gazette of the United States, insisted that the election offered Americans a choice between “GOD—AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT” and “JEFFERSON—AND NO GOD!!!!”