With few, if any, exceptions, every founding-era statesman was committed to the proposition that republican government required a moral citizenry, and that religion was necessary for morality. James Hutson of the Library of Congress suggests that this argument was so widespread that it should be called the “Founding generation’s syllogism.”36 When America’s founders spoke about “religion,” virtually all of them—even those most influenced by the Enlightenment—meant Christianity.
