The first stop was Newport, where a Jewish merchant and fellow Mason, Moses Seixas, greeted the president on behalf of Congregation Yeshuat Israel, assuring him that the Lord had “shielded your head in the day of battle” and protected him as “chief magistrate in these states.”14 As if seeking words of reassurance, Seixas noted that the Jewish congregation had formerly been deprived of “the invaluable rights of free citizens.”15 This elicited from Washington a letter to the Hebrew Congregation that ranks as his most beautifully enduring statement on religious toleration, showing that he had no
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