sad mischiefs to the Constitution. The struggle on our part was not for victory, but for the preservation of our best institutions.
What were these “best institutions” saved from destruction? First, the pecuniary qualification for the franchise; second, town representation in the house; third, the independence of the judiciary; fourth, the propertied basis of the senate; fifth, government support of religious worship. Four and five were the most seriously threatened. And the long-festering issue of state-supported religion gave more difficulty than any other.
The ruling order had not forgotten that Massachusetts began as a Holy Commonwealth. The faith of the Puritan founders had degenerated, of course, dissenting sects had sprung up and flourished, and Revolutionary ideas had upset the historic commitment to an established church; but in the face of these difficulties the state had endeavored to maintain its religious character and to enforce a corporate piety upon the entire community. Freedom of religious conscience was not denied in Massachusetts; indeed, it was expressly guaranteed by the second article of the declaration of rights. But it was rendered incomplete, and in the eyes of many dissenters nugatory, by other provisions of the constitution of 1780. Elected officials, senators, and representatives must declare their belief in the Christian religion. Ministers of Congregational churches in and around Cambridge held appointment as overseers of Harvard University, an institution sanctioned and supported by the state, yet dominated by this old, established clergy. Although the constitution did not formally establish the Congregational as the state church, it was the principal beneficiary of an ingenious compromise worked out by the framers to meet two sharply conflicting demands—religious freedom for the individual and public support of Christian worship for the peace and good order of the community. Embodied in the third article of the declaration of rights, the compromise required the several towns and parishes to make provision for public worship and instruction by Protestant ministers, provided, however, that “all monies paid by the subject to the support of public worship, and of the public teachers aforesaid, shall, if he require it, be uniformly applied to the support of the public teacher or teachers of his own religious sect or denomination… .” What this amounted to was the establishment of Protestant Christianity, though not without preference as to sect, because it operated within the historic framework of the Congregational system. Parish and town boundaries were usually coterminous, thus enabling church and town to act as one. The statute enacted in 1786 to implement the third article by authorizing the parishes, as bodies corporate, to assess polls and property for the support of religion confirmed, in effect, the locally established Congregational religion. Dissenters, to be sure, could file certificates with the local authorities declaring that they worshipped outside the fold and requesting that their tax money be transferred to their own ministers. But not only was this an awkward business; it was also an avowal of religious inequality, an admission of the right of government to interfere in affairs of religion, and an affront to the private conscience.
The third article, hotly contested from the start, threw the state into religious turmoil at intervals for forty years. The Baptists spearheaded the opposition, but increasingly other dissenting sects, which multiplied and grew until they represented a formidable challenge to the standing Congregational order, lent their support. They called for a dissolution of the state’s connections with religion and the introduction of a “voluntary system” of religious life. Every other state of the Union came to this solution before 1820. The crusading Baptist preacher Elder John Leland, who returned to his native state after laboring many years in Virginia, championed the Jeffersonian way for Massachusetts. Religion in Virginia and most other states was entirely free of official sanction or support, Leland said, “yet they are not sunk with earthquakes or destroyed with fire and brimstone.” Christian faith, as well as republican principle, demanded the Jeffersonian solution: “According to our best judgments, we cannot pay legal taxes for religious services, descending even to the grade of a chaplain for the legislature. It is disrobing Christianity of her virgin beauty—turning the churches of Christ into creatures of state—and metamorphosing gospel ambassadors to state pensioners.”
Not surprisingly, the religious issue became involved in party politics. In opposing the Federalists, the Republicans appealed to the dissenting sects and necessarily opposed the clerical establishment, which was violently anti-Jeffersonian. The government passed briefly into Republican hands in 1807, and under Governor James Sullivan they endeavored to enact a reform bill. It failed. But the Massachusetts system was rapidly being undermined by dissenter resistance, variant practices in the towns, litigation and court decisions, and, finally, by divisions within the Congregational church itself. In 1811 the legislature passed the Religious Freedom Act, which exempted unincorporated religious societies from the payment of the parish taxes, thereby placing the dissenters on an equality with the Congregationalists in respect to supporting their own ministers. The law ended the annual scramble of the sects, often succeeded by long drawn-out lawsuits, for their shares of parish tax money. Staunch defenders of the third article assailed the law, saying it opened the door to evasion, and they foresaw a flight from the parishes in order to escape payment of religious taxes.
By 1820 the inherent contradictions in the Massachusetts experiment were tearing it apart. To these difficulties were now added those produced by a deep cleavage in the orthodox church. Unitarianism had grown up within that church. Adherents of this milder, rationalistic faith wished ministers of their own persuasion, and so intradenominational disputes between Unitarians and Trinitarians rocked the church already besieged by the host of dissenters. As their following increased in the eastern towns, though still a minority of the faithful in most instances, they seized upon the parish system and by polling majorities in town meetings took over scores of churches, forcing the orthodox to form new societies on a voluntary basis. Thus victimized by the unified town and parish system, many Congregationalists turned against it and lost interest in state-supported religion. The dissenters won some wholly unexpected allies. Culminating two decades of bitter controversy, the courts upheld the Unitarian claims in the case of the Dedham church in December 1820, just as the third article came before the convention in Boston.
The select committee on the declaration of rights recommended several concessions to American opinion and practice, while at the same time preserving the fundamental principle of the third article. Its coverage was extended to Catholics and unincorporated religious societies. The provision empowering the legislature to enjoin attendance at religious worship was stricken. This far the convention agreed to go. In acting on other parts of the constitution, the delegates eliminated the religious test for officeholders and opened the board of overseers of Harvard to ministers of all denominations. However, the convention balked at the recommendation to give constitutional status to the act of 1811 relieving sworn communicants of dissenting sects from the payment of parish taxes. The reformers, of course, wished to go all the way to the voluntary system; a few, very few, would have liked to strike the third article in entirety. They were repeatedly beaten down. The crucial vote came on January 6, 1820, on the substitute resolution, earlier defeated in committee of the whole, sponsored by Henry H. Childs of Pittsfield. After acknowledging the dependence of civil government upon the piety and morality fostered by the public worship of God, the resolution declared that this end is best achieved by leaving every man free to worship as he pleases and therefore that every society of Christians should be equal in the eyes of the law and empowered to support itself. The resolution fell on a record vote of 136 to 246. Only two counties, Bristol and Berkshire, where denominational democracy and religious liberalism were most advanced, gave majorities for the Childs’s substitute (see Table 1.2). The conservatives then beat back an eleventh hour move to graft the 1811 statute on the constitution. Perhaps the most important change in the third article grew out of the Unitarian controversy. This permitted a Congregationalist of one persuasion to have his tax money appropriated to a minister or society of the same persuasion within the denominational fold; in short, a Trinitarian need not support a Unitarian minister. Although Hoar and others, Unitarians for the most part, viewed this clause as a death blow to the establishment, simple justice required it as long as the fiction of one orthodox church persisted in Massachusetts.
Next to religion the most troublesome problem for the delegates was that of representation in the legislature. suffrage, although
