The case of Reynolds v. United States was decided in 1879 by the Supreme Court … The Justices involved were:
- Chief Justice Morrison Waite
- Associate Justice Nathan Clifford
- Associate Justice Noah H. Swayne
- Associate Justice Samuel F. Miller
- Associate Justice Stephen J. Field
- Associate Justice William Strong
- Associate Justice Joseph P. Bradley
- Associate Justice Ward Hunt
- Associate Justice John M. Harlan
These Justices were appointed by different presidents:
- Stephen Johnson Field: Appointed by Abraham Lincoln.
- William Strong, Joseph P. Bradley, and Ward Hunt: All appointed by Ulysses S. Grant.
- Morrison Remick Waite: Appointed by Ulysses S. Grant.
I endorse the inalienable right of free conscience and of privacy given to every woman who has ever been born by her creator thus keeping our government out of women’s reproductive decisions as a strict application of maintains a wall of separation between church and state.
Your Catholic opinion has no justifiable bearing on the lives of my wife, my daughters and all the granddaughters that will come after me. You are a foul and religiously perverted human being. Foul un-American religious zealots such as you St.Mashmont the Trump Pervert must not be allowed to rule non-zealots by your perverted asinine religious dogma.
from here on below r1776r-jffrsnBIBLE
The Supreme Court turned the spotlight on the "wall of separation" phrase in 1878 by declaring in
Reynolds v. United States "that it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [first] amendment."
The high court took the same position in widely publicized decisions in 1947 and 1948, asserting in the latter case,
McCollum v. Board of Education, that, "in the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between church and state.'" Since
McCollum forbade religious instruction in public schools, it appeared that the court had used Jefferson's "wall" metaphor as a sword to sever religion from public life, a result that was and still is intolerable to many Americans.
Some Supreme Court justices did not like what their colleagues had done. In 1962, Justice Potter Stewart complained that jurisprudence was not "aided by the uncritical invocation of metaphors like the 'wall of separation,' a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution." Addressing the issue in 1985, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist lamented that "unfortunately the Establishment Clause has been expressly freighted with Jefferson's misleading metaphor for nearly 40 years." Defenders of the metaphor responded immediately: "despite its detractors and despite its leaks, cracks and its archways, the wall ranks as one of the mightiest monuments of constitutional government in this nation."
Given the gravity of the issues involved in the debate over the wall metaphor, it is surprising that so little effort has been made to go behind the printed text of the Danbury Baptist letter to unlock its secrets. Jefferson's handwritten draft of the letter is held by the Library's Manuscript Division. Inspection reveals that nearly 30 percent of the draft -- seven of 25 lines -- was deleted by the president prior to publication. Jefferson indicated his deletions by circling several lines and noting in the left margin that they were to be excised. He inked out several words in the circled section and a few words elsewhere in the draft. He also inked out three entire lines following the circled section.
Click here to see the text of the final letter.
