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Thomas Jefferson made slip in Declaration (not slip, a decision)

Be prepared for Jefferson haters. I had one.

I think I spoke to soon...Perhaps the better definition of what Jefferson was trying to say can be explained by the early definition of Roman Citizenship....voters, land ownership, generally excludes women.....

It wasn't a slip...it was to become the future definition in our constitution. Betcha Madison caught it....

Also of interest is that in 1998, the FBI’s crime lab examined Jefferson's letter, uncovering words deleted by the president (nearly 30 percent of the draft) prior to publication. This, along with other evidence, indicates that Jefferson’s pledge to separate church and state was at least partly political motivated.

James H. Hutson, head of the library’s manuscripts collection, stated, "It will be of considerable interest in assessing the credibility of the Danbury Baptist letter as a tool of constitutional interpretation to know, as we now do, that it was written as a partisan counterpunch, aimed by Jefferson below the belt of enemies who were tormenting him more than a decade after the First Amendment was composed."^[18]

Jefferson’s letter and the FBI’s restoration work are among the items in an exhibit at the Library of Congress called, "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic." The exhibit also notes that Jefferson began to attend worship services held at the House of Representatives two days after writing the letter, and that he permitted regular worship services to be held there, a practice that continued until after the Civil War, with preachers from every Protestant denomination appearing there. The Library of Congress exhibit records that

As early as January 1806 a female evangelist, Dorothy Ripley, delivered a camp meeting-style exhortation in the House to Jefferson, Vice President Aaron Burr, and a "crowded audience."...In attending church services on public property, Jefferson and Madison consciously and deliberately were offering symbolic support to religion as a prop for republican government. ^[19]^[20]

David Barton, Founder and President of WallBuilders, states that Jefferson voted that the Capitol building would also serve as a church building, praised the use of a local courthouse as a meeting place for Christian services, urged local governments to make land available specifically for Christian purposes, set aside government lands for the sole use of religious groups, assured a Christian religious school that it would receive “the patronage of the government”, proposed that the Great Seal of the United States depict a story from the Bible and include the word “God” in its motto, and agreed to provide money for a church building and support of clergy. And that like support of religion by the federal government militates against the extreme separatist position.^{[21] http://www.conservapedia.com/Separation_of_church_and_state#Interpretations}