Andrew Jackson on Religious Tolerance

"General" Jackson was villified throughout his public life as an uncouth backwoods ruffian, not totally without justification. For example, do you think John Quincy Adams would have been caught dead (pun alert) on a dueling ground? Nevertheless, Jackson was clearly a very bright man, and his self-education is awe-inspiring.

In Robert Remini's "The Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845", we find an anecdote in which an old woman so feared for the nation, due to the "late arrival of catholicks to our peaceful and happy land", that her granddaughter was moved to write the General for reassurance that he wasn't himself a closet "catholick", intent on establishing an "Inquisition in the United States". The General's response:

I was brought up a rigid Presbeterian, to which I have always adhered. Our excellent constitution guarantees to every one freedom of religion, and charity tells us, and you know Charity is the reall basis of all true religion, and charity says judge the tree by its fruit, all who profess christianity, believe in a Saviour and that by and through him we must be saved. We ought therefore to consider all good christians, whose walks correspond with their professions, be him Presbeterian, Episcopalian, Baptist, methodist or Roman catholic , let it be always remembered by your Grandmother that no estalished religion can exist under our glorious constitution.

Judge the tree by its fruit, have charity toward all those whose walks correspond with their professions, in so far as their professions are charitable, and recall the glory of our "excellent" Constitution and its First Amendment.