To James Madison from Nicholas P. Trist, [September 1827]
From Nicholas P. Trist
[September 1827]
You will find in No. 3 (as marked by me) some new details respecting your early career, as well as that of Mr Jefferson. I send Nos 1. & 2. as introductory: The letters from R.D.O., I mean—which are marked with //.1
You will perceive that the clergy are seriously—many of them conscientiously—bent on organizing a “christian Party in politics.”2 We may yet be destined in this country to a fearful struggle on this mischief-breeding subject. I have, for some years, watched the signs. Should it ever come, the Land of the Puritans will be the Rock of my Hope.
Do not write: but return the papers when convenient. I fear from not receiving the letter you read to me that your rheumatism is more obstinate than I hoped it would prove.
Friendly respects for Mr Todd; and for Mrs. Madison & yourself, all affection.
RC (ViHi: Nicholas P. Trist Album Book). Undated; conjectural date assigned based on the publication of Ezra Stiles Ely’s discourse (see n. 2 below).
1. Letters not found.
2. An excerpt from Ely’s “Duty of Christian Freemen to Elect Christian Rulers,” delivered on 4 July 1827 in Philadelphia’s Seventh Presbyterian Church, was published in the September 1827 issue of the Philadelphia Reformer (“Religious Rulers, or Church and State,” 135—37). In this discourse, Ely called for “a Christian party in politics,” by which he meant a broad coalition of various Protestant denominations that should reject any candidate for political office who was not “professedly friendly to Christianity, and a believer in Divine Revelation.”