416
Defending the Constitution
Morning Prayer, U.S. Senate, 1903.
(Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
Ames. Representative Ames, from Massachusetts, was a Federalist. In his
own State, and also in Connecticut, there still was an established church—
the Congregational Church. By 1787–1791, an ‘‘established church’’ was
one which was formally recognized by a State government as the publicly preferred form of religion. Such a church was entitled to certain
taxes, called tithes, that were collected from the public by the State. Earlier,
several other of Britain’s colonies had recognized established churches,
but those other establishments had vanished during the Revolution.
Now, if Congress had established a national church—and many countries, in the eighteenth century, had official national churches—probably