Forgotten Baptist Heroes: Richard M. Johnson (1780-1850) and Sunday Mail Delivery

by Bruce T. Gourley
Published February 2013
(Baptist Studies Bulletin Archives Index)

“Forgotten Baptist Heroes” is a series about significant historical figures whose faith stories and contributions to Baptist heritage and identity have largely been forgotten in the public eye.

From the earliest days of our nation until 1912, the United States Postal Service operated seven days a week, making no respecter of religious sentiments and recognizing no holy days, a policy befitting a nation established upon church state separation. During this time, however, many Christians of the nineteenth century wanted to force the government to recognize the Christian Sabbath as a holy day, and thus prohibit Sunday mail operations. Baptists opposed the cessation of Sunday mail services, with forgotten Baptist hero Robert M. Johnson playing a pivotal role in the struggle against a conservative Christian coalition that wished to transform America into their own image.

The story begins early in the nineteenth century, at a time when the Second Great Awakening led to a renewed Christian vitality in America. Whereas in the late eighteenth century less than 10% of Americans actually attended church, the revivals of the Awakening led to church attendance in the 30%-40% range by the 1820s. As Baptists had envisioned, by establishing the new nation on the principles of religious liberty for all and church state separation, religious faith flourished in the world’s first free marketplace of religion.

Many Christians other than Baptists, however, had from the beginning criticized America’s founding as a secular nation. That these critics benefited from church state separation by prospering in American society seemed to be lost upon them. As the influence and power of the major denominations grew in early nineteenth century culture and society, so did their criticisms of America’s secular founding. At the same time, many became concerned that Sunday was not observed as a holy day outside of Christendom. In a push to set aside Sundays as a holy day in their communities, some Christians in the first decade of the century considered doing away with local mail delivery on Sundays.

Recognizing the threat that a growing majoritarian Christian presence represented to the constitutional separation of church and state, Congress (who oversaw the Postal Service) in 1810 passed a law mandating that every post office be open on Sunday for at least one hour. The law, not surprisingly, angered the emerging conservative Christian coalition determined to make Sunday an American holy day. In 1811, in an effort to address criticisms that Sunday mail delivery forced Christian postal service employees to violate their Sabbath, the postmaster, while refusing to stop Sunday mail delivery, offered a compromise: “to guard against any annoyance to the good citizens of the United States, he carefully instructed and directed the agents of this office to pass quietly, without announcing their arrival or departure by the sounding of horns or trumpets, or any other act calculated to call off the attention of the citizens from their devotions . . . .”

A more discreet approach to Sunday mail delivery did nothing to satisfy leading Christians of the day. By the 1820s and led by eminent Presbyterian leaders of the day, conservative Christians had re-framed their criticisms of America as a secular nation by arguing that, based on the renewed presence and influence of Christianity in culture and society, the nation was in reality a Christian nation. As a Christian nation, therefore, the United States government must officially recognize the weekly holy day of the country’s majoritarian faith and thus stop Sunday postal mail services. Petitions to stop “Sunday desecration” flooded Congress.

Against the backdrop of an era of religious revival and Christian ascendancy, the Christian coalition for stopping Sunday mail services presented a very real challenge to the government. In addition, the larger movement to tear down the wall of separation between church and state — a wall Baptists in America had advocated since the 1630s — outraged Baptists. In the public discourse that ensued, Baptists publicly opposed the prospect of the U.S. government granting preferential treatment to Christians or any other religious group, declaring that halting Sunday mail delivery would violate the nation’s Constitution.

During the heightened Sunday mail crisis of the 1820s, U.S. Senator Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky chaired the congressional Committee on Post Office and Post Roads. Col. Johnson was a hero of the War of 1812 and a Baptist. A leader among Baptists of Kentucky, the senator in his earlier years had established a Baptist academy in his home state for the education of young Native Americans. Now, the prospect of the U.S. government granting favoritism to Christians propelled Johnson onto the national stage as a leader among Baptists of America.

Working with Obadiah Brown, prominent bi-vocational pastor of the First Baptist Church of Washington, D.C. and an administrator within the U.S. Postal Service, Sen. Johnson in 1829 formulated an official Senate response to the anti-Sunday mail service coalition.

Entitled “Report on the Transportation of Mails on Sunday,” Johnson and Brown’s document was adopted by the U.S. Senate. The report reiterated the nation’s founding upon a secular Constitution and the strict separation of church and state. In part the report read:

“What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small. Despotic power may invade those rights, but justice still confirms them. Let the national legislature once perform an act which involves the decision of a religious controversy, and it will have passed its legitimate bounds. The precedent will then be established, and the foundation laid for that usurpation of the Divine prerogative in this country, which has been the desolating scourge to the fairest portions of the old world. Our Constitution recognises no other power than that of persuasion, for enforcing religious observances. Let the professors of Christianity recommend their religion by deeds of benevolence — by Christian meekness — by lives of temperance and holiness. Let them combine their efforts to instruct the ignorant — to relieve the widow and the orphan — to promulgate to the world the gospel of their Savior, recommending its precepts by their habitual example: government will find its legitimate object in protecting them. It cannot oppose them, and they will not need its aid. Their moral influence will then do infinitely more to advance the true interests of religion, than any measures which they may call on Congress to enact.”

Sen. Johnson then recommended that the Senate consider the controversy settled. In so doing, he noted of the anti-Sunday mail services coalition: “these petitions and memorials in relation to Sunday mails, were but the entering wedge of a scheme to make this government a religious, instead of a social and political, institution; they were widely circulated, and people were induced to sign them without reflecting upon the subject,’ or the consequences which would result from the adoption of the measure proposed. There was nothing more improper than the interference of Congress in this matter.”

The controversy, not surprisingly, did not end with Johnson’s statements and the Senate’s decision to continue Sunday postal services. The following year, John Leland, Baptist evangelist and church state champion widely recognized as one of the leading Baptist figures North and South, wrote to Johnson, declaring in part:

Should Congress indulge the petitioners, and pass a law to stop the transportation of the mail on every Sunday, it would be a nest-egg for themselves and for others. Encouraged by success, they would next proceed to have the days of Christmas, and Easter, and their associations and synods exempted in the same way, and where would it end? The Sabbatarians, with the Jews, finding Congress flexible, would, with equal right, claim a law to sanctify Saturday for their convenience. Whenever a legislature legalize holy-days, creeds of faith, forms of worship, or pecuniary reward for religious services, they intrude into the kingdom of Christ, and impeach the wisdom of the divine law-giver, for not knowing how, or his goodness, for not giving all laws necessary in his government. The deadly pill, at first, will always be rolled in honey. The honor of religion, the spread of the gospel, the piety and research of the reformers, the good of society, the safety of the state, and the salvation of souls, form the syrup, in which the poisonous pill is hidden. It is from men, high in esteem for holiness and wisdom, that the worst of usages and most cruel laws proceed; for base characters defeat their own wishes. The heart of King Asa was perfect all his days, yet he oppressed some of the people was mad at the seer who reproved him, and made a law that whosoever would not seek the Lord should be put to death.

Admit of the principle that religion is an institute of state policy, and the people hold their liberty by the tenure of the will of the legislature, which is very changeable, often corrupt, and many times very cruel. Admit of the principle, and you approve of that which has reared an inquisition, and drenched the earth with blood.

Many plead for an equality of all Christian societies, and plead as strongly that they should become bodies politic, and be supported by the civil law. If this is proper for Christian societies, it is as proper for Jews, Pagan or Mahometan societies; but the liberty contended for, should be guaranteed to each individual, as his inalienable right, which cannot be meddled with, without usurpation in the rulers, which turns them to tyrants.

Also in 1830, Leland wrote a public essay entitled “Transportation of the Mail,” in which he scolded those who would Christianize America. Noting that America’s religious diversity ranged from paganism to Christianity and Islam to Judaism (and that each religion had its own holy days), he declared that the government had no business enacting theological mandates regarding holy days and thus tearing down the wall of separation between church and state:

“If any improvement has been made on this subject, from the days of Constantine, until the present time, it consists in the discovery, found out by long experience, “that the only way to prevent religion from being an engine of cruelty, is to exclude religious opinions from the civil code.” Let every man be known and equally protected as a citizen, and leave his religious opinions to be settled between the individual and his God: keeping this in view, that he who does not worship God in the way he chooses, does not worship him at all. Roger Williams, William Penn, and the early settlers of New York, embraced this principle, which has been interwoven in the constitution of government for the United States.

The powers given to Congress are specific-guarded by a ‘hitherto shalt thou come and no further.’ Among all the enumerated powers given to Congress, is there one that authorizes them to declare which day of the week, month, or year, is more holy than the rest-too holy to travel upon? If there is none, Congress must overleap their bounds, by an unpardonable construction, to establish the prohibition prayed for. Let the [anti-Sunday mail] petitioners ask themselves the question. If Congress should assume an ecclesiasticopolitical power, and stop the mail on the seventh day, and let it be transported on the first, would that satisfy them? If not, are they doing as they would be done by?”

While the U.S. Senate, with the support of Baptists throughout America, held firm to church state separation, the Sunday mail controversy consumed the energies of Congress throughout 1830 and beyond. Leland continued writing on the subject during the decade. In 1833, Sen. Johnson, on the strength of his defense of church state separation, was nominated as a candidate for the vice-presidency of the United States. In a nominating speech, the following lines were uttered of Johnson:

“Colonel Johnson had not only a regard for the political, but also for the religious, welfare of his country, when he drafted these reports. He had been instructed, by the history of the past, that in proportion as a sect becomes powerful, from whatever cause, it retrogrades in piety, and advances in corruption and ambition. He was aware that the Christian religion no longer partook of the character of its Founder, after the civil arm was wielded in its behalf. After it was taken into keeping by Constantine, that royal cut-throat– that anointed parricide — that baptized murderer — from that time to the present, with but few intervals, it has been wielded as a political engine, prostrating the liberties and paralyzing the energies of the nations.”

Richard M. Johnson became the vice president of the United States in 1837, remaining in office until 1841, the only Baptist to hold the position in the 19th century. As conservative Christian opposition to Sunday mail operations continued and grew, Johnson, Brown, Leland and the collective Baptist voice of 19th century America supported Sunday mail delivery (with the exception of Baptists of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War) on the grounds that religious liberty and church state separation demanded that government not grant privilege to religious faith of any kind, and demanded that citizens not be forced to honor any given religious beliefs.