President Ulysses S. Grant
(1869-1877) in a speech in 1875 to a veteran's meeting...
called for a Constitutional amendment that would mandate free public
schools and prohibit the use of public money for sectarian schools.
Grant laid out his agenda for "good common school education." He
attacked government support for "sectarian schools" run by religious
organizations, and called for the defense of public education "unmixed
with sectarian, pagan or atheistical dogmas." Grant declared that
"Church and State" should be "forever separate." Religion, he said,
should be left to families, churches, and private schools devoid of
After Grant's speech Republican Congressman James G. Blaine (1830-1893) proposed the amendment to the federal Constitution. Blaine,
who actively sought Catholic votes when he ran for president in 1884,
believed that possibility of hurtful agitation on the school question
should be ended. In 1875, the proposed amendment passed by a vote of
180 to 7 in the House of Representatives, but failed by four votes to
achieve the necessary two-thirds vote in the United States Senate. It never became law.
The proposed text was:
- "No State shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and no money raised
by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived
from any public fund therefor, nor any public lands devoted thereto,
shall ever be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any
money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects
~http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaine_amendmentso is Wikipedia the antichrist or what!?!