In his autobiography, Jefferson recounted with satisfaction that in the struggle to pass his landmark Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), the Virginia legislature "rejected by a great majority" an effort to limit the bill's scope "in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan." George Washington suggested a way for Muslims to "obtain proper relief" from a proposed Virginia bill, laying taxes to support Christian worship. On another occasion, the first president declared that he would welcome "Mohometans" to Mount Vernon if they were "good workmen" (see page 96). Officials in Massachusetts were equally insistent that their influential Constitution of 1780 afforded "the most ample liberty of conscience … to Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians," a point that Chief Justice Theophilus Parsons resoundingly affirmed in 1810.
Toward Islam itself the Founding generation held differing views. An evangelical Baptist spokesman denounced "Mahomet" as a "hateful" figure who, unlike the meek and gentle Jesus, spread his religion at the point of a sword. A Presbyterian preacher in rural South Carolina dusted off Grotius' 17th century reproach that the "religion of Mahomet originated in arms, breathes nothing but arms, is propagated by arms." Other, more influential observers had a different view of Muslims. In 1783, the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, cited a study showing that "Mohammadan" morals were "far superior to the Christian." Another New Englander believed that the "moral principles that were inculcated by their teachers had a happy tendency to render them good members of society." The reference here, as other commentators made clear, was to Islam's belief, which it shared with Christianity, in a "future state of rewards and punishments," a system of celestial carrots and sticks which the Founding generation considered necessary to guarantee good social conduct.