Not really. Most of the states literally had state religions. Almost all of the founders were religious and wrote about it. John Adams even said the Constitution was only fit for a religious people.
And yet, they made it the very first amendment, so any state with their own religion should have had it struck down quickly. Also, the term "separation of church and state" did in fact start with the founders. Who were mostly deists, not at all like today's Evangelical Christians.
>And yet, they made it the very first amendment, so any state with their own religion should have had it struck down quickly.
This is just incorrect. Before the 14th amendment the bill of rights did not apply to states.
>Also, the term "separation of church and state" did in fact start with the founders.
It started with a single founder not founders. Have you read Jefferson's letter? I would imagine you haven't if you think it meant a state couldn't have a state religion or that they couldn't push religious laws (not that abortion is strictly a religious thing).
>Who were mostly deists, not at all like today's Evangelical Christians.
Do you have a list? I am not sure that mostly is accurate. Episcopalianism (is that how you spell it?) was quite popular.
> This is just incorrect. Before the 14th amendment the bill of rights did not apply to states.
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
I forgot about that brief time before the civil war when states felt like they could pick and choose which parts of the Constitution applied to them. Why do you think it only applies to the bill of rights, though?
I find it darkly humorous that it took an amendment to the Constitution to really drive home that the Constitution actually applies to everyone in the US. That seems like a bit of circular logic, but at the point of a gun it worked.
Imagine if states could just choose that the second amendment did not apply to them today. Ha!
States couldn't pick and choose what to follow per se. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights for the most part only applied to the federal government. This is well documented.
Quoting the Constitution is pointless since it doesn't prove anything. If the federal government has the authority to do something then it is the law of the land. What you are missing is that the Constitution only allows like 10 things (I made up 10, but it is close to that). Anything other than those 10 things were left to the states (10th amendment).
Barron v. Baltimore was a Supreme Court case (that was decided unanimously) that made it clear that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the States. After the 14th amendment (though not immediately) something called the Incorporation Doctrine became the mainstream opinion. This was the process of applying the amendments to the states which only could happened due to the 14th amendment.
Prior to the 14th amendment states could ban guns though several of states had similar provisions to the 2nd amendment in their constitutions. Assuming they either amended their state constitution or never had the right in their constitution they could ban guns.
That was the entire purpose of the the way the US was set up. The federal government has a basic setup mostly to ensure defense of the nation (and a few other things like weights and measures) and the States deal with everything else. If a state wanted to ban guns they could. If you wanted to own guns you could move to a state that allowed gun ownership.
The US was intended to be closer to 50 distinct countries than one nation with 50 administrative regions like we have today.
