Currently in New Orleans (for an academic conference), my husband and I toured the old Ursuline convent in the French Quarter, where we saw, framed on the wall, a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Ursuline community. Dated May 15, 1804, the document sought to reassure the nuns that the Louisiana Purchase would result in neither the disruption of their school nor the confiscation of their residence:
"The principles of the constitution and government of the United States are a sure guarantee to you that it [your convent] will be preserved to you sacred and inviolate, and that your institution will be permitted to govern itself according to its own voluntary rules without undue interference from the civil authority."
How far today's politicians have strayed from such promises...!
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