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2. The President, a Mammoth Cheese, and the “Wall of Separation”: Jeffersonian Politics and the New England Baptists
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The President, a Mammoth Cheese, and the “Wall of Separation” Jeffersonian Politics and the New England Baptists The greatest Cheese in America, for the greatest Man in America. —Address of the inhabitants of Cheshire, Massachusetts (1802)1 Sir, we have attempted to prove our love to our President, not in words alone, but in deeds and in truth. . . . [W]e send you a Cheese . . . as a pepper-corn of the esteem which we bear to our Chief Magistrate. —Address of the inhabitants of Cheshire, Massachusetts (1802)2 The celebrated East Room [of the White House] was still unfinished , although Jefferson had recently used it to give shelter to the largest cheese ever made in the United States. This odoriferous miracle of American inventiveness most appropriately furnished that noble chamber until the electorate finally ate it. —Gore Vidal, Burr: A Novel (1973)3 On the first day of 1802, President Thomas Jefferson received a gift of mythic proportions. Amid great fanfare, a “mammoth” Cheshire cheese was delivered to the President’s House by the itinerant Baptist preacher and political gadfly Elder John Leland (1754–1841).4 It measured more than four feet in diameter, thirteen feet in circumference, 2 9 and seventeen inches in height; once cured, it weighed 1,235 pounds. According to eyewitnesses, its crust was painted red and emblazoned with Jefferson’s favorite motto: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”5 The prodigious cheese was made by the predominantly Baptist and staunchly Republican citizens of Cheshire, a small farming community in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. At the turn of the century , the Federalist party dominated New England politics, and the Congregationalist church was legally established in Massachusetts. The religious dissenters created the cheese to celebrate Jefferson’s recent electoral victory over his Federalist rival, John Adams, and to commemorate his long-standing devotion to religious liberty. Cheshire, according to local lore and extant electoral records, voted unanimously for Jefferson in the election of 1800. (Tradition has it that, with Leland ’s guidance, Cheshire’s conversion to Jeffersonian Republicanism was so thorough that when the first lone Federalist ballot was cast in the village, it was summarily thrown out because the selectmen were sure it was a mistake.)6 The cheese makers were both a religious and a political minority that had been subjected to legal discrimination in a Commonwealth dominated by a Congregationalist-Federalist establishment .7 The idea to make a giant cheese to celebrate Jefferson’s election (and, perhaps, to market Cheshire’s chief agricultural commodity)8 was announced from the pulpit by Leland and enthusiastically endorsed by his congregation.9 Much preparation and many materials were required for such a monumental project. Organizers had to calculate the quantity of available milk and instruct housewives on how to prepare and season the curds uniformly and to guard against contamination. No ordinary cheese press could accommodate a cheese of such gargantuan dimensions , so a modified “cyder” press with a reinforced hoop was constructed . On the morning of July 20, 1801, the devout Baptist families of Cheshire, in their finest Sunday frocks, turned out with pails and tubs of curds for a day of thanksgiving, hymn singing, and cheese pressing at the centrally located farm of Elisha Brown, Jr. The cheese was distilled from the single day’s milk production of nine hundred or more “Republican” cows. (Since this was a gift for Mr. Jefferson, the new Republican president, the milk of “Federalist” cows was scrupulously excluded .10 Many months later, when the cheese began to spoil, Leland 10 | The President, a Mammoth Cheese, and the “The Wall of Separation” [3.21.104.109] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 20:58 GMT) purportedly alleged that the decay was caused by the curds of one or two Federalist cows that had found their way into and contaminated the cheese.)11 In September 1801, the Boston Mercury and New-England Palladium published an “Epico-Lyrico Ballad” that commemorated the festive and worshipful summer day on which the cheese was pressed: From meadows rich, with clover red, A thousand heifers come; The tinkling bells the tidings spread The milk-maid muffles up her head, And wakes the village hum. . . . The circling throng an opening drew Upon the verdant grass, To let the vast procession through, To spread their rich repast in view, And Elder J. L. pass. Then Elder J.———with lifted eyes, In musing posture stood, Invoked a blessing from the skies, To save...