Elihu Palmer

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Parent Category: People

Category: freethinkers

Elihu Palmer (1764-1806) was an American Deist. A native of Canterbury, Connecticut, Palmer graduated from Dartmouth in 1787 where he trained to become a Presbyterian minister. He is probably the Elihu who in February 1788 wrote an impassioned defense of the wisdom of leaving God out of the U. S. Constitution. (This was in reply to William Williams' letter of February 11, 1788 in the Hartford American Mercury, in which Williams argued that God should be recognized in the Preamble to the Constitution. See: The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Vol. III. Ratification of the Constitution by the States Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Edited by Merrill Jensen, Madison State Historical Society of Wis, 1978, pp 590-592)

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