Calvinist residues of the original Puritans (including Congregationalists and also Presbyterians) still dominated New England national politics, as well as they were cautious of any kind of effort to separate church and state. They sustained their guy John Adams for reelection versus the Republican Thomas Jefferson, a Deist that at times seemed to edge into atheism.
That July Fourth, Dwight's sibling, Theodore, announced, "I know not who came from that Society in this country, but if I were about to make proselytes to illumatism in the United States, I should to begin with apply to Thomas Jefferson, Albert Gallatin [an U.S. Residence Agent from Pennsylvania as well as future Treasury assistant under Jefferson], and their political partners." Having actually functioned to feed the public's concern of the Illuminati's seepage of the United States, the Federalists were maybe not prepared for how promptly this paranoia would certainly be turned against them.