No. of Recommendations: 2
So when Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists regarding the Congregationalists, it really didn't carry any weight because that was the state of CT, and the Feds/BoR had no jurisdiction in that. They would have had to appeal to their governor and/or supreme court.
Yep. It was an effort at political persuasion, not the exercise of any power that Jefferson (or the U.S. government writ large) had to actually affect things in Connecticut. Because the Connecticut constitution didn't have any provisions regarding free exercise or establishment of religion, the state was free to have a state religion. Connecticut didn't disestablish the church until 1818, nearly two decades after Jefferson's 1802 letter.
