The diary of Isaac Backus

"American historians have long realized that the Baptist minister Isaac Backus (1724-1806) played a signal role in the separation of church and state in New England, but his diary, here published for the first time, makes clear as well his importance as a leader and spokesman of the small dissenting sect that would become after 1800 the largest Protestant denomination in the nation. The diary, covering the sixty-year span from the First to the Second Great Awakening, describes the campaigns he and his colleagues waged for religious liberty and for the propagation of their religious principles." (p. xv) Isaac was a direct descendant in the fifth generation of English immigrant William Backus Sr., who settled in Saybrook, Connecticut in 1637. Issac died before New England abandoned religious taxation (Connecticut in 1818, Massachusetts in 1833), but before his death he was certain New England would eventually switch to Thomas Jefferson's position of separation of church and state.