There frequently appears in the Freethought press, of whatever name, a quotation from or reference to that part of the United States Treaty with Tripoli of 1796-97 to the effect that the United States was not founded on the Christian religion. Generally the so-called quotations are misquotations and the words are attributed to George Washington as author. Since there is no evidence whatever that George Washington wrote the Treaty or any part of it, the most that can be said is that he approved of it. . . . He objected to atheists using this quotation and called it "a most flagrant misquotation for evil purposes." To which it should be stated that the passage in question is genuine and is not used for "evil purposes" unless truth and Americanism are evil purposes. This does not refer to the original text of the treaty now in the Department of State files, with the Arabic text on the right-hand page and the English translation on the left, but to an outline drafted by Joel Barlow in English which he used in negotiating the treaty before it was drawn up and agreed to by both sides. Barlow did not alone draft the treaty as it stands, but he worked it out with the Moslem leaders and then translated it into English.

What are the facts regarding this important treaty? In the first place it was not written by George Washington or anybody else in the United States, but in Algiers and signed at Tripoli on Nov. 4, 1796, and at Algiers on Jan. 3, 1797, by Hassan Bashaw, dey or bey of Algiers, and Joel Barlow, U.S. Consul to Algiers. The original is in Arabic and the English text was translated by Joel Barlow. Both texts were submitted to the U.S. Senate on May 29, 1797, and the treaty was ratified and proclaimed in Philadelphia on June 10, 1797. George Washington was president when the treaty was signed at Tripoli, but by the time it reached the Senate for ratification John Adams was president, and it was the latter who presented it to the Senate. Joel Barlow (1754-1812), as U.S. Consul to Algiers, was co-author with Moslem officials of this treaty and sole author of Article XI which contains the non-Christian statement. He was a well-known poet and diplomat of the time and later was U.S. Minister to France (1811-12). Like the leaders among the Founding Fathers of the United States he was a Deist and non-Christian and well knew that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."