I'm very happy to have landed in the Gulch...
In 1853 the U.S. Senate and House issued committee reports, which can be ordered from the National Archives, which are primary sources of law. The Senate report says in part, "Our fathers were true lovers of liberty, and utterly opposed to any constraint upon the rights of conscience. They intended, by this amendment (The first amendment), to prohibit "an establishment of religion" such as the English church presented, or anything like it. But they had no fear of jealousy or religion itself, nor did they wish to see us an irreligious people; they did not intend to prohibit a just expression of religious devotion by the legislators of the nation, even in their public character as legislators; they did not intend to send our armies and navies forth to do battle for their country without any national recognition of that God on whom success or failure depends; they did not intend to spread over all the public authorities and the whole public action of the nation the dead and revolting spectacle of atheistical apathy."