The Church was prominent in all phases of the restoration of legitimacy in Europe--a connection incomprehensible in America, where Church and State had been completely severed in the course of the political revolution. Disestablishment by statute in Virginia had been followed by similar action in all States where the Established Church held. Local constitutions as formed by the States guaranteed not toleration, but absolute religious freedom. The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States made this freedom national. The Ordinance for the North-west Territory extended it to States yet unborn. Washington, as President, gave assurance of non-interference in the replies which he framed to addresses from the leading sects. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how a State church could have been maintained in the rapid shifting of the Chief Executive. President Washington was an Episcopalian, President Adams a Congregationalist, and President Jefferson a free-thinker, or Unitarian of later times. So thoroughly had Church and State been divorced in America that some suspicion was aroused over a manifesto signed at St. Petersburg, on "the day of the birth of our Saviour," 1816, by the monarchs of Austria, Russia, and Prussia. It announced that "in conformity with the words of the Holy Scripture, which commands all men to regard one another as brethren," the three agreed to lend each other assistance, aid, and support, and to govern their subjects in "a spirit of fraternity for the protection of religion, peace and justice." The exhortation of these monarchs to their people to fortify themselves in the principles of the Saviour, no less than the confession that they themselves ruled only by a delegation of power from Christ, was regarded by the Protestant Americans as religious cant. The power behind the throne was more likely force of arms. The provision that other nations professing these principles should be "received with as much readiness as affection in this holy alliance" was regarded as a bid and possible conspiracy for the extension of legitimacy not alone to Europe, but to the colonial holdings as well.