The sale of a 230-year-old letter in which America’s first president speaks of “Providence” guiding the fledgling republic’s affairs has rekindled interest in how George Washington saw religion, a subject long debated among scholars, supporters and skeptics.
The letter, which came on the market Monday, was sold at the asking price of $140,000 to an unnamed private collector by the Raab Collection, an antiquities dealer in Ardmore, Pa., near Philadelphia.
Written Sept. 7, 1788, to Richard Peters, at the time speaker of the Pennsylvania House, the letter captures Washington railing against the calling of a second Constitutional Convention by some states.