Check all academic facts these days; few are as interested in evidence as the old Classical Liberal professors were.

Very interesting history from American History and Today’s Two Americas by Seth Barrett Tillman.

Tillman's base case is a dispute that arose over the seating of a North Carolina legislator in 1809 based on the North Carolina Constitution which stipulated 

That no person, who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this State.

 The legislator was Jacob Henry, Jewish and was held by one of his fellow legislator's to have contravened the stipulation of Article 32.

Reflecting well on that generation of legislators still inspired by the ideals of the Revolution, including religious liberty, the motion to unseat Henry was quickly dispatched. 

As Tilman points out, there were multiple arguments to be made on behalf of Henry.  Which were advanced?  Which prevailed?  The Henry case became relevant later in 1835 when North Carolina updated its Constitution and the apparent restriction on religious liberty again came to the fore.

Tillman is trying to determine what documented knowledge do we have about the circumstances and arguments in the 1809 decision.  Which of those were later used in 1835 as well as what further arguments were made.  

This part of the article is essentially logic (the argument that could, might, or likely was made) and detective work.  It is an exciting read in both the substance of the argument and how evidence suddenly becomes available to affirm or deny assumptions already made.

But the upshot is that Henry was seated and there was little further ado.  For all those debating the ins and outs of which arguments were used, there was agreement on the outcome.

Which cannot be said about modern "scholars" who seek adherence to an ideological narrative over respectful treatment of history or facts.  Tillman ends his brief post with two different accounts of the historical evidence he covers.  The first is from 1989 when classical liberal scholarship prevailed and facts, hard as they might have been to discern through historical texts, were still rendered as facts.  The second is from a mere eighteen years later when the flood of postmodernism and critical theory were in the flow and academic abandonment of facts and evidence was being set aside to the extent that those facts contradicted a preferred ideological narrative.

Jacob Rader Marcus, United States Jewry 1776–1985, multiple vols. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), volume 1, page 507:

It must have been quite a shock to [Henry], after he had served for a year in the state legislature and had been reelected for another term, to see one of his colleagues rise and, without warning, ask for his expulsion because Henry, as a Jew, was not entitled to a seat in the Assembly. He had refused to take the prescribed oath affirming a belief in the divine authority of the New Testament. Naturally, as a Jew, he could not and would not take such an oath. On the following day, the 6th of December, 1809, after consulting with eminent Christian jurists, Henry [responded] to his colleagues in the House of Commons. It is a proud justification of his refusal to take the test oath. Tradition has it that his letter was framed, if not actually written, for him by Chief Judge John Louis Taylor of the State Supreme Court, a Catholic. [https://tinyurl.com/y2prjud4]

Jon Meacham, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007), page 107:

Jacob Henry, a Jew, was elected to the state house in 1808 but he was blocked the following year because the law required him to be a Protestant and to accept the divine authority of the Old and New Testaments. A standoff ensued, with Christian lawmakers refusing to seat [Henry]. [https://tinyurl.com/y2cwxmkx]

Marcus reaches for the facts (as elaborated on in Tillman's extended essay, A Religious Test in America?: The 1809 Motion to Vacate Jacob Henry’s North Carolina State Legislative Seat—A ReEvaluation of the Primary Sources by Seth Barrett Tillman).  

Meacham simply states the facts as he would have wished them to be without adherence to evidence or being constrained by truth.  His account his grossly misleading, leaving the impression that Henry's fellow legislators did not confirm him in his seat within 24 hours after the objection was raised.