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As Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz notes, "The 5,000 Year Leap is not a fervid book. Instead, it is calmly, ingratiatingly misleading. Skousen quotes various eighteenth-century patriots on the evils of what Samuel Adams, in 1768, called "the Utopian schemes of leveling," which Skousen equates with redistribution of wealth. But he does not mention the Founders' endorsement of taxing the rich to support the general welfare. Thomas Jefferson, for example, wrote approvingly in 1811 of having federal taxes (then limited to tariffs) fall solely on the wealthy, which meant that "the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings." Skousen also challenges the separation of church and state, asserting that "the Founders were not indulging in any idle gesture when they adopted the motto In God We Trust." In reality, the motto that came out of the Constitutional Convention was 'E Pluribus Unum': out of many, one. "In God We Trust" came much later; its use on coins was first permitted in 1864, and only in 1955, at the height of the Cold War, did Congress mandate that it appear on all currency. " Furthermore, according to Alexander Zaitchik, a journalist at the The International Herald Tribune, among other publications: "Toward the end of Reagan's second term, Skousen became the center of a minor controversy when state legislators in California approved the official use of another of his books, the 1982 history text "The Making of America." Besides bursting with factual errors, Skousen's book characterized African-American children as "pickaninnies" and described American slave owners as the "worst victims" of the slavery system. Quoting the historian Fred Albert Shannon, "The Making of America" explained that "[slave] gangs in transit were usually a cheerful lot, though the presence of a number of the more vicious type sometimes made it necessary for them all to go in chains."