The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut by M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

M >> M. Louise Greene, Ph. D. >> The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut

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The leader of the Republicans in Connecticut was Pierpont Edwards, a
recently appointed United States district judge. He was brother of
Jonathan Edwards, Jr., for years the pastor of the North Church at New
Haven, and in 1800 president of Union College. This Republican leader
was the maternal uncle of his opponent in Federal state politics,
President Dwight, and also of the Republican Vice-President, Aaron
Burr. Another nephew of his was Theodore Dwight, the brother of
Yale's president, who led the Federal civilians, and who was editor of
the "Hartford Courant," the organ of the Connecticut Federalists. The
Hartford "American Mercury" voiced the sentiments of the
Republicans. The latter party throughout the state was formally
organized in 1800 at a meeting in New Haven, the home of Mr. Edwards
and of his henchman, Abraham Bishop, son of that city's mayor.

The close personal relationship of the leaders, [l] the scorn of the
radicals, the abhorrence of the conservatives for the principles,
opinions, and even, in some cases, habits of life of their opponents,
entered into the strife and vituperation of the political campaigns
from 1800 to 1806. Personalities were unsparing, passion rose high,
and speeches were bitter. This was particularly the case in New Haven,
where Abraham Bishop's impudent boldness of attack and denunciation
was exaggerated by his father's position. Samuel Bishop, the father,
was a man of seventy-seven, and old in the service of both Church and
State. He was senior deacon in the North Church, or what was at that
time known as the Church of the United White Haven and Fair Haven
Societies. He was also a justice of the peace, town clerk, and mayor
of the city. The last office was held, according to the charter,
during the pleasure of the legislature. Samuel Bishop was also chief
judge of the court of common pleas for New Haven County, and sole
judge of probate, annual offices which the General Assembly had
re-conferred upon him in 1800 and in 1801. His son was a graduate of
Yale (1778). He was a lawyer of somewhat indifferent practice, and
from 1791 to 1798 clerk of the county court under his father, while
from 1798 he had been clerk of the superior court. Before settling
down to practice at the bar he had lived abroad, and had been caught
in the whirl of French thought and democratic ideas. He had returned
home bearing words of recommendation to Washington's secretary of
state from Jefferson's European friends. A personal meeting with that
party leader had added to Bishop's enthusiasm. For some years he had
lived in Boston, and tried his hand at literature. He had returned to
New Haven in 1791, and had thrown himself into politics. He purposely
exaggerated his opinions. He was careless of his unorthodox
expressions even to the verge of blasphemy. Though himself a believer
in God, he was perhaps what one would probably have termed a little
later a Unitarian. His enemies exaggerated his exaggerations,--and
Unitarianism was a crime according to the Connecticut statutes. [m]

In his speeches and essays Abraham Bishop struck out boldly, with
earnestness, logic, shrewd wit, and irony, and, as has been said, at
times with dangerous irreverence,--often with down-right impudence
when that would serve his purpose. An illustration of his extreme use
of it was in 1800, about the time of the organization of the
Republican party throughout the state.

He had been honored with the Phi Beta Kappa oration, annually
delivered on the eve of the Yale Commencement, then in September. A
polished literary effort was expected. He broke tradition, courtesy,
and every implied obligation in the choice of his subject. In August
he sent to the committee his paper for their acceptance or refusal. It
was entitled "The Extent and Power of Political Delusions," and was an
out and out campaign document. The presidential election was due in
November! Further, Bishop made political capital of the anticipated
refusal of his paper, which was not sent him until the eleventh
hour. The readers of the morning paper, wherein the committee offered
an apology for the change of speakers at the Society's meeting to be
held that night, were confronted by the announcement that the refused
address would be given to all who cared to listen to it in the parlors
of the White Haven church that same evening, and by the still further
notice that copies of it were fresh from the printer's hands and were
ready to be distributed to the remotest parts of the state. Needless
to state, the Phi Beta Kappa audience dwindled away to swell the crowd
of fifteen hundred, wherein Bishop gleefully counted "eight clergymen
and many ladies." The address met with great favor, and the
Wallingford Republicans at their celebration of March 11, 1801, in
honor of the election of Jefferson and Burr, asked Mr. Bishop to be
their orator. [n]

To top Bishop's insult,--as it was regarded by every friend of the
Standing Order,--came in the following spring Jefferson's displacement
of Elizur Goodrich, President Adams's appointee as collector of the
port of New Haven, and the substitution of Samuel Bishop. President
Jefferson considered himself at liberty to make this change; and all
the more so because President Adams had made the appointment as one of
his last official acts, when he must have known it would have been
unacceptable to the incoming Republican administration. The merchants
of New Haven immediately united in a petition to President Jefferson,
in which they declared that Samuel Bishop was too old to perform the
duties of the office, and, moreover, not acquainted with
accounts. Assuming that his son Abraham would assist him, they
denounced the latter as "entirely destitute of public confidence, so
conspicuous for his enmity to commerce and opposition to order, so
odious to his fellow citizens, that we presume his warmest partizans
would not have hazarded a recommendation of him." Notwithstanding
this protest the appointment was continued, the President pointing out
the honors bestowed upon the father and the care with which he,
Jefferson, had investigated the case before acting upon it. Reproving
the authorities for so long excluding the Republicans entirely from
office, Jefferson expressed his regret at finding upon his accession
to the presidency not even a "moderate participation in office in the
hands of the majority." He further stated that when such a situation
was in some measure relieved he would be only too glad to make the
question "Is he capable? Is he honest? Is he faithful to the
Constitution?" the only tests for obtaining and holding office. Samuel
Bishop died in 1803, and the collector ship was then bestowed upon his
son, who held it until his death in 1829.

In Connecticut the two political parties prepared for conflict. The
Republicans desired a new constitution and disestablishment. The old
constitutional and religious debates were opened and fiercely fought
out in pamphlet, press, sermon, and political oration. Noah Webster
replied to the "Extent and Power of Political Delusion" by "A Rod for
the Fool's Back." John Leland published his famous Hartford speech as
"A Blow at the Root, a fashionable Fast-Day Sermon," and his "High
Flying Churchman," as contributions in behalf of civil and religious
liberty. Abraham Bishop took up the latter topic in his "Wallingford
Address, Proofs of a Conspiracy Against Christianity and the
Government of the United States," published in 1802, as well as in his
"Extent and Power of Political Delusion" of 1800. A fair type of
Mr. Bishop's style and treatment is shown in his "Connecticut
Republicanism," a campaign document, wherein he sets forth his opinion
of the union of Church and State. [o]

In his campaign document under the title "Connecticut Republicanism"
Bishop declared:

Christianity has suffered more by the attempts to unite church and
state than by all the deistical writings, yet the men who denounce
them are pronounced atheists and no proof of their atheism is
required but their opposition to Federal measures.... Church and
state cannot be better served than by keeping them distinct and by
placing them where they ought to be, above, instead of beneath the
control of men who care no more for either of them than they can
turn to their personal benefit. The self-styled friends of order
have in all nations been the cause of all the convulsions and
distresses which have agitated the world.... The clergyman
preaches politics, the civilian prates of orthodoxy, and if any
man refuse to join their coalition they endeavor to hunt him down
to the tune "The Church is in danger."... In 1787 this visible
intolerance had abated in New England; there was no written law in
force that none but church-members should be free burgesses: yet
the avowed charge of Christ's church was in our law-books, some
nice points of theology were settled in our statutes and the
common law of church and state was in full force.... The
Trinitarian doctrine is established by laws, and the denial of it
is placed in the rank of felony. Though we have ceased to
transplant from town to town Quakers, New Lights, and Baptists;
yet the dissenters from our prevailing denominations are even at
this moment praying for a repeal of those laws which abridge the
rights of conscience.

* * * * *

Break the league of church and state which first subjugates your
consciences, then treating your understanding like galley slaves,
robs you of religion and civil freedom.... Thirty thousand freemen
are against the union of church and state. Thirty thousand more
men, deprived of voting because they are not rich or learned
enough, are ready to join them. [201]

In his "Wallingford Address," Bishop exclaims "The clerical
_politician_ is a useless preacher; the _political_
Christian is a dangerous statesman." On the title page of this address
appeared the epigram, "Our statesmen to the Constitution; our Clergy
to the Bible." The unfortunately irreverent parallel which Bishop drew
between the Saviour of the world and the leader of the national
Republican party, or of the democracy or common people, gave to the
epigram an evil significance not intended, and to its author a
reputation not wholly deserved.

David Daggett, a prominent New Haven Federalist and lawyer, [p] tried
in "Facts are Stubborn Things" to refute the charge that the people
were priest-ridden, the legislature arbitrary and tyrannical, the
clergy bigots. In the course of his argument he gives an account of
the reception of a Baptist petition which, voicing the smouldering
discontent that was kept burning by the certificate law, had been
presented to the legislature. Daggett charged the Republicans with
instituting the custom of holding their party meetings in Hartford and
New Haven at the time of the meeting of the Assembly in those cities,
and of making the political gathering a means of directing what topics
should be brought up for discussion in the House of Representatives,
and what discussed in their party organ the "American Mercury."
Daggett accused the Republicans of purposely choosing subjects of
discussion of an inflammable character, and declared that it was in
Babcock's paper (so called from its editor) that the Baptist petition
originated, which, circulated through the state, received some three
thousand signatures, "many of whom doubtless sought the public good."
[202] The petition was presented for trial in 1802 and a day set for
its hearing, upon which Mr. Pierpont Edwards and Mr. Gideon Granger
were to advocate it. The gentlemen, according to Mr. Daggett's
account, did not appear, and of course no trial was held. Instead, the
Assembly referred it to a committee of eighteen from the two
houses. Mr. Daggett insisted that "it was thoroughly canvassed, and
every gentleman professed himself entirely satisfied that there was no
ground of complaint which the Legislature could remove, except John
T. Peters, Esq., who declared that nothing short of an entire repeal
of the law for the support of religion would accord with his idea."

The truth of the matter was that the committee were chiefly
Federalists. Mr. Peters was a Republican. In their answer to the
petition, the committee assumed that it "was an equitable principle,
that every member of the society should, in some way, contribute to
the support of religious institutions and so the complaint of those
who declined to support any such institution was invalid." If there
was ground for complaint because of sequestration of property for the
benefit of Presbyterians only, the committee failed to find any such
cause, and if such existed, the proper channel of appeal was through
the courts. All other complaints in the petition were considered to
be answered by the assumption that the legislature had the right, on
the ground of utility, to compel contributions for the support of
religion, schools, and courts, whether or not every individual
taxpayer had need of them. The next year, 1803, the petition gained a
hearing, but that was all. It continued to be presented at every
session of the Assembly, and was first heard by both houses in
1815. It was finally withdrawn at the session that passed the bill for
the new constitution of 1818.

As one of the preliminary steps in the education of the people in
Republican principles and aims, John Strong of Norwich in 1804 founded
the "True Republican," thus giving a second paper for the
dissemination of Republican opinions. From 1792 the "Phenix or Windham
Herald" had been dealing telling blows at the Establishment and at the
courts of law through a discussion in its columns carried on by Judge
Swift, the inveterate foe of the union of Church and State, and a
lawyer, frank to avow that partiality existed in the administration of
justice. Though both the paper and the judge were strongly Federal in
their politics, they were both materially helping the Republican
advocates of reform. From the Windham press came, also, a
republication of "A Review of the Ecclesiastical Establishments of
Europe," edited by R. Huntington, with special reference to the
bearing of its arguments upon the conditions existing in Connecticut,
where illustration could be found of the absurdities and dangers that
the book had been originally written to expose. In 1803 John Leland,
representing forty-two Baptist clergymen, twenty licensed exhorters,
four thousand communicants, and twenty thousand attendants, sent out
another plea for disestablishment in his "Van Tromp lowering his Peak
with a Broadside, containing a Plea for the Baptists of Connecticut."
In it he urges that thirteen states have already granted religious
liberty, and that many of them have formed newer constitutions since
the Revolution. Such should also be the case in Connecticut. Moreover,
it could readily be accomplished at the small cost of five cents per
man. Such a small sum would pay the expenses of a convention to
formulate a constitution and another to ratify it, while five cents
more per person would furnish every citizen with a copy of the
proposed document, so that each could decide for himself upon the
constitutionality of any measure proposed, and would no longer be
obliged to read pamphlet after pamphlet or column after column in the
newspaper to determine its validity. [203]

All this was preparatory; and the first purely political note of
warning and call to battle for a new constitution was sounded by
Abraham Bishop at Hartford, May 11, 1804, in his "Oration in Honor of
the Election of President Jefferson and the peaceful acquisition of
Louisiana." He sums up the situation thus:--

Connecticut has no Constitution. On the day independence was
declared, the old charter of Charles II became null and void. It
was derived from royal authority, and went down with royal
authority. Then, the people ought to have met in convention and
framed a Constitution. But the General Assembly interposed,
usurped the rights of the people, and enacted that the government
provided for in the charter should he the civil constitution of
the State. Thus all the abuses inflicted on us when subjects of a
crown, were fastened on us anew when we became citizens of a free
republic. We still live under the old jumble of legislative,
executive and judicial powers, called a Charter. We still suffer
from the old restrictions on the right to vote; we are still ruled
by the whims of seven men. Twelve make the council. Seven form a
majority, and in the hands of these seven are all powers,
legislative, executive and judicial. Without their leave no law
can pass; no law can be repealed. On them more than half of the
House of the Assembly is dependent for re-appointments as
justices, judges, or for promotion in the militia. By their breath
are, each year, brought into official life six judges of the
Superior Court, twenty-eight of the probate, forty of county
courts, and five hundred and ten justices of the peace, and, as
often as they please, all the sheriffs. Not only do they make
laws, but they plead before justices of their own appointment, and
as a Court of Errors interpret the laws of their own making. Is
this a Constitution? Is this an instrument of government for
freemen? And who may be freemen? No one who does not have a
freehold estate worth seven dollars a year, or a personal estate
on the tax list of one hundred and thirty-four dollars.... For
these evils there is but one remedy, and this remedy we demand
shall be applied. _We demand a constitution that shall separate
the legislative, executive and judicial power, extend the
freeman's oath to men who labor on highways, who serve in the
militia, who pay small taxes, but possess no estates._ [204]

Abraham Bishop threw down the gauntlet, and in the following July his
party issued a circular letter. It emanated from the Republican
General Committee, of which Pierpont Edwards was chairman. It stated
"that many very respectable Republicans are of the opinion that it is
high time to speak to the citizens of Connecticut plainly and
explicitly on the subject of forming a constitution; but this ought
not to be done without the approbation of the party." A general
meeting was proposed to be held in New Haven on August 29, 1804. In
response, ninety-seven towns sent Republican delegates to assemble at
the state house in New Haven on that date. Major William Judd of
Farmington was chosen chairman. The meeting was held with closed
doors, and a series of resolutions was passed in favor of adopting a
new constitution. It was declared "the unanimous opinion of this
meeting that the people of this state are at present without a
constitution of civil government," and "that it is expedient to take
measures preparatory to the formation of the Constitution and that a
committee be appointed to draft an Address to the People of this State
on that subject." The address reported by this committee was printed
in New Haven on a small half-sheet with double columns, and ten
thousand copies were ordered distributed through the state.

The issue was fairly before the people. From the Federal side, just
before the September elections, came David Daggett's "Count the Cost,"
in which he ably reviewed the Republican manifesto, impugning the
motives of the leaders of the Republican party, and eloquently urging
every friend of the Standing Order and every freeman to "count the
cost" before voting with the Republicans for the proposed reform.

The fall election of 1804 was lost to the Republicans, for while they
made many gains here and there throughout the state, [q] the immediate
slight access to the Federal ranks showed that the people generally
were not yet ready for a constitutional change.

As one result of the defeat at the polls, there arose a wider sympathy
for the defeated party. When the legislature met in October, the
Federal leaders resolved to administer punishment to the defeated
Republicans. So strong was the popular feeling, and so determined the
attitude of the legislature, that it summoned before it all five of
the justices of the peace [r] who had attended the New Haven
convention of August 29, to show why they did not deserve to be
deprived of their commissions. Their oath of office ran "to be true
and faithful to the Governor and Company of this state, and the
Constitution and government thereof." What right, the Federals asked,
had they to attack a constitution they had sworn to uphold? At the
same time, several of the militia, known to be of Republican
sympathies, were also deposed or superseded. Mr. Pierpont Edwards was
allowed to make the defense for the justices. Mr. Daggett appeared for
the state. Reviewing the proceedings of the Republican meeting,
Mr. Daggett traced the history of the government of the colony and
state in order to demonstrate that the charter was peculiarly a
constitution of the people, "_made by the people_ and in a sense
not applicable to any other people." He declared the New Haven
"address" an outrage upon decency, and it to be the duty of the
Assembly to withdraw their commissions from men who questioned the
existence of the constitution under which they held them. The day
after the hearing, a bill to revoke the commissions was passed
unanimously by the governor and council, and by a majority of eleven
in the Lower House, the vote standing 67 yeas to 56 nays. This attempt
to stifle public opinion won a general acknowledgment that the
minority were oppressed. The feeling of sympathy thus roused was
increased by the death of Major Judd, who had been taken ill after his
arrival in New Haven. His partisans asserted that his death was
caused by his efforts to save himself and friends, and his consequent
obligation to appear at the trial when really too ill to be about. The
day after his death, the Republicans published and distributed
broadcast his "Address to the people of the State of Connecticut on
the subject of the removal of himself and four other justices from
office."

From this time forward the minority thoroughly realized that it was
"not a matter of talking down but of voting down their opponents."
Their leaders also understood it. Bishop entered the lists, not only
against his political antagonist David Daggett, but against such men
as Professor Silliman, Simeon Baldwin, Noah Webster, Theodore Dwight,
and against the clergy, led by President Dwight, Simon Backus, Isaac
Lewis, John Evans, and a host of secondary men who turned their
pulpits into lecture desks and the public fasts and feasts into
electioneering occasions. Their general plea was that religion
preserved the morals of the people, and consequently their civil
prosperity, and hence the need for state support. Occasionally one
would insist that it was a matter of conscience with the Presbyterians
which made them enforce ecclesiastical taxes and fines, and that all
had been given the dissenters that could be; that the Presbyterians
had "yielded every privilege they themselves enjoyed and subjected
them (the dissenters) to no inconvenience, not absolutely
indispensable to the countenance of the practice" (of dissent). David
Daggett maintained that there was a just and wide-spread alarm lest
the Republicans should undermine all religion, and therefore it
behooved all the friends of stable government to support the Standing
Order.

The Republicans vigorously contested the elections of 1804,1805, and
1806. Their second general convention, that of August, 1806, at
Litchfield, was more outspoken in its criticism, and so much bolder in
its demands that many conservative people hesitated to follow its
programme. The Republican gains were so small that after 1806 there
was a lull in the agitation for constitutional reform for some
years. It was well understood that the religious establishment was the
greatest clog upon the government. It was also thoroughly understood
by many that its destruction meant the destruction of the Federal
party in Connecticut. Consequently the Federal patronage distributed
the several thousand offices within the gift of Church and State with
a "liberality equalled only by the fidelity with which they were paid
for." So firm was the Federal control over the state that even in 1804
they risked antagonizing the Episcopalians by again refusing to
charter the Cheshire Academy as a college with authority to confer
degrees in art, divinity, and law. In the face of a strong protest, it
was refused again in 1810. The House approved this last petition, but
the Council rejected it. Naturally, the Episcopalians felt still more
aggrieved when in 1812 the charter was once more refused; but still
they did not desert the Federal party. The latter clung to the spoils
of office for their partisans, to the old restrictive franchise, and
to the obnoxious Stand-up Law, nor were they less disdainful of the
dissenters and of the Republican minority.

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