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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Yet many of their best men had come to feel that there was wrong and
injustice done the minority; that there should be a stop put to the
open ignoring of Democratic lawyers, numbering in their ranks many men
of wide learning and of great practical ability; that the spectacle of
a Federal state-attorney prosecuting Republican editors was not
edifying, and that the imprisonment of such offenders and their trial
before a hostile judiciary opened that branch of the state government
to damaging and dangerous suspicion. [205]

In July, 1812, a meeting was called in Judge Baldwin's office in New
Haven, with President Dwight in the chair, to organize a Society for
the Suppression of Vice and the Promotion of Good Morals. At this
meeting the political situation was thoroughly discussed, and measures
were taken to cope with it.

I am persuaded [wrote the Rev. Lyman Beecher to Rev. Asahel Hooker in
the following November] that the time has come when it becomes every
friend of the State to wake up and exert his whole influence to save
it from innovation.... That the effort to supplant Governor Smith [s]
will be made is certain unless at an early stage the noise of rising
opposition will be so great as to deter them; and if it is made, a
separation is made in the Federal party and a coalition with
Democracy, which will in my opinion be permanent, unless the overthrow
by the election should throw them into despair or inspire repentance.

If we stand idle we lose our habits and institutions piecemeal, as
fast as innovations and ambitions shall dare to urge on the work.

My request is that you will see Mr. Theodore Dwight, expressing to him
your views on the subject, ... and that you will in your region touch
every spring, _lay_ or clerical, which you can touch prudently,
that these men do not steal a march upon us, and that the rising
opposition may meet them early, before they have gathered
strength. Every blow struck now will have double the effect it will
after the parties are formed and the lines drawn. I hope we shall not
act independently, but I hope we shall all act, who fear God or regard
men. [206]

Writing of the meeting to organize the Society for the Suppression of
Vice and the Formation of Good Morals, Dr. Beecher in his
"Autobiography" gives a sketch of the politics of the time that had
led up to the occasion. One of the prominent actors of the time, he
tells us that this meeting, composed of prominent Federalists of all
classes, was unusual, for--

it was a new thing in that day for the clergy and laymen to meet
on the same level and co-operate. It was the first time there had
ever been such a consultation in our day. The ministers had always
managed things themselves, for in those days the ministers were
all politicians. They had always been used to it from the
beginning.... On election day they had a festival, and, fact is,
when they got together they would talk over who should be
Governor, and who Lieutenant-Governor, and who in the Upper House,
and their councils would prevail. Now it was a part of the old
steady habits of the state ... that the Lieutenant-Governor should
succeed to the governorship. And it was the breaking up of this
custom by the civilians, against the influence of the clergy, that
first shook the stability of the Standing Order and the Federal
party in the state. Lieutenant Governor Treadwell (1810) was a
stiff man, and the time had come when many nlen did not like that
sort of thing. He had been active in the enforcement of the
Sabbath laws, and had brought on himself the odium of the opposing
party. Hence of the civilians of our party, David Daggett and
other wire-pullers, worked to have him superseded, and Roger
Griswold, the ablest man in Congress, put in his stead. That was
rank rebellion against the ministerial candidate. But Daggett
controlled the whole of Fairfleld County bar, and Griswold was a
favorite with the lawyers, and the Democrats helped them because
they saw how it would work; so there was no election by the
people, and Treadwell was acting Governor till 1811, when Griswold
was chosen. The lawyers, in talking about it, said: "We have
served the clergy long enough; we must take another man, and they
must look out for themselves." Throwing Treadwell over in 1811
broke the charm and divided the party; persons of third-rate
ability on our side who wanted to be somebody deserted; all the
infidels in the state had long been leading on that side ... minor
sects had swollen and complained of certificates. Our efforts to
reform morals by law were unpopular. [t]

Finally the Episcopalians went over to the Democrats. The Episcopal
split was due to a foolish and arbitrary proceeding on the part of the
Federals. In the spring of 1814, a petition was presented to the
General Assembly for the incorporation of the Phoanix Bank of
Hartford, offering "in conformity to the precedents in other states,
to pay for the privilege of the incorporation herein prayed for, the
sum of sixty thousand dollars to be collected (being a Premium to be
advanced by the stockholders) as fast as the successive instalments of
the capital stock shall be paid in; and to be appropriated, if in the
opinion of your Honors it shall be deemed expedient, in such
proportion as shall by your Honors be thought proper, to the use of
the Corporation of Yale College, of the Medical Institution,
established in the city of New Haven, and to the corporation of the
Trustees of the Fund of the Bishop of the Episcopal church in this
state, or for any purpose whatever, which to your Honors may seem
best." The capital asked for was $1,500,000. "The purpose of this
offer [u] a was a double one,--creating an interest in favor of the
Bank Charter among Episcopalians and retaining their influence on the
side of the Charter Government, as there was no inconsiderable amount
of talent among them." The Bishop's Fund, slowly gathering since 1799,
amounted to barely $6000. This bonus would give it a good start, and
conciliate the Episcopalians, still indignant at the refusal of the
Assembly to incorporate their college. When presented to the Assembly,
the Lower House favored the bank charter; the Council, rejecting it,
appointed a committee to consider its request. They soon originated an
act of incorporation, granting a capital of $1,000,000, and ordered
the bonus to be paid into the treasury. An act of incorporation,
rather than a petition, was, they claimed, the way established by
custom of granting bank charters. The same session of the legislature
originated bills giving $20,000 to the Medical Institution of Yale
College, and one of the same amount to the Bishop's Fund, "in
conformity to the offer of the petitioners for the Phonix Bank, and
out of the first moneys received from it as a bonus." The bill for
the medical school was passed unanimously by the House; that for the
Bishop's Fund uniformly voted down. [v] The Episcopalians, to whom the
Republicans were quick to offer their sympathy, asserted that by the
"grant to Yale the legislature had _committed themselves in good
faith_ to make the grant to the two other corporations connected
with it in the same petition." [w] Stripped of formal and courteous
wording, the petition, both in letter and in spirit, had offered its
conditions to all, if accepted by one; or, if refused at all, the
opportunity to divert the money from all three recipients to some
other and quite different use which should be approved by the
legislature.

The further bad faith of both branches of the Assembly increased the
enmity of the Episcopalians. In the spring of 1815, they petitioned
for their first installment of $10,000. They were told that the
treasury was empty, and that war time was no time to attend to such
matters. In the fall, in answer to their second petition, they found
the Lower House still hostile; the majority of the Council, including
the governor, in their favor, until the discussion came up, when the
Council, with one exception, sided with the House. The explanation of
the change appeared to the Episcopalians to be due to the fact that
during the session the Medical School had petitioned for the balance
of the $30,000, and seemed likely to receive it at the spring
meeting. This was too much for the Episcopalians, and thereafter the
Democrats claimed nine tenths of their vote. The sect was estimated in
1816 to contain from one eleventh to one thirteenth of the
population. The Democratic-Republicans had won over discontented
radicals, a majority of the dissatisfied dissenters, a few
conservatives, and now the indignant Episcopalians. Their political
hopes rose higher, but the War of 1812-1814 interfered, substituting
national interests for local ones, yet all the while adding recruits
to the Republican ranks, so that at its close there was a strong
party. There was also a Federal faction in process of
disintegration. The result was that when the constitutional reform
movement again became the issue of the day, though supported by the
Republicans, the question at issue soon drew to itself a new political
combine which under various forms kept the name of the Toleration
Party, and which eventually won the victory for religious freedom and
disestablishment.

FOOTNOTES:

[a] This party, called for short "Republican," stood for the
principles known as "democratic,"--the appellation of the party itself
since 1828. This was the school of Jefferson.

[b] There were men of mark among the Anti-Federalist leaders, such as
William Williams of Lebanon, a signer of the Declaration, Gen. James
Wadsworth of Durham, and Gen. Erastus Wolcott of East Windsor,--these
three were members of the Council; Dr. Benjamin Gale of Killingworth,
Joseph Hopkins, Esq., of Waterbury, Col. Peter Bulkley of Colchester,
Col. William Worthington of Saybrook, and Capt. Abraham Granger of
Suffield. At the ratification of the Constitntution the Tote stood 128
to 40. Afterwards for about ten years, in the conduct of state
politics, there was little friction, for in local matters the
Anti-Federalists were generally conservatives."

[c] Two deputies were allowed every town rated at $60,000. In 1785
Oliver Ellsworth had prepared a bill limiting towns of L20,000 or
under to one deputy. It passed the Senate, but was defeated in the
House.--_The Constitution of Connecticut_, 1901, State Series,
p. 105.

[d] In his pamphlet Dr. Gale advises that each town nominate one man,
and from the nominations in each county, the General Assembly elect
two, four or six delegates from each county to meet and frame a new
constitution, since "any legislature is too numerous a body, and too
unskilled in the science of government to properly perform such a
task" (p. 29).--J. Hammond Trumbull, _Hist. Notes on the
Constitution of Conn._, p. 17, and Wolcott's Manuscript in
_Mass. Hist. Soc. Col._ vol. iv.

[e] A similar method of election applied to the representatives in
Congress. Eighteen names were voted on in May for nomination, of which
the seven highest were listed for election in September.

[f] Bishop Seabury's church, St. James of New London, had neglected to
ohserve President Washington's proclamation of a national thanksgiving
on February 19, 1795, which fell in Lent. This roused some antagonism,
and was made the subject of a sharp and rather censorious newspaper
attack upon the Episcopalians. At the same time a few Federal
Congregationalists were further stirred by Bishop Seabury's signature,
viz. "Samuel, Bishop of Connecticut and Rhode Island," to a
proclamation that the prelate had issued, urging a contribution in
behalf of the Algerine captives. This signature was regarded as a
"pompous expression of priestly pride." Governor Huntington was a
personal friend of Bishop Seabury. Moreover, at this particular time,
the congregation to which the Governor belonged in Norwich was
worshiping in the Episcopal church during the rebuilding of their own
meeting-house, which had been destroyed by fire. The Governor had
previously been approached with a suggestion that the fasts and feasts
of the Congregationalists and Episcopalians should be made to
coincide, or at least that the annual fast day should not be appointed
for any time between Easter Week and Trinity Sunday, and that the
public thanksgivings, when occasion required them, should, if
possible, not be appointed during Lent. In 1795, the annual fast day
would have fallen upon the Thursday in Holy Week. In order to avoid
laying any stress upon the sanctity of certain days of the week, and
because Governor Huntington wished to turn the public mind away from
the petty controversy, he appointed the fast day on Good Friday. In
1796, the annual fast fell in the Lenten season. In 1797, in order to
avoid having the fast interfere with the regular sessions of the
County Courts, and at the same time to avoid its falling in Easter
week, Governor Trumbull appointed it again on Good Friday. The
arrangement was accepted with satisfaction by the Episcopalians and
with no objections from the Congregationalists, and thereafter it
became the custom. (Bishop Seabury had been elected to the bishopric
of Rhode Island in 1790.)--William DeLoss Love, Jr., _Fasts and
Thanksgivings of New England_, pp. 346-361.

[g] Early in his career he had written a versification of the Psalms,
in 1788 his _Conquest of Canaan_, and later _Triumph of
Infidelity_. President Dwight taught the seniors rhetoric, logic,
ethics, and metaphysics, and the graduate students in theology. In
1805 he was appointed to the professorship of the latter study.

[h] Dr. Dwight's _Theology Explained_ was not published until
1818, after his death, and his _Travels_ not until 1821-22.

[i] Except among the backwoodsmen of Kentucky in 1799-1803.

[j] The Society was granted a charter in 1802. In 1797 interest in the
missions was intensified by the free distribution of seventeen hundred
copies of the report of missionary work in England and America.

[k] The Rev. Jedidiah Champion of Lifcchfield, an ardent Federalist,
on the Sunday following the news of the election of Adams and
Jefferson, prayed fervently for the president-elect, closing with the
words, "0 Lord! wilt Thou bestow upon the Vice-President a double
portion of Thy grace, _for Thou knowest he needs it._" This was
mild, for Jefferson was considered by the New England clergy to be
almost the equal of Napoleon, whom one of them named the "Scourge of
God."

[l] Pierpont Edwards, b. April 8, 1750, graduated at Princeton, 1768,
died April 5, 1826.

Timothy Dwight, b. May 14, 1752, died January 11, 1817.

Aaron Burr, b. February 6, 1756, Vice-President 1801-05, died
September 14, 1836.

Theodore Dwight, b. December 15, 1754, educated for the law under
Pierpont Edwards, and practiced it for a time in New York city with
his cousin, Aaron Burr. He broke the partnership because of difference
in politics, and went to Hartford. He became a member of the
governor's council, 1809-1815; secretary of the Hartford Convention,
1814. He established the _Connecticut Mirror_ in 1809; founded
and conducted the _Albany Daily Advertiser_, 1815-16, and the
_Daily Advocate_, New York, 1816-36. He died June 12, 1846.

[m] The crimes against religion punishable by law were Blasphemy (by
whipping, fine, or imprisonment); Atheism, Polytheism, Unitarianism,
Apostaey (by loss of employment, whether ecclesiastical, civil, or
military, for the first offense).--_Swift's System of Law_, ii,
320, 321.

[n] _Oration delivered in Wallingford on the eleventh of March 1801,
before the Republicans of the State of Connecticut at the General
Thanksgiving for the election of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency,
and of Aaron Burr to the Vice-Presidency, of the United States of
America 1801._

See the appendix to the Oration for an account of the New Haven
episode.

[o] "Connecticutensis," or David Daggett, also replied in _Three
Letters to Abraham Bishop._ Theodore Dwight's _Oration at New
Haven before the Society of the Cincinnati, July 7, 1801,_ took up
the constitutionality of the charter government.

[p] Later chief justice.

[q] Windham County was steadily Republican after this election.

[r] Major William Judd of Farmington, Jabez H. Tomlinson of Stratford,
Augur Judson of Huntington, Hezekiah Goodrich of Chatham, and
Nathaniel Manning of Windham.

[s] Federalist.

[t] To preserve our institutions and reform public morals, to bring
back the keeping of the Sabbath was our aim ... We tried to do it by
resuscitating and enforcing the law (That was our mistake, but we did
not know it then.) and wherever I went I pushed that thing; Bear up
the laws--execute the laws.... We took hold of it in the Association
at Fairfield, June, 1814, ... recommending among other things a
petition to Congress." (_Autobiography_, i, 268.) At this meeting
originated the famous petition against Sunday mail.

Dr. Beeeher urged a domestic missionary society to build up waste
places in Connecticut. His sermon "Reformation of Morals practicable
and desirable" warned against "profane and profligate men of corrupt
minds and to every good work reprobate."

[u] Judge Church.

[v] The final speech in favor of the bill was made by Nathan Smith, a
lawyer of New Haven. When he had finished his eloquent setting forth
of the benefits and dangers attendant upon passing the bill, there was
an unusual and solemn silence. Dr. Gillett says if the bill had been
promptly put to vote it would probably have been passed, but the
churchlike silence was broken by a shrill voice piping forth,
"Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, what shall we sing?" The laughter which
followed broke the orator's charm and sealed the fate of the bill.

[w] See _Columbian Register_ of June 17, 1820, for a full
account of the Bishop's Fund and the final award of the bonus.

CHAPTER XV

DISESTABLISHMENT

No distinction shall I make between Trojan and Tyrian.

The Federal grip upon Connecticut, one of the last strongholds of that
party, was weakening. Preceding the deflection of the Episcopalians
in Connecticut, there had been throughout New England a strong Federal
opposition to the national government and its commands during the War
of 1812. Such conduct had shattered party prestige, and when its
opposition culminated in the Hartford Convention of 1814, it wrote its
own death-warrant. The Republicans, on the contrary, had dropped local
questions of constitutional reform and religious liberty, preferring
to bend all their energies to the support of the general
government. When as a national party they humbled England and brought
the war to a victorious close, the contrast of their loyalty to state
and national interests steadily drew the popular favor. In the era of
good feeling and prosperity that followed, the great national
political parties dissolved somewhat and crystallized anew. In
Connecticut a similar change took place in local politics. In the
years immediately following the war, the Democratic-Republicans, the
majority of the dissenters, and the dissatisfied among the
Federalists, formed different coalitions that, under the general name
of Toleration, [a] opposed the Standing Order. In 1816 the agitation
for constitutional reform was revived, and after three years resulted
in the overthrow of the Federalists and the triumph of a peaceful
revolution whereby religious liberty was assured.

The conduct of the Federal party, both within and without Connecticut
from 1808 to 1815, was quite as much the real cause of their downfall
in the state as that coalition between clergy and lawyers described by
Dr. Beecher as causing the breakdown of party machinery and its
ultimate ruin. Glancing somewhat hastily at some of the most
far-reaching acts of the Federalists, we find first the Federal
opposition to the embargo that from December 22, 1807, for over a year
paralyzed New England commerce. In February, 1809, John Quincy Adams,
who had recently resigned the Massachusetts senatorship because of his
unpopular support of the embargo, informed President Jefferson that
the measure could no longer be enforced. He assured the President that
the New England Federalist leaders, privily encouraged by England,
were preparing to break that section off from the union of the states
if the embargo were not speedily repealed. This information, whether
accurate or not, so influenced the President and his advisers that the
Non-intercourse Act, applying only to France and England, replaced the
embargo, whose repeal took effect from March 4, 1809. In the following
December, Madison's administration (in the belief that France had
withdrawn her hostile decrees) limited non-intercourse to England
alone, after having vainly urged upon her a repeal of her Orders in
Council. With the embargo lifted, New England commerce revived, and
Connecticut seamen, Connecticut farmers, [b] Connecticut merchants,
together with artisans of all the allied industries that were called
upon in the fitting out of ships and cargoes, enjoyed two years of
prosperity. The period was given over to money-getting, and the
ordinary rules of national or commercial honesty were flung to the
winds. Napoleon sold licenses to British vessels to supply his
famishing soldiers stationed in continental ports, while forged
American and British papers were openly sold in London. So enormous
were the profits of a successful voyage that the possibility of
capture only added zest to the American ventures and contributed not a
little to the daring of the privateers in the years of the war. So
enriched was the state that by May, 1811, Connecticut had so far
recovered from her late financial distress that the "state owed no
debt and every tax was paid," while her exports were: domestic,
$994,216; foreign, $38,138, or a total of $1,032,354.

The ninety days' embargo of 1812, the declaration of war (June
18,1812), and the patrolling of Long Island Sound by a British fleet,
brought such desolation to Connecticut that ships again lay rotting at
the wharves, ropewalks and warehouses were deserted, cargoes were
without carriers, and seamen were either scattered or idling about, a
constant menace to the public peace. National taxes to support a
detested war were laid upon the people at a time when their incomes
were ceasing, and their homes and property were laid bare to a
plundering enemy. "A nation without fleets, without armies, with an
impoverished treasury, with a frontier by sea and land extending many
hundreds of miles, feebly defended" by fortifications old and
neglected, had rushed headlong into war with the strongest nation of
the earth without "counting the cost." Such was the opinion of the
Federalists everywhere and, at first, of the large wing of the
Republican party who preferred peace. The Federalists of Connecticut,
when they saw a small majority sweep the nation into the conflict with
Great Britain, believed the war threatened liberty of speech. They
feared military despotism, when the general government demanded the
control of the militia; and that the war would prostrate" their civil
and religious institutions by increasing taxation and loss of income."
[c] They feared "national dismemberment" when the war measures,
together with the presence of the British fleet blockading the coast,
alternately angered the people almost to rebellion against an
apparently indifferent central government, or drove them into plans
for self-defense. Much of the opposition in New England is in part
accounted for by the rebound towards Federalism which the declaration
of the war caused, and by the belief that the national election of
1812 would be a Federal victory. Though it turned out to be a defeat,
it consolidated and so strengthened that party in New England that
before the close of 1813 all the state executives were Federalists and
were arrayed against the administration. The Republicans kept their
hold upon the minority, partly by the diversion of the capital, thrown
out of the carrying trade, into privateer ventures, war supplies, and
manufactures.

At the beginning of the war, Governor Griswold, of Connecticut, backed
by both houses of the legislature, joined with Governor Strong of
Massachusetts (supported only by the House of Representatives) in a
refusal to place the militia under regular officers of the United
States army. They refused also to allow the quotas called for by
General Dearborn (under the Act of Congress of April 10, 1812), for
the expedition against Canada, to leave the state. These executives
claimed that the troops were not needed to execute the laws of the
United States, to suppress insurrection, or to repel invasion,--the
only three constitutional reasons giving the President the right to
consider himself "commander in chief of the militia of the several
states." [207] By taking such a stand, the state governors assumed to
decide whether a necessity existed that gave the President his
constitutional right to call out the militia. Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge,
in his "Memoir of Governor Strong," exonerates that executive by
pleading his intense convictions of duty, his loyal patriotism, and
his later efficient aid [d] in defending the eastern coast of the
state. Mr. Lodge reminds his reader that the governor's position was
supported by the best lawyers, whom he had been at great pains to
consult concerning state and federal rights, which, at that period,
had not been so carefully examined and discriminated between as
since. The same pleas may be urged for Governors Griswold [e] and
Smith. The Connecticut legislature immediately passed an act for
raising twenty-six hundred men for state defense under state
officers. Governor Griswold's successor, Gov. J. Cotton Smith, when
Decatur was blockaded in the Thames, when the descent upon Saybrook
was made, at the attack upon Stonington, and during those months when
the enemy hovered upon the long exposed coast line, kept a large force
of militia ready for duty. The state supported these troops, for, in
the wrangle over officership, the national government refused the
promised supplies.

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