amertcan Commontoealti^js* CONNECTICUT. c- 3llnicrican Mohawks were so emphatically the leading mem- ber that their name was regularly put by synec- doche for the whole. The Connecticut Indians, at any rate, never stopped to discriminate mi- nutely between the various branches of the Six Nations, but, on the appearance of any of them, promptly fled with the panic-stricken cry, " The 28 CONNECTICUT. Mohawks are coming ! " There seems to have been hardly the thought of resistance, when, every year, two elders of the Mohawks appeared in Connecticut, passing from village to village, col- lecting tribute, and announcing the edicts of the great council at Onondaga. To this exercise of supremacy they seem to have made but one excep- tion, the kindred tribe of the Pequots. The Indians of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and probably Massachusetts, were originally of one blood, perhaps divided into a few strong tribes. A few years before the arrival of the English, ac- cording to tradition, a sept of the Mohegan blood from New York, crossing the Hudson and moving eastward to the Connecticut River, passed south- ward and conquered a permanent home for them- >lves on the shore of Long Island Sound, in the theastern part of the present State. This ir- tion split the Indian population into two parts, the east of the Pequots were the Narragansetts, powerful tribe of Miantonomoh and Canonchet, kvelling in Rhode Island, but claiming still some jortion of the soil of Connecticut. They were dufficiently intact to make head against the Pe- quots, and waged continual war with them ; but, lacking the ferocity and fervor for war which was a Pequot characteristic, they had difficulty in maintaining their position. To the west of the Pequots, the pressure of the strangers on one side and the Mohawks on the other ground up the THE INDIANS OF CONNECTICUT. 29 Indians into that mass of petty tribes which has been referred to, none of which dared to offer re- sistance after the power of the Pequots had been once established, all being interested merely to es- cape the notice of their oppressors as far as pos- sible. Thus the Pequots, with but seven hundred fighting men, were able to overawe all the western tribes, while maintaining equal warfare with the Narragansetts, whose warriors are variously esti- mated at from one to five thousand. There are no annals of Indian diplomacy from which we may learn how the Six Nations and the Pequots avoided collision in the matter of supremacy over their tributaries; but it is not probable that either power was intent on establishing a right of ex- clusive extortion. Both were satisfied by the pay- ment of their respective tribute, and the Pequot irruption merely doubled the burden of the abori- ginal inhabitants. At the time of the English entrance to Connec- ticut, the grand sachem of the Pequots was Tato- bam, or Sassacus. One of his sagamores was Uncas, whose grandmother was the sister of the grandfather of Sassacus. Uncas had connected himself still more closely with the sachem's house by taking the daughter of Sassacus in marriage. He was Sagamore of Mohegan, the most impor- tant Pequot district. His courage, strength, and cunning were remarkable even among the Pe- quots ; and the relations between him and Sas- 30 CONNECTICUT. sacus soon became strained and finally broke. Un- able to resist the grand sachem, Uncas fled to the Narragansetts, was allowed to return, rebelled again, and was again defeated and fled. It was inevitable that the coming of the English should act as a wedge on this rift in the conquering tribe, and should make its downfall the surer. The Dutch had at first recognized the Pequots as lords paramount of the territory, and had made their purchases of land from them. But the Pe- quots, unable to restrain the savagery of their natures, had lain in wait for and killed some of their enemies at the Dutch trading-house, and had thus interfered very seriously with the course of trade. In retaliation, the Dutch had killed the father of Sassacus. Anxious to get rid of his troublesome neighbors, Sassacus had acquiesced in the invitation of Winthrop to furnish settlers for the Connecticut Valley. But when Holmes at last came, he brought back some of the old sar chems, who had been expelled by the Pequots, and made his purchases of land from them. Further- more, a certain lewd and drunken ship-captain named Stone, from Virginia, having brought his vessel into the Connecticut River during the sum- mer of 1633, was taken for a Dutchman by the Pequots, who murdered him while he lay in a drunken sleep in his cabin. During the following year, Sassacus sent messengers who made a treaty with the government of Massachusetts Bay, by the THE INDIANS OF CON'NECTICUT. 31 terms of which many of the difficulties between his tribe and the English were put out of sight. The Pequots were to allow the English to colonize and trade within their borders ; were to give up the murderers of Stone ; and were to pay a tribute of wampum, a part of which was to be transferred by the English to the Narragansetts, so as to bring about a peace between these two ancient enemies without subjecting the haughty Pequot chief to the degradation of a personal appeal for cessation of hostilities. The terms were largely nominal. The English made no demand for those who had murdered Stone, and Sassacus paid none of the stipulated tribute and was asked for none. The murder of John Oldham, in 1636, first brought the English into collision with the Pe- quots. Oldham, with a crew of two boys and two Narragansett Indians, had been trading with a pinnace on the shore of the Pequot country, and had passed on to Block Island. Here he was killed by the Island Indians. The murder had hardly taken place when John Gallop, who was sailing from the Connecticut River to the east end of Long Island, found Oldham's vessel in posses- sion of Indians. He first fired duck-shot into the naked Indian crew until he had driven them under hatches, and then rammed Oldham's vessel until all but four of the Indians had jumped overboard and were drowned. Two surrendered, and he made sure of one of them by throwing him over- 32 CONNECTICUT. board. As the sea was rising he took Oldham's body into his vessel, and allowed the derelict to drift ashore with two of the Indians still in her hold. It is difficult to see how the Pequots were con- cerned in all this. But Governor Vane and his council, of Massachusetts Bay, in sending Endi- cott with an expedition to punish the Block Island- ers, assumed that the Pequots had harbored some of the murderers, and must be included in the punishment. No proof was offered to the in- dictment against the Pequots, who seem to have held the same place in the English mind that Habakkuk held in the Frenchman's, and to be "capable of anything." But Endicott gathered no laurels in his Pequot expedition. His fero- cious antagonists did not wish to fight, and could hardly be persuaded to fight. A few of them, and none of the English, were killed and wounded ; and the expedition, having satiated its wrath by burning the Indian wigwams and crops, returned to Boston. Enough had been done to range the Pequots against the English. As a choice of evils, Sassa- cus proposed to the Narragansetts a treaty of alli- ance against the foreigners, but this was thwarted by the influence of Roger Williams, who induced the Narragansetts to send ambassadors to Boston and conclude a treaty with the English. The Pe- quots were thus left to maintain alone their ancient THE INDIANS OF CONNECTICUT. 33 title, by courage, to their territory. They did not hesitate. The fort at Say brook, whose commander. Lieutenant Gardiner, had strongly disapproved Endicott's expedition, was first attacked. A forag- ing party was cut off, and several men were cap- tured and put to the torture. Other parties were similarly caught in ambuscades, and the fort was beleaguered through the whole winter. In the spring of 1637, the war was opened in the upper Connecticut Valley. The people of Wethersfield had agreed, in buying lands from Sequin, a friendly Indian, to allow him to remain within the town limits. The agreement was violated, and he was expelled. In revenge, he brought the Pequots down upon the little settlement. They almost took it by surprise, killed a number of the people, and inflicted considerable damage before they were driven off. Four days afterward, the successful Pequots sailed past the fort at Saybrook, waving the clothes of their victims and exhibiting two cap- tive girls. The Pequot war had fairly begun, and, in the nature of things, it could be ended only by the extermination of one party or the other. For this severe strain upon an infant colony, the Con- necticut colonists were indebted to the stupidity or willfulness of Governor Vane and his council. They must have appreciated Cromwell's subsequent es- timate of the governor. 3 CHAPTER V. THE PEQTJOT WAR. The Connecticut General Court met at Hart- ford May 1, 1637, the ninth meeting of that body which is on the records. It is not likely that it represented, as yet, more than eight hundred souls, though the proportion of fighting men in so young a colony must have been abnormally large. Its action was thorough-going. It resolved that there should be " an offensiue warr against the Pequoitt," and a draft of ninety men was ordered from the three towns, — forty-two from Hartford, thirty from Windsor, and eighteen from Wethersfield, — the whole to be under command of Captain John Mason, of Windsor. The minute distribution of the assessment of the requisition for stores upon the three towns, and the proviso that one half of the corn is to be baked into biscuit " if by any meanes they cann," are evidences of the poverty of the colony, and the resolution with which its rulers drove their demands upon its patriotism up to the highest possible point. It is certain that the people were nearly starving when they were thus called on for a full third of their able-bodied men. THE PEQUOT WAR. 35 Nine days after the call, May 10, the ninety men were ready, and, with seventy Mohegans under Uncas, who was thereafter the ally of the colonists, embarked on the river in three small vessels. Un- cas and his men soon found the voyage uncomfort- able, and begged to be allowed to make the trip to Saybrook by land. When Mason reached Say- brook, after j&ve days of tedious sailing, he found Uncas there, exultant in the success of a battle with the Pequots, in which he had killed seven of his enemies and captured another, who had been living among the colonists as a spy. The spy could appeal to no law, civilized or savage, for safety ; but it is a repulsive business to read the punishment which was allowed to be inflicted. He was handed over to the mercy of Uncas and his Mohegans, who tortured and roasted him, and finally ate him. Lying wind-bound in front of the fort at Say- brook, Mason knew well that his motions were under the sharp ej'^es of Pequot scouts, and that his entry into the Thames River would find his enemies thoroughly prepared to meet him. Foi'ti- fied by a council of war, and by an all-night prayer of the chaplain, Mr. Stone, he decided to disobey instructions, pass on to Narragansett Bay, and at- tack the Pequots from the eastward. The change of programme was no doubt watched carefully by the runners of Sassacus ; and when the three vessels had passed the only available landing place 36 CONNECTICUT. in the Pequot country, the Thames or Pequot River, the doomed tribe abandoned itself to a sense of triumphant security : the white men had not dared attack them after all, but had chosen the less formidable Indians of Block Island or the Bay as the objects of their revenge. The danger had passed them by. On Saturday, May 30, the little squadron came to anchor in Narragansett Bay, too late in the afternoon to effect anything that day. It is a witness of their conscientious exposition of the Puritan theory that the urgent need for prompt action in order to gain the advantage of a sur- prise could not induce them to devote Sunday to that purpose ; and then an unfavorable wind kept them from landing until Tuesday night. March- ing at once to the village of Miantonomoh, the Narragansett chief. Mason demanded his assistance against their common enemy. The chief consid- ered their enterprise a most laudable one, but thought the English too few to deal with such " great captains " as the Pequots. All that could be obtained was permission to pass through the Narragansett country, but a number of individual volunteers from the surrounding Indians joined the troops on their march. A few days' waiting would have increased their force bj a Massachu- setts reinforcement under Captain Patrick, which had already reached Providence ; but Mason bal- anced the advantage of surprise against this in- THE PEQUOT WAR. 37 crease of force and pushed on. Thirteen men were sent back with the vessels to meet the main body at the Pequot River ; and the army now con- sisted of seventy-seven Englishmen, Uncas's Mohe- gans, and about two hundred exceedingly doubtful Narragansett auxiliaries, who were present rather as spectators and critics than as fighting men. One day's march carried the expedition nearly across the present State of Rhode Island, and on the next morning the eagerness of the Narragan- sett auxiliaries to act as a rear guard proved that the trail was becoming uncomfortably warm. Toward evening, when just north of the present town of Stonington, Mason called a halt, and was told by the Narragansetts that they were now close to one of the two great Pequot forts ; the other, the chief residence of Sassacus, being sev- eral hours' journey further on. Camp was formed, and the men slept on their arms, their outposts having been pushed near enough to the fort to hear the revelry of the Indian garrison, which lasted until midnight. Before daybreak, June 5, the men were up and on the march. Two miles of an Indian trail brought them to the foot of a swelling hill, still known as Pequot Hill, near Groton. Here Uncas was called on for explanations, as there were no signs of the Pequots. He told Mason that the fort was at the top of the hill before him, and that the Narragansetts at the rear had now fallen into a condition of abject fright. '* Tell 38 CONNECTICUT. them not to fly," said Mason, " but stand behind, at what distance they please, and see now whether Englishmen will fight." Underbill with part of the men on the southern slope, and Mason with the rest on the opposite side, stole cautiously up the hill. There were no sentinels, and the garrison was still sound asleep. As the assailants came within a rod of the pali- sade, there was a bark from an Indian cur within it, and some Pequot warrior, perhaps starting up from a dream, called out " Owanux ! Owanux ! " (Englishmen.) Still there was no general alarm within the fort until the assaulting party fired a volley through the palisade, which was answered by a terrified yell from the awakened garrison. The piles of bushes which served for gates were torn down, and the English swarmed through into the fort, but still the Pequots remained within their wigwams. Mason, after entering, stood in the main street and saw not an Indian in it to the other side of the fort. Every wigwam which was entered, however, became the stage for a desperate hand-to-hand struggle. Some of the Pequots began to shoot from the wigwam doors ; and Mason, shouting " We must burn them," touched a fire- brand to the mats which covered a neighboring hut. The fire, fanned by a rising northeaster, spread through the fort ; Underbill on the other side aided it with gunpowder ; and soon the at- tacking party was forced to hurry out of the fur- THE PEQUOT WAR. 39 nace heat. There was no such privilege for the hated Pequots. In an hour, from four to six hun- dred of them were roasted to death, seven being taken prisoners, and seven breaking through the line and escaping. From one hundred and fifty to two hundred of the Indians were wari'iors ; the rest were old men, women and children. It is true that two of Mason's party were killed, and about twenty wounded, in the whole struggle, but many of the recorded casualties bear strong testimony to the disadvantages under which the Indians fought. Some of the men were saved from arrow wounds by their neck-cloths : when so slight a buckler was sufficient, the force of the weapon could not have been very terrible. Sim- ilarly, a piece of cheese in the pocket of another was enough to intercept an arrow in its deadly flight. In recounting the subsequent attack upon the retreating party, Underbill contemptuously says that the Pequots fought with the Mohegans and Narragansetts in such a manner that neither would have killed seven men in seven years. The arrow was shot into the air at such an elevation as to drop on an adversary, if the adversary had not suflficient forethought to step out of the way ; and each arrow was retained until the result of its predecessor was ascertained. The English regu- larly avoided the weapon, then picked it up and broke it, and thus gradually exhausted the ammu- nition of the enemy. Savages though they were, 40 CONNECTICUT. it is pitiful to think of human beings, locked up in a furnace by a circle of guns and keen-tempered swords, and forced to rely on such weapons as the fallacious Indian arrow. And yet to the last the Pequots crawled up to the palisade and shot their impotent bolts at their inaccessible foe. Mason's thorough-going massacre of men, wo- men and children has been compared to Arnold's butchery at New London, long afterward, to Ma- son's manifest disadvantage, since Arnold at least did not burn the village, drive the women and children back into the flames, and roast them in the ashes of their homes. The comparison is un- fair. Arnold had not the slightest reason to ap- prehend from the women and children of New London such treatment as Mason knew that the Indian squaws and children would mete out to his men if they were defeated and captured. In the gray of the opening morning, while Indian men and women, hardly to be distinguished from one another by their dress and appearance, were vying with one another in the ferocity of their resist- ance, it was practically impossible for Mason's men to make distinction. To say this is not to assert that they were under a controlling desire to make such a distinction. On the contrary, probably not a man of them but was there under the religious confidence that the Pequots were acting the part of the Canaanites in resisting the children of Israel, and that a similar fate was THE PEQUOT WAR. 41 their proper portion. In this they probably dif- fered from Benedict Arnold. Much as we may regret that Endicott's unpardonable raid had de- cided that Sassacus was to be the enemy of the colonists, and the disreputable Uncas their friend and ally, this decision, when reached, had no pos- sible result but the complete overthrow of the Pe- quots. It is easy to talk of sparing non-combat- ants, but not easy to apply it to a case in which the non-combatants insist on fighting to the death. Nevertheless, it is a truth that there is no feature in the history of the commonwealth which is more unpleasant reading than the conduct of the Pequot war from its causeless outbreak down to its con- clusion. Hiring some of his generous Narragansett allies to carry the wounded, Mason now began a retreat to his vessels, which were just sailing into what is now New London harbor, but half a dozen miles away. By this time, nearly the whole remaining power of the Pequot tribe had gathered at the ruins of the fort. The chroniclers calmly state the details of the ecstasy of rage into which the sight of their slaughtered comrades threw them ; they note with a curious interest, as if speaking of the almost human affection of a she-bear robbed of her whelps, how the Pequots stamped, shrieked, tore their hair, and finally rushed down the hill to charge the rear of the retiring column. But — alas for all excuses for the expedition ! — they also 42 CONNECTICUT. note that a rear guard of a dozen men was suflB- cient to repulse all the assaults of two thirds of the whole Pequot power. The English force reached the vessels without difficulty, finding there Captain Patrick and the Massachusetts con- tingent. Putting the wounded on the ships, the uninjured men returned in triumph by land to Say brook. The last council of the Pequot nation was held on the day following the capture of the fort. It is not difficult to imagine the feeling of the par- ticipants. They had proved, even to themselves, that it was impossible for them to resist the stran- gers in the field ; and it seems to have been as im- possible for them to conceive the notion of surren- der. Having first put to death every relative of Uncas within their reach, they came to a Roman resolution. The route by which they had origi- nally entered Connecticut was now blocked by the new English towns ; but there was a possible road of return along the Sound, where there were as yet no settlements. Burning their villages and crops, they set out on their desperate venture. Thirty of the men, with many of the women and children, soon abandoned it and returned to their old home, where they took refuge in a swamp. Toward the end of June, a Massachusetts party of one hundred and twenty men under Stoughton was guided to their hiding place by the Narragan- setts, who had not ventured to attack them, but THE PEdUOT WAR. 43 said they were " holding them " for the English. The Pequots met their fate calmly and without resistance. All the men were put to death in cold blood with the exception of two, who prom- ised to guide the party to the hiding place of Sas- sacus ; and even these, proving unwilling to fulfill their bargain, were subsequently killed. Thirty- three of the eighty women were presented to the Indian allies ; the remainder were sent to Massa- chusetts and sold as slaves. The main body of the tribe pursued their march for the Hudson under Sassacus and Mononotto. While crossing the Connecticut, they came upon three white men in a canoe, killed them after a stout resistance, and hung their bodies on the trees upon the shore. After passing Saybrook, they were driven by lack of supplies to take a route close to the shore, in order to dig shell-fish. Such circumstances were not favorable for a forced march ; the daily journeys grew shorter ; and that keen-scented hound, Uncas, was on their track. Stoughton's men had joined Mason, and the com- bined force had taken ship at Saybrook to pursue by the Sound, while Uncas and his men searched the shore. Stragglers from the main body were occasionally met, and one incident will indicate their fate. Near Guilford, a Pequot chief with a few men was sighted. Escaping from view for a few minutes, the fugitives hid at the end of the cape which juts out from the eastern side of the 44 CONNECTICUT. harbor. Uncas searched the opposite side of the harbor, but sent part of his men to search the eastern cape. Driven from their refuge, the Pe- quots swam across the harbor and were shot as they landed by the Mohegans. Uncas cut off the head of the Pequot chief and lodged it in the branches of an oak, where it hung for years, giv- ing the place the local name of Sachem's Head. About the time when the pursuers had reached the place where the town of Fairfield was after- wards planted, a Pequot was captured who was found willing, in return for life, to engage to kill or betray Sassacus. He kept his agreement. He joined the main body, and, when suspected and forced to flee, brought back word that the main body of the Pequots had taken post in a swamp, the stronghold of a local sachem, near Greenfield Hill. The untiring pursuers set out at once for the place, some twenty-five miles away, found it, and undertook to surround the swamp. There were really two swamps, a lai-ger and a smaller, separated by a neck of firm ground covered with bushes. After a hand-to-hand struggle, the be- siegers succeeded in cutting down the bushes and reducing the coverts to one, which their numbers were sufficient to surround efficiently. A call for surrender was then sent in. It was accepted by the local tribe on whose hospitality the Pequots had forced themselves, and by the women and children of the Pequots, so that the number of the THE PEQUOT WAR. 45 besieged was reduced from three hundred to one hundred. Those who were left were the picked men of the tribe. They saw before them the strangers who had suddenly flung them from their supremacy to their present position, and they had a savage preference of death to surrender. They rushed so furiously on the messenger that the English found difiiculty in rescuing him. All night long they crept up to the border of the swamp and shot their ineffectual arrows at the besiegers ; and in the gray of the next morning they made their last burst for freedom. In a heavy fog they rushed on that part of the English line commanded by Patrick, and the fight at once be- came so furious that the rest of the English force had to be brought up to Patrick's assistance. In the confusion, about seventy of the hundred Pe- quots burst through and got off ; but many of them were found dead in the pursuit. The subsequent course of the survivors is not known. There is a tradition that they made their way to the moun- tainous region of western North Carolina, and that, forty years afterward, the intelligence of King Philip's war brought them or their children as far north as Virginia, on their way back to strike another blow at the English, when they were stopped by hearing of Philip's death. Sassacus and Mononotto had left their tribe before the swamp fight, either overwhelmed with unpopularity, or unable to spur the remainder of 46 CONNECTICUT. the tribe to the necessary celerity of movement. Their party of thirty or forty men escaped to the Mohawks ; but their new hosts put them all to death, sending their scalps to the English to relieve them from further anxiety. Only Mononotto es- caped, and it is not known what became of him. His wife, with her children, was among the cap- tives at the swamp. It is pleasant to record that she had been very kind to the two captured Eng- lish girls, and that Governor Winthrop gave di- rections that she should be treated with corre- sponding kindness. All the prisoners, even in- cluding the wife of Mononotto, were made slaves, some being kept in Connecticut, and others sent to Massachusetts or the West Indies. They proved, however, most unsatisfactory slaves, and their servitude was in almost every case soon ter- minated by death. The downfall of the Pequots inured largely to the benefit of Uncas. Many of the original tribe took membership in the Mohegan branch, though some preferred to join the Narragansetts or the Long Island Indians. It was not long before the jealous Narragansetts called Uncas to account be- fore the equally jealous colonists for harboring Pequots to such an extent as to make his own power a source of possible danger. An investiga- tion showed that there were still at large some two hundred Pequots, half of which number were given to Uncas and the rest to the Narragansett THE PEQUOT WAR. 47 chiefs. Late in 1638, the delicate negotiation was closed by a treaty between the Connecticut dele- gates, Miantonoraoh for the Narragansetts, and Uncas. The two high contracting Indian parties were to retain their respective Pequots, paying an annual tribute for them and incorporating them into their tribes. Connecticut was to have all the territory formerly occupied by the Pequots, and was to act as umpire in any quarrel between Un- cas and Miantonomoh. The former lords of the soil had disappeared, and the stranger had taken their place. The tripartite treaty of 1638 settled the su- premacy of the English for the future. Purchases of lands from the Indians went on with increasing frequency until prohibited by the general court in 1663. Even Uncas was unwary enough to make such transfers ; and in one of them, in 1640, in return for " five and a half yards of trucking cloth, with stockings and other things," he is said to have transferred to the commonwealth his whole territory, covering the whole northern por- tion of New London County, with the southern portion of Tolland and Windham counties. The Mohegans, however, insisted that the transaction was only a covenant to sell their lands to no white men without first giving the commonwealth an opportunity to buy, and their claims were a long- standing source of difficulty. Miantonomoh was not satisfied with the treaty 48 CONNECTICUT. of 1638. It is not probable that he would have been permanently satisfied with any treaty which left the parvenu Uncas in the position of a great chief. An attack made by Uncas upon a chief related to Miantonomoh furnished an opportune casus belli. With a discretion worthy of a more highly civilized monarch, Miantonomoh postponed the declaration of war to the more urgent neces- sity of making war. The whole power of the Narragansetts was secretly set in motion for the Mohegan country. Uncas was not asleep. His runners saw the host of the enemy crossing a ford, and carried the intelligence to their chief at his fort near the present city of Norwich. When the Narragansetts found the lair of the Mohegan chief, they found that they had to deal with the whole strength of his tribe, which he had had time to call in. Uncas had felt himself strong enough to ad- vance a few miles, though he had but half the force of his enemy, for he relied with confidence on the mingling of unscrupulous treachery and headlong courage which had been the Pequot title to the soil from the beginning. He signaled for a parley as soon as the Narragansetts came within hearing, and, meeting the Narragansett chief be- tween the lines, appealed to him to prevent a needless effusion of blood by a single combat of the leaders. Miantonomoh rejected the proposal, perhaps with some contempt, and Uncas at once THE PEQUOT WAR. 49 gave the signal for which his men had been wait- ing, by dropping prone upon the ground. His men instantly poured a flight of arrows upon the Narragansetts, and followed it by a charge, which Uncas rose and headed. The battle lasted but a moment ; the Narragansetts fled, almost without striking a blow; and Miantonomoh, deserted by his people and over- weighted by an English corse- let, was caught, after a long chase, by Uncas and one of his sachems. The captive kept a stolid si- lence, refusing to beg for mercy, even by gesture. The tender mercies of Uncas would doubtless have been swift to visit Miantonomoh but for one circumstance. The Rhode Island settlers were not forgetful of the benefits which they had re- ceived at the hands of the Narragansetts ; and one of them, Gorton, of Warwick, sent Uncas a violent message, threatening him with English vengeance if he injured Miantonomoh. Uncas, unable to dis- criminate clearly between English sectaries or to balance the respective power of white faces, carried his prisoner to Hartford for trial. The governor and magistrates referred him to the commissioners of the united colonies, who were to meet at Boston in the following September. Until then, Mianto- nomoh remained at Hartford. The commissioners, much as they dreaded Mian- tonomoh, did not see their way clear to condemning him to death. In the emergency they summoned into council five of the delegates to a synod then 60 CONNECTICUT. sitting at Boston. These counselors rode rough- shod over the scruples which had given pause to the lay mind. To them the Narragansett was a Philistine, an Amalekite, who was of necessity guilty. They decided that he must die, and the commissioners acquiesced in the decision. They directed the Connecticut authorities to give him up to Uncas for execution outside of the common- wealth's jurisdiction, to detail witnesses to see that all should be done in order, and to defend Uncas against any threatened vengeance for the act. The most shocking attendant circumstance is the fact that the announcement of the sentence was postponed until the Connecticut commissioners had safely reached Hartford, for the reason that Mian- tonomoh himself had given notice that his people intended to capture them on the way and hold them as hostages for his safety. It is no wonder that so dangerous a chieftain should find no mercy. The Narragansett chief was delivered to the custody of Uncas, two Englishmen joining the party to be witnesses to the execution. Wlien the Mohegans had reached the scene of the battle near Norwich, Uncas gave a signal to his brother, Wa- wequa, whose place was just behind the captive. He at once sunk his hatchet into Miantonomoh's brain, and death followed instantly. Uncas de- voured a piece of flesh cut from the dead man's shoulder, declaring it the sweetest meat he had ever eaten. THE PEQUOT WAR. 51 The only serious difficulties with Indians there- after were in the southwest, and were really off- shoots from the continual troubles between the Dutch and the Indians. There were several mur- ders and savage assaults, the most notable victim being Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, of Massachusetts, who had settled near Stamford, and was killed, with some seventeen others, in a night attack by the Indians. The Narragansetts seem to have taken no concerted part in this border warfare. They had come to despair of making head against the whites ; and their hopes of revenge were con- centrated on Uncas and his tribe, upon whom they made repeated attacks. Their only results were renewed and increased fines and tribute imposed by the white supporters of Uncas. About 1658 these attacks ceased, and the Narragansetts re- signed themselves to their fate. The chiefs to whom Pequots had been assigned, and especially Uncas, were so greedy and tyran- nical in their rule that the conquered people began to drift away from them and form scattered and illegal communities. One or two of their new chiefs showed themselves good friends of the Eng- lish ; and in 1655 the New England commissioners, to Uncas's unconcealed disgust, consented to a re- organization of the Pequots into two tribes under chieftains of their own blood, Hermon Garret and Cassasinamon. In 1667 the colony established a reservation for Cassasinamon's tribe in the present 52 CONNECTICUT. township of Ledyard, near Groton ; and in 1683 a settlement was assigned to the other tribe in North Stonington. The original force of the Pequot has been persistent enough to carry their descendants, after a fashion, through the intervening years in which the subject tribes have disappeared. In 1850 the Ledyard settlement held 989 acres, and the North Stonington settlement 240, with a mon- grel population of twenty-eight and fifteen persons respectively. In 1880 the county of New London still held the largest proportion of the Connecti- cut " Indians," 147 out of a total of 255 in the State. As the record of Indian difficulties ends with the death of Miantonomoh, the record of Indian deca- dence begins. Individuals, under the tacit or ex- press authorization of the general court, bought lands of the Indian proprietors ; and the early town records begin with deeds given by a number of sachems, whose unutterable names are only a little less awe-inspiring than the hieroglyphics by which they are indicated, transferring their lands to whites for the pettiest considerations. Real property titles in the State are traced back to these Indian deeds. When a tribe had entirely gotten rid of the inheritance, its few remaining members drifted off to other parts of the country, or became a town charge as paupers. But the general court was careful so to limit these trans- fers as not to drive the few dangerous tribes to THE FEQUOT WAR. * 53 desperation, and the good results were seen in tli • outbreak of King Philip's war in 1675. The Connecticut Indians left the colony free to bend all its energies to the assistance of the sister col- onies. Even the Pequots and Mohegans were faithful allies and soldiers, and enjoyed the Indian luxuries of seeing the final overthrow of the Nar- ragansetts, and of executing Canonchet, the son of Miantonomoh. Uncas died about 1683. Two of his alleged descendants were living in 1800. His tribe and its successive chiefs seem to have found a fatal fas- cination in the process of land transfer, which they never could master. Drunken sachems made trans- fers of land which was really the common property of the tribe ; or the tribe, having a well-founded apprehension of the sachem's weakness for strong drink, made clumsy attempts to make trust deeds of their lands to white men in whom they confided, while the trustees considered these instruments as transfers of the fee simple. The result was abun- dant litigation ; and some of the commonwealth difficulties arising from it will be considered here- after. In 1721 a committee of the general court examined and decided on these transfers, reserving some 5,000 acres to the Mohegans, and making the tract inalienable so long as a single Mohegan should survive. This arrangement was practi- cally confirmed by royal commissions in 1737 and 17135 on appeal by the Indians. The tribe sent 54 CONNECTICUT. many of its number into the American army dur- ing the Revolution, and some eighteen of them were killed. In 1786 a few of the survivors, with other Connecticut Indians, went to the Oneida country, in New York, and there established the Brothertown tribe. There remained to the tribe in 1850 some 2,300 acres of its reservation at Montville, with some sixty persons living on it, and about the same number scattered in other parts of the country. However we may discredit the accounts given by the first settlers of Indian immorality, it is im- possible to exaggerate their subsequent degrada- tion. Ignorant, poverty-stricken, unclean, drunken, and licentious to the lowest degree, the smaller Indian tribes disappeared with startling rapidity. In 1680 there were but five hundred warriors left in the whole colony. In 1774 there were only eight left in Greenwich, nine in Norwalk, and none in Stamford. There is not now a drop of pure Indian blood in the State. The so-called In- dians are the progeny of two centuries of irregular intercourse between Indians, negroes, mulattoes, and whites. Efforts have not been wanting to civilize or evangelize the race, but they have been of little avail. Pierson, Fitch, and Barber preached to them with hardly any perceptible result ; Gookin and John Eliot entered the colony for the same purpose, but withdrew defeated; and the only THE PEQUOT WAR. 56 effort which ever came to anything like success met it outside of Connecticut. Eleazar Wheelock began preaching at Lebanon in 1735. In 1762 his Indian school numbered twenty, and he went to England to raise funds for it, developing it into what became Dartmouth College. Among his Connecticut pupils he had received in 1743 a Mo- hegan aged twenty, who took the name of Samson Occom. After an irregular education and service as teacher on Long Island and elsewhere, Occom was ordained in 1759 by the presbytery of Suffolk, L. L, and became a successful preacher. He stands out as about the only civilized product of Connecticut Indian origin ; and even he occasion- ally relapsed into intoxication, to his own bitter repentance. He made a part of the Brothertown tribe, and died among its members in 1792. There is little room or excuse for romance in the Indian history of the commonwealth ; and it has seemed best to bring it down to its conclusion at once, in order to confine the subsequent story of the commonwealth to the history of the dom- inant race. CHAPTER VI. THE CONNECTICUT COLONIT. When the Pequot war broke out, there were but three English settlements within the present area of Connecticut. Leaving Massachusetts, the Connecticut River flows to the southwest and then to the southeast, forming two sides of a very ob- tuse and irregular angle. At the apex of this angle, and on the western side of the river, was planted the town of Newtown (the present capital city of Hartford). On the same side of the river were Dorchester (Windsor), a few miles above Hartford, and Watertown (Wethersfield), a few miles below Hartford. To the north, and just be- yond the Massachusetts boundary line, was Aga- wam (Springfield), Pynchon's settlement; but it was not known for some years whether it was in or beyond the jurisdiction of the mother colony. Until this was ascertained, this town was taken and deemed to be a part of Connecticut. The first settlers had no notion of leaving government behind them when they left Massachusetts. Tlie migration took place under direction of eight persons, headed by Roger Ludlow and William THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 57 Pynchon, acting under the commission from the Massachusetts General Court, which was to be in force for only one year. By the time it exj^ired, the new colony had begun its own system of gov- ernment. The meeting of the first legislative body, the " Corte," was held at Newtown, April 26, 1636. The three migrating towns at first retained even their Massachusetts names, and this inchoate com- monwealth government was little more tlian a consequence of the Massachusetts commission. It was not until February 21 of the next year that the name of Hartford was substituted for that of Newtown, that of Wethersfield for Watertown, and that of Windsor for Dorchester. The name of Hartford was probably meant to commemorate the birthplace of Mr. Stone, Hertford, near Lon- don. Windsor was taken from its English name- sake ; and Wethersfield was named from Wethers- field in Essex, England, the birthplace of one of the leading men of the settlement, John Talcott, commonly called " Tailcoat " in the records. For a year the court met at the three towns in turn, two magistrates from each town making up its number, except when Pynchon was present and raised the number to seven. Like all the com- monwealth legislatures of New England, this one exercised both legislative and judicial functions, taking from the latter its title of the " Corte," afterwards the " General Court," as in the Massa- 68 CONNECTICUT. chusetts charter. For the first year its proceed- ings were confined to the prevention of the trade in muskets with the Indians, the enforcement of military drill, the regulation of swine and other animals, the appointment of constahles, some pro- bate business, and one suit at law, that of a land claimant against the people of Wethersfield. On May 1, 1637, the legislature, now first called the General Court, met at Hartford in a form more fitting for a separate commonwealth. In addition to the six magistrates there were now present nine " committees," or deputies, three from each town. Hooker, in his letter to Winthrop, states that the " committees " were chosen by the towns ; that they met at Hartford, elected the six magis- trates, and gave them an oath of office. The mi- gratory commission from Massachusetts was thus supplanted by a new government, deriving its authority directly from the towns. In the dis- tinction between deputies and magistrates, slight at first, there was the germ of the commonwealth's subsequent bi-cameral system. Springfield was represented occasionally during 1637-38, and her affairs were considered to be under the jurisdiction of the new colony. For the next two years Spring- field is neither represented nor referred to, the general court confining its attention to the other three towns. On June 2, 1641, the Massachusetts General Court recognized Springfield, on petition therefrom, as one of its towns, and appointed com- THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 59 missioners to define the boundary line between the two colonies. The General Court, under its new constitution, at once assumed a wider range of action. Its first meeting declared war against the Pequots ; its second, June 2, 1637, ordered a draft of thirty men " to sett downe in the Pequoitt Countrey and River in place convenient to mayntaine o"^ right y* God by Conquest hath given to vs." At the meeting June 26, it was decided that Haynes and Ludlow should " parle with the bay [Massachu- setts] about o' settinge downe in the Pequoitt Countrey." For Massachusetts had advanced a claim to the Pequot soil, based partly on the ex- ceedingly hazy geography of the time, and partly on conquest ; while Connecticut had a keen per- ception that this section was essential to her com- monwealth's development, and meant to hold it. In the end her determination prevailed, and she still keeps the Pequot country. It would hardly be too strong to say that the establishment of the town and of the church was coincident : the universal agreement in religion made town government and church government but two sides of the same medal, and the same persons took part in both. In fact, the three orig- inal settlements had entered the new territory not only as completely organized towns, but as com- pletely organized churches, only one (Watertown) having left its minister behind. The original 60 CONNECTICUT. church of Watertown is therefore still in Massa- chusetts ; the original churches of Cambridge (Newtown) and Dorchester are now in Hartford and Windsor. For nearly a century (until 1727) the same persons in each town discussed and de- cided ecclesiastical and civil affairs indifferently, acting as a town or a church meeting. The same body laid the taxes, called the minister, and pro- vided for his salary. When the gradual recogni- tion of other sects reduced the Congregational order from its exclusive to a merely predominant position in the commonwealth, a trace of the old system remained in the Congregational churches in the dual control of the " church and society " in each congregation, — the former, composed of church-members, having ecclesiastical jurisdiction ; the latter, composed of pew-holders and contribu- tors, having a financial and administrative control, and joint action of the two being usually neces- sary. The " society " represents the former town meeting. The Connecticut churches agreed with those of Massachusetts in their Congregational system ; and their pastors and teachers were called upon again and again to make the journey through the wilderness to Boston, in order to take part in the synods made necessary by the vexed questions of Puritan belief and practice. Connecticut, how- ever, did not agree with Massachusetts in making church-membership a prerequisite to voting and holding oflBce. In this omission, it maintained THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 61 the complete independence both of its churches and of its towns ; but it gave rise to many of its subsequent ecclesiastical difficulties. It was largely a dispute on this point that had sent the first set- tlers into the wilderness, and the original three towns would undoubtedly have insisted on local freedom in this respect. When new towns were formed, offshoots from the first three, it was nat- ural in the eyes of both town and colony that this freedom should be continued to them, and none of them desired any ecclesiastical restriction on the right of suffrage. Those who desired such an ar- rangement went into the New Haven jurisdiction, of which it was an essential part. The independence of the town was a political fact which has colored the whole history of the commonwealth, and, through it, of the United States. Even in Massachusetts, after the real be- ginning of government, the town was subordinate to the colony ; and, though the independence of the churches forced a considerable local freedom there, it was not so fundamental a fact as in Con- necticut. Here the three original towns had in the beginning left commonwealth control behind them when they left the parent colony. They had gone into the wilderness, each the only organized political power within its jurisdiction. Since their prototypes, the little tuns of the primeval German forest, there had been no such examples of the perfect capacity of the political cell, the " town," 62 CONNECTICUT. for self-government. In Connecticut it was the towns that created the commonwealth ; and the consequent federative idea has steadily influenced the colony and State alike. In Connecticut, the governing principle, due to the original constitu- tion of things rather than to the policy of the commonwealth, has been that the town is the re- siduary legatee of political power ; that it is the State which is called upon to make out a clear case for powers to which it lays claim ; and that the towns have a primd facie case in their favor wherever a doubt arises. All this is so like the standard theory of the relations of the States to the federal government that it is necessary to notice the peculiar exact- ness with which the relations of Connecticut towns to the commonwealth are proportioned to the re- lations of the commonwealth to the United States. In other States, power runs from the State up- wards and from the State downwards ; in Connec- ticut, the towns have always been to the common- wealth as the commonwealth to the Union. It was to be the privilege of Connecticut to keep the notion of this federal relation alive until it could be made the fundamental law of all the common- wealths in 1787-89. In this respect, the life prin- ciple of the American Union may be traced straight back to the primitive union of the three little settlements on the bank of the Connecticut River. All this, however, may be left to the THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 63 chapter on the Convention of 1787. The point in question here is the introduction of the democratic element into the American system, and the claims of Connecticut to the credit or responsibility for it. The first constitution of Connecticut — the first written constitution, in the modern sense of the term, as a permanent limitation on governmental power, known in history, and certainly the first American constitution of government to embody the democratic idea — was adopted by a general assembly, or popular convention, of the planters of the three towns, held at Hartford, January 14, 1638 (9). The common opinion is that democ- racy came into the American system through the compact made in the cabin of the Mayflower, though that instrument was based on no political principle whatever, and began with a formal ac- knowledgment of the king as the source of all authority. It was the power of the crown " by virtue " of which " equal laws " were to be en- acted, and the " covenant " was merely a make- shift to meet a temporary emergency : it had not a particle of political significance, nor was democracy an impelling force in it. It must be admitted that the Plymouth system was acci- dentally democratic, but it was from the absence of any great need for government, or for care to preserve homogeneity in religion, not from po- litical purpose, as in Connecticut. It was a pas- 64 CONNECTICUT. sive, not an active system ; and it cannot be said to have influenced other American common- wealths. Another though less prevalent opinion is, that the first democratic commonwealth was the mother colony of Massachusetts Bay. The intensely democratic feeling subsequently devel- oped in Massachusetts has been reflected on her early history, and has given it a light which never belonged to it. On the contrary, it is not difiiculc to show that the settlement of Connecticut was it- self merely a secession of the democratic element from Mf^ssachusetts, and that the Massachusetts freemen owed their final emancipation from a the- ocracy to the example given them by the eldest daughter of the old commonwealth. He who studies carefully the history of Massa- chusetts from 1629 until 1690 will see that there was a constant struggle in that colony between two conflicting forces, and that its earlier phases were coincident and complicated with the Connec- ticut secession. The better blood of the colony was determined to establish a privileged class of some sort ; and the bulk of the freemen, instinc- tively inclined to democracy, found it difficult to resist the claims of blood, wealth, and influence, backed by the pronounced support of the church. For the ministers of the colony, in spite of their evidently conscientious wish to separate church and state, seem to have had no notion of the real boun- daries between the two, and were constantly in THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 65 favor of measures which tended straight to the establishment of an oligarchy. Whenever the dominant class desired to overcome the rising op- position of the commons, the readiest and surest means was to offer to submit the question to the decision of the " elders," or ministers. The com- mons never ventured to refuse ; and the ministers never failed to decide in accordance with the wishes of the dominant class. The expressions of dissenting writers, as to the " spiritual tyranny " in early Massachusetts, must be taken always with very large allowance. Ecclesiastical punishments were not severe, according to the universal stand- ard of the times ; and the result of hostile research seems curiously inadequate to the indignation which has been spent in it. But one must admit that the early Massachusetts system, whatever else it may have been, was not even meant to be a democracy. " Democracy," said Cotton, the spokesman of the dominant class, " I do not con- ceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government either for church or commonwealth." The question appeared with the transfer of the charter government from England to Massachu- setts. The charter gave to the governor, eighteen assistants, and the freemen, assembled in a single chamber as the *' great and general Court," the power of electing officers and making laws and ordinances. The dominant class of the colony was determined to restrict this general court, 5 66 CONNECTICUT. which the superior numbers of the freemen could control, to the functions of a mere electing body, leaving to the assistants, what the charter did not give them, the duties of making and enforcing laws. The first meeting of the Court of Assist- ants in Massachusetts made the support of the clergy a commonwealth matter ; the second as- sumed control of the admission of inhabitants to the towns ; and, early in 1632, the settlement of town boundaries, and the control of town inter- ests, were assumed by the assistants without any authority, either from the charter or from the towns. Secular and ecclesiastical influences were strong enough to induce the freemen, in 1630, to confirm the usurped powers of the Court of Assist- ants ; and this was followed in the next year by the exclusion of all but church-members from " the liberties of the Commonwealth," that is, from voting. So wide was the effect that Hut- chinson asserts, and Judge Story approves the esti- mate, that five-sixths of the people were still dis- franchised as late as 1676. The whole system was upheld by Governor Winthrop of Massachu- setts, in a letter to Hooker, on the ground that it was unwarrantable and unsafe to refer matters " of counsel or judicature " to the body of the people, because " the best part is always the least, and of that best part the wiser part is always the lesser." The people, or that better part of them who should be admitted to vote, were to choose THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 67 the Court of Assistants ; but that wiser body was to make the laws and enforce them. Such a system was certain to arouse dissatisfac- tion ; and a due regard to the fact will make it easier to understand why the Massachusetts char- ter was finally lost so tamely. Dissatisfaction, to the honor of the Massachusetts freemen, first took the shape of assertion of local liberty, of town freedom rather than of individual freedom. There were attempts at independent town action before 1634 ; but the curious and perhaps significant fact is that nearly all of them took place in the three towns which afterwards made up the Connecticut secession. The towns in 1634 informally sent two deputies each to Boston to get a sight of the pa- tent. The sight was enough to expose the usur- pation of the assistants ; and at the general court in May the freemen would make no elections un- til their deputies had been recognized as a factor in the government. Nevertheless, influence, and particularly that of the ministers, was still strong enough to secure the passage of an act, the very next year, constituting a council for life, consisting at first of three members, but meant to be larger in future. There is every indication of an organ- ized design to establish an hereditary order, or at least a life privilege for certain classes, in order to attract influential and wealthy immigrants from the mother country ; but luckily Massachusetts freemen knew how to cut the knot. When it 68 CONNECTICUT. was proposed in 1639 to give the governor a life tenure, the freemen answered by taking all "mag- istratical " powers from the council, and that body died the death soon after. Time would fail in telling the further details of the struggle, — the success of the deputies in maintaining that share in the government which the charter had not given them ; the efforts of the assistants to secure the " negative voice," by which they were to have a veto on the deputies ; the famous " sow business," which convulsed the colony, and brought the "negative voice" into common disrepute; and the •final compromise in 1644, by which the introduc- tion of a bi-cameral system gave both the assistants and the deputies a negative voice. All these be- long to Massachusetts history, and were the efforts of democracy to get its head out of water. In every point, the ministers had been on the side of the assistants. The latter had always been willing to refer every disputed question to the el- ders, and had always been supported. The stand- ing grievance had been that the assistants would not admit the right of the general court (which really meant the deputies, or the freemen whom they represented) to adopt a body of laws as a permanent limitation on the judicial powers of the assistants ; they wished to decide every case " on its own merits." Winthrop himself acknowledged, in 1639, that the people " had long desired a body of laws, and thought their condition very unsafe TEE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 69 while so much power rested in the discretion of magistrates ; " and he adds the very credible note that the magistrates and some of the minis- ters were " not very forward in this matter." In December, 1641, a brief code of laws was extorted by the freemen ; but it left great blanks, which the assistants still persisted in filling as they saw fit. In 1645 the elders formally declared that the freemen were to choose the assistants, but that the authority of the latter was not derived from the freemen or to be limited by them, and that they were to decide according to the word of God in the absence of express law. The deputies yielded ; and it was not until 1649 that they at last secured a complete code of laws. Reference has already been made to the patent differences between the three migrating towns and the five which they left behind them, and to the probability that there was some political difference to account for them. A regard to the coincident struggle against class power in Massachusetts will make it still more probable that the migrating towns were simply those which did not choose to continue the struggle longer at home, but pre- ferred to establish a more democratic system for themselves in the wilderness, and without any charter. Hooker was undoubtedly the strength of the migration ; and he had been so notoriously opposed to Cotton in the old colony that it would be reasonable to presume that he differed toto coelo 70 CONNECTICUT. from Cotton's views as to democracy. In answer- ing the letter of Winthrop mentioned above, he is evidently cautious, and unwilling to provoke an argument; but he dissents from Wintbrop's entire position, and says : " In matters of greater consequence, which concern the common good, a general council, chosen by all, to transact busi- nesses which concern all, I conceive, under favor, most suitable to rule and most safe for relief of the whole." The difference between him and Winthrop is marked ; and it would not be difficult to say, from these two letters, which of them held the seed from which sprang the modern American commonwealth. Again, the first step of the Con- necticut settlers was to secure what their Massa- chusetts brethren were still struggling for — pop- ular control of legislation. Codes of laws were merely the symbol : democracy wanted the recog- nition of the deputies, the direct representatives of the towns, as a factor in the government ; and this was secured by the constitution of 1639. It even provided a way by which the deputies, if the gov- ernor and the " magistrates " (answering to the Massachusetts title of " assistants ") refused to call them together, might meet and organize a supreme legislature without their associates, — a provision wholly inexplicable without a careful regard to the contemporary struggle in Massachusetts. Here the evidence that government "of the people, by the people, for the people," first took THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 71 shape in Connecticut, and that the American form of commonwealth originated here, and not in Mas- sachusetts, Virginia, or any other colony, might well stop. The case in favor of Hooker, however, has now an impregnable basis, which was wanting when the standard histories of the commonwealth were written. His letter to Winthrop might be made the foundation of the claim that he had sup- plied the spirit of the Connecticut constitution ; and yet the basis is an unsatisfactory one. It is evident enough that the complete popular control over government which was the characteristic of the new Connecticut system was neither familiar nor welcome at the time in the other Puritan com- monwealth ; but the letter alone is not enough to establish a connection of this fact with Hooker. All this time there has been in existence an abstract of a sermon of Hooker's, preached at Hartford, May 31, 1638, some seven months before the framing of the constitution. Henry Wolcott, Jr., of Windsor, had been in the excellent Puritan habit of taking notes of the sermons to which he listened, and he had left behind him a MS. volume of abstracts of Hooker's sermons. Among them was this sermon. Dr. J. H. Trumbull saw its im- portance and deciphered its short-hand characters. Any one who will read this abstract, and try to imagine the way in which the writer of the letter to Winthrop must have clothed this skeleton with flesh and blood, and the effect on his hearers, will 72 CONNECTICUT. appreciate its importance in American history. If the germ is potentially the whole development, this is the most important profession of political faith in our history. It is as follows : — Detjt. i. 13. — Take yau wise men, and understand- ing, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you. Captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, over fifties, over tens, etc. Doctrine. I. That the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people, by God's own allowance. II. The privilege of election, which belongs to the people, therefore must not be exercised according to their humours, but according to the blessed will and law of God. III. They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them. Reasons. 1. Because the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people. 2. Because, by a free choice, the hearts of the people will be more inclined to the love of the persons chosen and more ready to yield obedience. 3. Because of that duty and engagement of the people. Uses. The lesson taught is three-fold : — 1st. There is matter of thankful acknowledgment in the appreciation of God's faithfulness towards us, and the permission of these measures that God doth command and vouchsafe. 2dly. Of reproof — to dash the councils of all those that shall oppose it. THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 73 3dly. Of exhortation — to persuade us, as God hath given us liberty, to take it. And, lastly, as God hath spared our lives, and given us them in liberty, so to seek the guidance of God, and to choose in God and for God. Here is the first practical assertion of the right of the people not only to choose but to limit the powers of their rulers, an assertion which lies at the foundation of the American system. There is no reference to a "dread sovereign," no resei'va- tion of deference due to any class, not even to the class to which the speaker himself belonged. Each individual was to exercise his rights " according to the blessed will and law of God," but he was to be responsible to God alone for his fulfillment of the obligation. The whole contains the germ of the idea of the commonwealth, and it was devel- oped by his hearers into the constitution of 1639. It is on the banks of the Connecticut, under the mighty preaching of Thomas Hooker and in the constitution to which he gave life, if not form, that we draw the first breath of that atmosphere which is now so familiar to us. The birthplace of American democracy is Hartford. From early times, certainly since 1656, Con- necticut has placed upon her common seal vines, to represent her towns, at first three for the origi- nal towns ; then one for each town ; then, as the towns became more numerous, the original three again. The stripes on the flag of the United 74 CONNECTICUT. States, increased to fifteen until after the war of 1812, are a curious parallel. With the vines was the significant motto of the commonwealth, at first on a scroll held by a hand coming out of a cloud, afterwards on a scroll below the vines : qui TRANSTULIT SUSTINET. The motto was not meant as the record of an historical fact alone, or as an exclusion of the agency of man from the attainment of liberty. The spirit, if not the trans- lation, of it is in the third of Hooker's " Uses " of his lesson, his " exhortation — to persuade us, as God hath given us liberty, to take it." This hia flock proceeded to do in their constitution. In the preamble, the inhabitants and residents of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, desiring to establish an orderly and decent government according to God," associated and conjoined them- selves to be as one public state or commonwealth, for the purposes of maintaining and preserving the liberty and purity of the gospel, the discipline of the churches, and the orderly conduct of civil affairs according to law. There is no mention or hint of royal, parliamentary, or proprietary author- ity in any part of the constitution, or in the forms of oaths for governor, magistrates, and constables which make an appendix to it. The ecclesiastical excrescence upon it, probably inevitable at the time, but absolutely contrary to the spirit of the whole instrument, was to remain and trouble the commonwealth until the political system came fully up to its own original standard in 1818. TEE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 75 The constitution gave the general court power to " admit of freemen ; " but the right of suffrage was given unequivocally, by a subsequent addition to the first section, to admitted freemen who had taken the oath of fidelity to the commonwealth ; and in 1643, to settle the matter, the court declared that it understood by " admitted inhabitants " those who had been admitted by a town. The towns, therefore, retained complete political con- trol of their own affairs. No attempt was made to define the powers of the towns, for the reason that they, being preexistent and theoretically in- dependent bodies, had all powers not granted to the commonwealth. To avoid any possible ques- tion, the general court, at its meeting in the follow- ing October, passed a series of orders, securing to the towns the powers of selling their lands ; of choosing their own officers ; of passing local laws ■with penalties ; of assessing, taxing, and distrain- ing for nonpayment ; of choosing a local court of three, five, or seven persons, with power to hear and determine causes arising between inhabitants of the town, and involving not more than forty shillings ; of recording titles, bonds, sales and mortgages of lands within the town ; and of man- aging all probate business arising within the town. The really new point introduced by the " orders " was the direction to the towns to choose certain of their chief inhabitants, not exceeding seven, to act as magistrates. Out of this grew rapidly the 76 CONNECTICUT. executive board of the towns known as " select- men," who have ever since held almost a dictator- ship in their towns during the intervals between meetings of their towns, limited by the force of public opinion, by commonwealth statutes, and by personal responsibility. These orders are often called an " incorporation " of the towns by the general court. The word can hardly be defended. All these privileges belonged to the towns already ; and the orders of October 10, 1639, are much more like the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, a Bill of Rights, originating in the jealousy of the political units. Indeed, there is hardly a step in the proceedings in Con- necticut in 1639 which does not tempt one to di- gress into the evident parallels in the action on the national stage one hundred and fifty years later. Like causes produced curiously similar effects. Each town was to choose annually, by vote of the freemen, four persons as deputies to the gen- eral court, unless the number of towns should in- crease so as to make a reduction necessary. Each year there was to be a court of election on the second Thursday of April (afterwards changed to May), to choose a governor and six magistrates. The choice of magistrates was limited to those nominated at some preceding session of the court, each town making not more than two nominations, and the general court adding as many as it chose. At the court of election, the freemen brought in THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 77 paper ballots stating their choice for governor for the following year, a plurality vote electing. It seems to have been the intention to make this election a pure democracy, in which each voter gave in his ballot in person. As population spread further from Hartford, the custom of sending bal- lots by proxies must have grown up ; for the court order of 1660, which proposed a change in the governor's term of office, suggested to the "remote Plantations, that use to send Proxies at the elec- tion, by their Deputies," that they should vote on their ballots for or against the proposed repeal. After 1670, the regulations adopted by the assem- bly, to govern the manner of taking these proxies, amounted practically to election laws, to be en- forced by the town selectmen. The governor was to be a church-member, and originally no one was to be chosen to the office two years in succession. In 1660, the general court, desiring to retain John Winthrop, Jr., as governor, proposed to the free- men to abolish the restriction of reelection, and the freemen did so. The six magistrates were the germ of the fu- ture senate of the commonwealth, but at first they can hardly be considered a separate chamber. Their " magestraticall powers V were quite unde- fined, and, until the charter, may be taken to cover not only judicial functions, but such duties as the general court saw fit to add thereto from time to time. In general, they were district 78 CONNECTICUT. judges, meeting from time to time in bank, with legislative powers when joined by the governor and deputies. At the court of election, the sec- retary for the time being read the nominations for the ofl&ce of magistrate in the order in which they had been given him. As each was read, the freemen handed in either blank ballots counting against the candidate, or ballots containing his name and counting for him. The balloting con- tinued until six names had obtained a majority of the votes cast. If six magistrates were not thus obtained, the number was filled up by taking those names which had received the largest number of votes in their favor. On the second Thursday of September, the gov- ernor, magistrates, and deputies were to meet as a general court, " for makeing of lawes," other- wise expressed by the phrase " to agitate the af- faires of the commonwealth." This body was to pass laws of general interest, to dispose of unap- propriated lands, to act as a court of last resort, to decide on the amount of taxation, and to appor- tion it among the towns on the report of an ap- portionment committee on which each town was to be equally represented. In the little to^n republics, the ancient and honorable office of constable was the connecting link between commonwealth and town. The con- stable published the commonwealth laws to his town, kept the " publike peace " of the town and THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 79 commonwealth, levied the town's share of the commonwealth taxation, and went " from howse to howse " to notify the freemen of meetings of the general court, and of the time and place of elections of deputies thereto. " The parish," says Selden, " makes the constable ; and, when the constable is made, he governs the parish." He might even become the instrument of a legal rev- olution, in case the governor and magistrates re- fused to call the regular meetings of the general court, or, on petition of the freemen, a special meeting. In that case, the constitution provided that the freemen were to instruct the constables to order elections of deputies, who were to consti- tute a general court themselves, excluding the governor and magistrates. This power never was exercised, but it is an extraordinary feature in constitutional law. It was the Connecticut mode of ensuring recognition of the direct representa- tives of the towns. This constitution was the first conscious and deliberate attempt to found a commonwealth de- mocracy on this continent, and it lasted in reality until 1818, for the charter changed it in no essen- tial point. It was a system of complete popular control, of frequent elections by the people, and of minute local government. It remained, through- out confiscations, modifications, and refusals of charters in other colonies, the exemplar of the rights of self-government which all the English 80 CONNECTICUT. colonies gradually came to aim at more or less consciously. In later times the length of ser- vice of its oflBcers was again and again cited by Jefferson to prove that, in a real democracy, an- nual elections were no bar to prolonged tenure of office. The first election of officers under the constitution was held April 11, 1639. John Haynes was chosen governor. Six magistrates were elected. One of the magistrates, Roger Lud- low, was chosen deputy governor ; another, Ed- ward Hopkins, secretary ; and another, Thomas Wells, treasurer ; and these and twelve deputies, or " committees," made up the general court. Until 1660, it was a tolerably steady rule that the governor of one year was the deputy governor of the next, and vice versa. In this period of about twenty years Haynes was governor eight times, and deputy governor five times ; and Hopkins was governor seven times, and deputy governor six times. In 1657 John Winthrop began his term of service as governor, which lasted, through the removal of the provision against reelection, for eighteen years, the longest term of service reached by any of Connecticut's chief magistrates. In the next century, Gurdon Saltonstall held the office for seventeen years, 1707-24, Nathan Gold hold- ing the office of deputy governor during all but the first year of Saltonstall's term. Saltonstall was followed by Joseph Talcott, who also held the office of governor for seventeen years, 1724- THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 81 41 ; having the same deputy governor, Jonathan Law, throughout his entire term. Law succeeded Talcott ; and thereafter, until 1818, the rule was that a governor held office until he died or refused to serve longer, when the deputy governor took his place for a like term. Jonathan Trumbull, senior, was governor, 1769-84 ; and his son, of the same name, held the office 1798-1809. Reelection to other offices was never prohibited, and long terms of service in them have been al- most too numerous for special mention. John Al- lyn, for example, became secretary in 1664 and held the office for twenty-eight years, influencing the policy of the colony strongly during the whole period. A more remarkable case is that of the Whitings, who held the office of treasurer for seventy years, — Joseph Whiting 1679-1718, and his son and successor, John Whiting, 1718-49. Even this family record was outdone by the Wyllyses in the office of secretary. Hezekiah Wyllys held the office 1712-35 ; his son and suc- cessor, George Wyllys, 1735-96; and Samuel Wyllys, George's son and successor, 1796-1810, the office having remained in the family but two years short of a century. Length of tenure was the rule in local offices as well. In the first two hundred and fifty years of its history, Hartford has had but twenty town clerks. One of them, John Allyn, held the office, by annual elections, for thirty-seven years, and another, George Wyllyg, 82 CONNECTICUT. for fifty years. Cases of this kind were exceed- ingly common throughout the commonwealth. William Hillhouse, of New London, served in the general court for fifty-eight years, so that, as elec- tions to the lower house of that body were semi- annual, he was sent by his town to one hundred and sixteen successive sessions. It must be admitted that much of this perma- nency in democracy was due to the nature of the people ; but a large share ought to be credited to their institutions. The people, fully satisfied with the complete control over the government which their constitution had secured to them, were con- tent to allow circumstances to develop the men best suited to government. At the same time, the intense personal interest felt by every citizen in the commonwealth gave all of them a common motive, sharpened their intelligence, united their force, and carried the commonwealth safely through storms which would otherwise have been fatal. So much, at least, Connecticut owes to the constitution of 1639. CHAPTER VII. THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. The settlements of New Haven, Milford, and Guilford probably had their origin in closely con- nected movements at home, though they took place at different times. Every indication to be drawn from the records shows common character- istics of persons, methods, beliefs, and purposes. The two most prominent men in the New Haven party of settlers were John Davenport (otherwise Damport or Dampard) and Theophilus Eaton, both Londoners, at least by adoption. Davenport was a Coventry man, an Oxford student, curate of St. Lawrence Jewry, and vicar of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, London. His inclinations seem to have been at first those of a moderately Low Church man, in the modern sense ; but Laud's persecutions had converted him into a " danger- ous " Puritan by 1633, when he resigned and went to Holland. His acquaintance among Londoners of the middle class and of his own way of think- ing was extensive ; and it was from this class that the material strength of the New Haven settle- ment was drawn. Its leading representative was 84 CONNECTICUT. Theophilus Eaton, an Oxfordshire man by birth, and a London merchant of sufficient prominence to have served in some semi-diplomatic capacity at the Danish court. In some way now unknown, the tentacles of the movement had run out into York- shire, Hertfordshire, and Kent ; and these counties furnished the bulk of the purely agricultural pop- ulation. The Hertfordshire families seem to have tended to Milford, and the men of Kent to Guil- ford, while the Yorkshiremen found New Haven most congenial. The first or New Haven party of settlers, mainly Londoners, with Davenport and Eaton as leaders, landed at Boston, July 26, 1637. The wealth, influence, and coherence of the party made it a desirable acquisition, and the Bay colony made every effort to settle it within the jurisdiction. Many reasons combined to make the efforts fruit- less. Theological disputes, notably the Hutchin- son controversy, had harassed Massachusetts ; and there was no great promise, to the critical eyes of the new-comers, of healing them. The peculiar- ity of Massachusetts, as distinguished from Con- necticut, was the supremacy of the commonwealth over the towns, of church - members over non- church-membei's, and of influential classes over the church-members. This constitution of affairs was not so objectionable to the Davenport and Eaton party, for they followed it closely in their own colony, as the fact that in Massachusetts THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 85 they would form only one or two towns, and would be under the control of the commonwealth, whereas they desired to he the commonwealth and control the subordinate civil divisions. They had no desire to assume the place of the common- wealth's opposition, from which the Connecticut settlers had just escaped. Again, they came to Boston at a time when the newly opened Connec- ticut territory was a common topic of conversa- tion ; and a " fine opening " has always been an almost irresistible temptation to the race. Fi- nally, the chase of the Pequots along the Connec- ticut coast toward New Netherland had taken place within a month of their arrival ; and who could pass through the southern borders of Con- necticut in June without sounding their praises to his friends at Hartford and the Bay ? The new- comers seem to have decided very quickly that they would not remain in Massachusetts ; that they would go to the new territory ; and that their settlement should be placed somewhere on the coast. In the autumn of 1637, Eaton, with some of his party, explored the northern shore of Long Island Sound, and pitched on Quinnipiack, an Indian district having a good harbor, as the best seat for a colony. A hut was built, and a few men were left to try the winter climate by personal experi- ence. The rest of the party remained in various Massachusetts towns, and even increased their 86 CONNECTICUT. numbers by accessions from their neighbors. The venture had a commercial as well as a politico- religious aspect. Each of the " free planters " had invested stocks, varying from Eaton's X 3,000 down to the ordinary <£10 share. Some of these " free planters " never came to New Haven or New England, investing money only ; and, on the other hand, some Massachusetts men entered their names, and even promised their personal presence to the venture. The company set sail froni Boston March 30, 1638. Quinnipiack was reached in about a fort- night; and the memorable first sermon was preached by Davenport, April 18, under an oak- tree, probably from Matt. iv. 1 : " Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil." It is a pity that no note of the discourse has been preserved, for the obvious application of the text to the situation of the hear- ers, the constant temptation to consider every un- pleasant incident, or even the consequences of their own errors, as the intervention of their personal enemy and antagonist, the Devil, would go very far to explain or palliate many otherwise inex- plicable events in their history. Such incidents were not slow in coming. The season was so bad that the crops failed and had to be replanted ; and a violent earthquake, June 1, seemed sent to daunt their spirits and drive them out of the territory into which they had intruded. THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 87 If any of these things moved them, it was probably only to a more stubborn resolution against Satanic power and Indian powowings. Their determina- tion to stand their ground was not relaxed. On the contrary, and as if to deal fairly even with their spiritual enemies, they went on to complete their title to the soil by purchase from the Indians. On November 24 and December 11, 1638, Daven- port, Eaton, "and others" bought the title from Momaugin and Montowese respectively, with their subordinate chiefs. Subsequent neighboring pur- chases made up, roughly speaking, the present county of New Haven, excluding the narrow strip on its northern border. For all this the price paid was one dozen each of coats, spoons, hatchets, hoes and porringers, two dozen knives, and four cases of French knives and " sizers " to one, and a dozen coats to the other, with a vague promise to both of protection against their enemies, and a reservation of the Indian right to hunt and fish on the ceded territory. Some may think that this was driving a sharp bargain with the adversary; but, all things considered, it must be admitted that the Indians received all that the territory was worth to them. The colony purchases did not stop here : pur- chase was the colony's consistent policy. The In- dian district of Wapoweage (subsequently Milford) was bought February 12, 1638 (9) ; Menunkatuck (Guilford), September 29, 1639 ; Rippowams (Stamford), in July, 1640 ; and Yennicock (South- 88 CONNECTICUT. old, L. I.), some time in 1640. These four plan- tations, subsequently developed into towns, with Branford, made up mainly of the purchase of De- cember 11, 1638, and the parent settlement of New- Haven, finally constituted the New Haven com- monwealth. New parties entered the colony from England throughout the autumn and winter of 1638-39, so that there were thi*ee ministers present — Daven- port, Rev. Henry Whitefield, and Rev. Peter Prud- den, with congregations more or less organized ; and another, Rev. Samuel Eaton, a brother of Theophilus, who seems to have had no following. Homogeneous as this settlement was, there were evidently interests which would impel segregation, and it was decided that the Whitefield party should take Guilford, the Prudden party Milford, and Samuel Eaton Branford, if he could obtain settlers. The latter enterprise was a failure, and Eaton was a resident of New Haven for four years after 1640, then returning to England and dying there in 1664. The Milford and Guilford ventures were successful during the summer ; and they were from the beginning so definite in organiza- tion that, though they were in New Haven in June, and afterwards followed the ecclesiastical and civil constitution then adopted, they did not in- trude upon the proceedings which led to it. More is known of the early topography and appearance of New Haven than of Hartford. THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 89 Atwater and Lambert give maps of early New Haven and Milford. The houses of the early- leaders, at least, are pretty accurately described, and something is known of their interiors. Con- temporaries were struck with the unaccustomed luxury of the New Haven houses. Some of them had tapestry hangings ; and Governor Eaton's had Turkey carpets, tapestry carpets and rugs. It is certain, at any rate, that the colony was spared many of the privations incident to most of the New England settlements ; and that, until the unhappy issue of the Delaware Bay settlement, which brought poverty into the colony, its affairs were unusually prosperous. Soon after their arrival at Quinnipiack, the Davenport and Eaton party had framed what was called a " plantation covenant." Nothing is known of its terms, except that it was short and simple, mei'ely engaging that the Scriptures should govern their proceedings not only in the gathering and ordering of the church, but in the choice of magis- trates and other officers, the making and repeal of laws, the allotment of inheritances, and all other civil affairs. This, to be sure, furnished the lines on which the future constitution was to be con- structed. It had, also, peculiar effects which de- serve notice, though they may not be apparent on the surface. It practically abolished the excres- cences, such as entails and primogeniture, which had grown up on the English common law ; it 90 CONNECTICUT. was almost, if not quite, a declaration of indepen- dence : and it made it certain that nothing short of direct and overmastering force could make the commonwealth anything but a republic. But it was yet without form or consistence ; and in spite of its Scripture provisions, the real work of consti- tution-making by the settlers did not begin until " They in Newman's barn laid down Scripture foundations for the town." The planters met June 4, 1639, in a large barn belonging to Mr. Robert Newman, to settle a con-^ stitution. Rev. Mr. Davenport opened the matter by preaching from Prov. ix. 1 : " Wisdom hath builded her house ; she hath hewn out her seven pillars." The application of the text to the busi- ness in hand was that, in a wise ordering of church or state, it was essential to rest on seven approved brethren, to whom the others were to be added. It is not difficult to see, on a general survey of the whole proceeding, what was the underlying pur- port of this proposition ; for, if the constitution of Connecticut looked of necessity to a government by the many, that of New Haven had as strong a disposition to secure government by the chosen few. After the service, Mr. Davenport submitted six " foundamentall orders " to the planters before him ; and as eacn was adopted by a show of hands, the whole became the constitution of New Haven. The orders were as follows : — THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 91 1. That the Scriptures hold forth a perfect rule for men in their family, church and commonwealth affairs. 2. That the rules of Scripture were to govern the gathering and ordering of the church, the choice of magistrates and officers, the making and repeal of laws, the dividing of allotments of inher- itance, and all things of like nature. 3. That all " free planters " were to become such with the resolution and intention to be admitted into church fellowship as soon as God should fit them thereunto. 4. That civil order was to be such as should con- duce to securing the purity and peace of the ordi- nances to the free planters and their posterity. 5. That church-members only were to be " free burgesses," and were to choose from their own number magistrates and officers to make laws, di- vide inheritances, decide cases at law, and transact all public business. This alone seems to have met opposition. It called upon those free planters who were not church-members to surrender political as well as ecclesiastical power into the hands of the comparative minority who were church-members, and to make the surrender permanent and funda- mental. One man, probably Rev. Samuel Eaton, agreed to the general principle that voters and magistrates should be men fearing God, and that the church was the likeliest place to find such ; " only at this he stuck, that free planters ought 92 CONNECTICUT. not to give this power out of their hands." The vote left the objector in a minority of one. The number thus disfranchised in New Haven was probably a majority ; in Guilford, nearly half ; in Milford, but ten out of forty -four, and six of these ■were admitted within a year or two. 6. That the free burgesses, or church-members, were to choose twelve of their number, and that these twelve were to choose the " seven pillars " to begin the church. The twelve selected were Eaton, Davenport, Robert Newman, Matthew Gil- bert, Richard Malbon, Nathaniel Turner, Ezekiel Cheevers, Thomas Fugill, John Ponderson, Wil- liam Andrews and Jeremiah Dixon, all noted names in early New Haven history. The names given number but eleven. The reason for the de- ficiency is unknown. It may perhaps be found in a note on the record that one of the twelve was accused of extortion, confessed it with grief, and made restitution. His name may have been left out and never supplied. A provision was added to the " foundamentalls" that no one be admitted as a free planter until he had signed them. This was to make the peculiar- ities of the constitution permanent. Eaton, Davenport, Newman, Gilbert, Fugill, Ponderson and Dixon were chosen as the " seven pillars." These then entered into covenant with one another (August 22), this step constituting the church, and proceeded to gather the other TEE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 93 brethren to them and it. They were thus a church before they were a civil government, and the or- ganized church organized the government. On the same day the church at Milford was gathered in the same way. The seven pillars met for the first time as a general court October 16, 1639. They elected Eaton " magistrate : " he was not called governor until the full development of the commonwealth in 1643. Newman, Gilbert, Turner and Fugill were chosen deputy magistrates, and Fugill secre- tary and notary public. It was agreed that future elections should be held in the last week of Octo- ber yearly, and that the word of God should be the only rule for the guidance of judges and public officers. Popular control, carefully limited as to the general court, was as nearly as possible ex- cluded from the periodical meetings of the magis- trates' court held by Eaton and his four deputies. Even after 1643, when it became the Particular Court of New Haven, it was rather a court of both civil and criminal equity than anything else. The republic of New Haven, thus constituted, had very little official communication with depend- ent or associated towns for some four years. Mil- ford with forty-four free planters, and Guilford with forty, were settled in 1639, in November and August respectively, under governments carefully modelled on that of New Haven. Most of the Milford settlers were dissatisfied Wethersfield 94 CONNECTICUT. people, who had left the Connecticut jurisdiction to reach just such a social and ecclesiastical system as that of New Haven ; while the Guilford people were absolutely in sympathy with Davenport even before their departure from England. Each had its church, gathered to its seven pillars, who also acted as a legislature and court, and held the town lands in trust for the town. The separate life of New Haven may therefore stand as a fair repre- sentative of the others. The lands belonging to the towns seem to have been distributed by common agreement or by lot, and with entire impartiality. The minister was given a first choice ; and it was very natural that a man so distinguished among his fellows as Eaton was honored with a choice next after the minister. The leading military man. Captain Turner, and the deacons, were given a similar privilege, so that they might choose places convenient for the ful- fillment of their duties. Thereafter the division bears a curious resemblance to the distribution of lands under the village community system. The limited area which was meant to be the real town was divided into home lots, and the outlying lands of the township, as distinguished from the town, were divided into corresponding plots of arable and meadow lands. Home lots and outlying plots were of different sizes, corresponding to the vari- ous known gradations of contribution to the com- mon stock. In each grade of contribution, the THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 95 contributors received share and share alike, though the higher grades of contributors had to be first satisfied. But " grades of contribution " did not depend simply on money values. In the distribu- tion of January, 1640, each settler received five acres of upland and meadow for each hundred pounds of his estate, and for each head in his family two and a half acres of upland and half an acre of meadow ; " and in the necke an acre to every hundred pound, and half an acre to every head." In the distribution of September, 1640, twenty acres of out-land were assigned to every " hundred pounds of estate given in," and two and a half acres for " every head ; " and it was decided that each of the small lots in the town should have four acres of planting ground to each lot, and one acre to every head. As a restriction on the eager- ness for acquisition, taxes were imposed from the beginning, — fourpence an acre per annum for up- land and meadow, and twopence for second-division lands. Finally, no sales to outsiders were to be made without the approval of the general court ; and common lands, including clay-pits, were re- served to the commonwealth. These " common lands " were held under much the same conditions in the New Haven and Con- necticut towns as in those of Massachusetts, though the materials for study are not so abundant. There was no hasty scramble from ship to shore, no location wherever choice and opportunity might 96 CONNECTICUT. lead a family to settle without interfering Tvitli prior rights. On the contrary, every step was or- dered and directed by the voice of the town, ex- pressed in that assembly which has always been the mainspring of the New England system. The voice of the town either chose each man's location for him, or fixed the principles on which it was to be chosen. Here the parallel with any form of the village community must stop, for the New England settlers had come from England thor- oughly imbued with the idea of individual prop- erty in land; and the land, when once allotted, became purely individual property, subject to alienation or devise, without return to the com- mon stock. But there was necessarily a certain amount of land, larger or smaller, which was not needed for immediate allotment ; and the rules of the community were pretty rigidly applied to this. It was the property of all, and was at first regu- lated by the town authorities. In New Haven, January 16, 1642 (3), it was decided that the common land known as " The Neck " should be a " stinted common " for cattle, and should be fenced and fitted with gates. The owner of twelve acres could put in a horse, of six acres an ox, of three acres a two-year-old steer, and of two acres a calf. As allotments had not depended on wealth alone, but on " heads " as well, this gave every man a share in the common. So a Norwalk town meeting of May 30, 1655, voted that " all THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 97 dry cattle, excepting two year old heifers, shall be herded together on the other side of the Nor- walk river, and there kept by the owners of the cattle ; every man keeping according to his pro- portion of the cattle there herded." And all the town records of early years contain provisions al- lowing the inhabitants to fell timber in the town " commonage " at particular seasons, or to carry away windfalls. As long as the town commonage was large and comparatively valueless, its affairs were managed by the town meeting. As its area became smaller and more valuable, and as new-comers crowded into the town, the management fell into the hands of an association of proprietors, composed of descend- ants of the original settlers, and interminable law- suits often varied the monotony of the management. All through the eighteenth century, the efforts of the " new-comers " to get a share of the common lands made up a large part of local politics ; and, during the Revolution period, the same question underlies much of the difference between " Sons of Liberty " and " Tories." Finally, the com- monage being reduced by sales to a minimum of land poor enough to bankrupt any corporation which should undertake to manage it in earnest, the association of proprietors dies out and disap- pears, or becomes an hereditary social organiza- tion. A pronounced distinction between New Haven 98 CONNECTICUT. and Connecticut was the inquisitorial character assumed by the former from the beginning of its existence. It is true that much of what appears to be inquisitorial proceeding was due to the pe- culiar theory which governed the constitution of the legislative bodies of New England : the legis- latures were also courts, and their proceedings were interspersed with a vast number of cases which would now be thought beneath the atten- tion of a commonwealth government, — cases of lewdness, drunkenness in servants, impertinence, promiscuous kissing, etc. But the difference, which is plainly perceptible from any reading of the respective records, is that such matters were rather matters of business with the Connecticut authorities, to be dealt with and got rid of as rap- idly as justice would permit; while to the New Haven magistracy they were matters of deep and serious import, to be probed to the bottom with scientij&c accuracy in every moral and psychologi- cal detail. Every New Haven sentence bristles at least with implications of the moral law. "Never elsewhere, I believe," says Dr. Bacon, " has the world seen magistrates who felt more deeply that they were God's ministers executing God's justice." All this may be admitted with- out impairing the belief that this attempted per- sonification of Divine justice had its drawbacks. It would be unjust to say, as is generally assumed, that it resulted in Draconic severity of punish' THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 99 incnt : New Haven punishments, as a rule, were not at all severe. It would be unfaithful not to say that it resulted in a meddlesomeness which must have done more moral harm than good, and in the end did much to overthrow the government itself. " Goodman Hunt and his wife, for keep- ing the councils of the said William Harding, bak- ing him a pasty and plum-cakes, and keeping com- pany with him on the Lord's day, and she suffer- ing Harding to kiss her," were ordered to be sent out of town " within one month after the date hereof [March 1, 1643], yea, in a shorter time if any miscarriage be found in them." While the New Haven magistracy was sitting in solemn la- bor to bring forth such a mouse as this, its Con- necticut rival was actively engaged in real com- monwealth business, every step of which made its ultimate supremacy more assured. The peculiar cast of mind of the New Haven magistracy has done injustice to the good name of the early town. Its records of trials contain a mass of filth from which the Connecticut records are comparatively free. Some think that the missing records, covering the years 1649-53, were even worse, and were destroyed by the authorities to protect the town's reputation. But the trials which remain really speak highly for the morals of the town. The amount of real uncleanness brought to light is singularly small ; the " evi- dence " on which other convictions were based 100 CONN'jlCTICUT. would not be even admitted in a modem court of law ; and the whole makes up a record rather of the diseased suspicions of the magistrates than of the criminality of their people. Most of the " criminals " better deserved a medical than a " magistratical " examination ; and their cases are merely a demonstration of the necessity of the recognized rules of evidence, not of the immo- rality of the early Puritans, as dissenting author- ities are so fond of representing them. Sumptuary laws were attempted in New Haven, as in Connecticut, and with as little success in one as in the other. Codes were drawn up to regulate prices of labor and materials, but they were prob- ably meant mainly to regulate the rates at which taxes should be paid to the commonwealth in kind, in materials or labor. So far as they were meant to regulate individual contracts, they were evidently a failure, and they were soon repealed. Rules against excess in drinking and in apparel were also attempted, with the usual want of suc- cess ; and in their failure, as in the matter of "watching and warding," there are indications that kissing is not the only thing that goes by favor. John Jenner, accused, February 5, 1689 (40), of being drunk with strong waters, was ac- quitted, " itt appearing to be of infirmyty and occasioned by the extremyty of the colde." It needed but a few years for the little settle- ment to show its consciousness of independent ex- THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 101' istence. As soon as the establishment of hous^^s and streets had given it a corporate appearance and feeling, its name was changed, September 1, 1640, to New Haven (commonly then Newhaven). Another step, though abortive, shows the spirit of the people. It was ordered, December 25, 1641, " that a free school shall be set up in this town." Davenport was to ascertain the amount of money which would be needed for it, and to draw up rules for the institution. Contemporary expressions go to show that the intent was not to establish a mere school, in the modern sense of the word, but to lay a foundation which could develop easily into some such institution as the powerful university with which New Haven's name is now so closely linked. It should not be forgotten that, at least in spirit, the establishment of Harvard by the common- wealth of Massachusetts Bay had a contemporary rival in the straggling little settlement on the shores of Long Island Sound. But for the differ- ent circumstances of the two peoples, and a defer- ence to Harvard's appeals for support, their two universities would have been born almost together, and the two hundred and fiftieth anniversaries of Harvard and Yale would have been almost coinci- dent. When the separate existence of New Haven had lasted some five years, her government developed into a confederation. Many reasons might be assigned for such a result. The towns which LIBRARY UNIVERSriY OF CALIFORNU SANTA BARBARA 102 CONNECTICUT. had been founded on the New Haven purchases had been separated from the parent stem long enough to make Mr. Davenport's opinion some- thing less than all-sufficient, and to develop a higher regard for the opinion of their own minis- ters ; for there was a strong ecclesiastical tap-root to town independence, even under the New Haven system. Again, it may well be imagined that men like Goodyear and Leete had not been blind to the growth and possibilities of the Connecticut colony. New Haven claimed only what she had bought : Connecticut claimed every square foot on which a Pequot had ever collected tribute. If New Haven was to maintain her solidarity against her rival's indefinite and penetrating claims, it must be by turning a nominal hegemony into a real commonwealth. Closely connected with this point was the proposed New England Union. If New Haven were left out of it, she was practically subordinated to her rival in the new territory. If she was to present her claim to admission, it must be with all the prestige derivable from a cluster of allied, not dependent, towns. It is significant, perhaps, that the first suggestion of the change comes in the appointment, April 6, 1643, of com- missioners to the New England Union "for the jurisdiction of New Haven." It is quite probable that the leading men of the various towns had already agreed on the general form which the " jurisdiction " was to take, but it was not settled THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 103 until October, owing to difficulties in the case of Milford. During Milford's four years of nominal depend- ence, but real independence, it had gone so far as to admit six men as " free burgesses," or voters, although they were not church-members. With the rise of the commonwealth proposition, the ad- mission of these six Milford burgesses became a great international question, which cost a whole summer of negotiation before it could be settled. It was finally agreed that the six should continue to vote in peace so long as they remained in Mil- ford, but that they should not hold office, and that Milford should never again scandalize the other towns by thus violating their common law. Harmony having thus been restored, a consti- tution for the commonwealth was agreed upon, October 27, 1643, by a general court, consisting of Governor Eaton, now first so called ; Deputy- governor Goodyear ; three magistrates ; and eight deputies, two each from New Haven, Milford, Guilford, and Stamford. The features of the new constitution were not essentially different from that of 1639. Free burgesses, or voters, were to be church-members only, except the six Milford anomalies. Only church-members were to hold office. The rights of " free planters," not church- members, were limited to " their inheritance and to commerce." Each town was to have its par- ticular court, elected by the burgesses, dealing 104 CONNECTICUT. with causes of not more than <£20, or, in criminal cases, involving no greater punishment than "stocking and whipping'' or a fine of <£5, with right of appeal to the general court. In the election of governor and other commonwealth of- ficers, voters need not go to New Haven, but might vote by proxy. The general court, con- sisting of governor, deputy governor, magistrates and two deputies from each town, was to meet at New Haven twice a year, on the first Wednesday in April and the last Wednesday in October, the latter being the court of election. The magis- trates were to meet separately, as a court of mag- istrates, on the Monday preceding the stated gen- eral court meetings, to try weighty and capital cases or appeals from town courts, and to perform most of the functions of a grand jury. Ordinary trial by jury was not a part of the New Haven system. The general court was to provide for the main- tenance of the purity of religion, and " suppress the contrary ; " to make and repeal laws, and require the execution of them ; to call magistrates to ac- count for misdemeanors ; to impose upon the in- habitants an oath of fidelity and subjection to the laws ; to settle and levy taxes ; and to try causes on appeal from any of the other courts. Its pro- ceedings were to be in accordance with the Scrip- tures, and no law was to pass but by a vote of a majority of the magistrates and a majority of the deputies. THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 105 At the next stated meeting in April, 1644, it •was ordered that "the judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses," should be consid- ered binding on all offenders, and should be a rule to all the courts of the jurisdiction, " till they be branched out into particulars hereafter." These are probably the provisions which have done most to develop the current notions of the criminal code of New Haven. They have very probably reflected upon the sister colony as well, and, since the provisions of the Connecticut criminal code were like those of New Haven, though without their expressed basis, both have helped to give currency to Mr. Peters's absurd code of " Blue Laws." A general reference to " the Mosaic code of New Haven " has usually been held sufficient rebutter to any attempt to argue against the Blue Law myth. Nor is the reason far to seek. It is not a violent assumption that the phrase, " the judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses," has not, to the average reader or hearer of the present time, that clear-cut significance which it had to those who first used it, or which the death statutes of a modern state have to the criminal lawyer. It is true that the New Haven general statute, agreeing generally with those of Connecticut and Massachusetts, made some fifteen offenses capital crimes, — murder, treason, perjury aimed at life, kidnapping, bestiality, sodomy, adultery, incest, rape, blasphemy in its highest 106 CONNECTICUT. form, idolatry, witchcraft, "presumptuous" Sab- bath-breaking, the third conviction for burglary- committed on the Lord's day, and rebellion against parents. A formidable catalogue truly. But why is it the only one to be brought to the bar ? Mackintosh, speaking in the English House of Commons so late as March 2, 1819, said : " I hold in my hand a list of those offenses which at this moment are capital, in number two hundred and tiventy-three.'''' The New Haven and Connecticut colonists, by a single stroke of legislation more than a century and a half before, had reduced their list of capital offenses to fifteen. If such a reduction, with hardly an execution for any of them, be not considered a long step in the history of law reform, law reformers are hard to satisfy. The government established in 1643 continued without essential change until its final absorption by Connecticut. Two towns, however, were added to the four already named. Southold, L. I., bought in 1640, was admitted as a town in 1649. It was at first called by its Indian name, Yennicott or Yennicock ; and its English name, Southold or Southhold, perhaps signified the place of strength to the south of New Haven. It ex- tended some forty miles west of Orient Point. Totoket, or Branford, was a part of the second purchase of 1638. Samuel Eaton having failed to settle it, it was granted in 1640 to another dis- satisfied Wethersfield company, headed by Wil- THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 107 liam Swayne, and Branford was admitted as a town in 1651. In 1644 it had been reinforced by- Rev. Abraham Pierson's church from Southamp- ton, L. I., which sought a more congenial home under the New Haven jurisdiction when its town joined Connecticut. But Pierson's church was not to escape thus. Within twenty years, the union was consummated, and the church again broke away from Connecticut and founded New- ark, N. J., a settlement which has given to New Jersey the mass of the Connecticut family names which have appeared in her history. Hunting- ton, L. I., also applied to be admitted in 1656 and 1659, but was refused because of her demand that her local court should try all her civil cases and all criminal cases not capital. Six towns, therefore, — New Haven, Milford, Guilford, Stamford, Southold and Branford, — made up the New Haven jurisdiction during its short history. With the exception of Stamford and Southold, the commonwealth lay immediately around New Haven. Its smaller members are now villages which offer little that is striking to the traveler or visitor. Time was when they were members of an almost independent republic whose hopes were high, and whose history serves at least to show that the New England town system cannot thrive in an unfriendly soil. CHAPTER Vni. THE SAYBROOK ATTEMPT AND ITS FAILIJEE. The Saybrook colony was the offspring, in one sense, of the English king's committal to the policy of " thorough." There was in the king- dom, in addition to the comparatively helpless lower-class victims of Laud, an unknown number of gentlemen of good family who were thoroughly indoctrinated with Puritanism, or with kindred forms of dissent. These had as yet escaped serious persecution, partly through family and social influ- ences, partly through the English reserve which, by checking any too violent expressions of dissent, had enabled family and social influences to have their full effect. About 1634-35 there were strong indications that the period of peace for this class was approaching its limit. Wentworth, in Ireland, was constructing the covered way by which the liberties of England were to be assailed. The heart of all Protestant Europe was yet faint and sick at the hideous atrocities of Tilly's musketeers at the sack of Magdeburg : was any more mercy to be expected by English cities at the hands of Wentworth's Irish musketeers ? And who was THE SAYBROOK ATTEMPT. 109 to suppose that the supple body known as a parlia- ment under Elizabeth and James would take the law into its own hands against Charles ? Or that Puritanism would develop a soldiery before which the king's men would faint and fly ? Patient and reserved men forgot that other Englishmen were as reserved, as patient and as dangerous as they, and concluded that hope was gone from England, and that there was no refuge but across the At- lantic. It may be that the supposititious, or at least unverifiable grant to Warwick by the Council of Plymouth in 1630 was a pious fraud, designed to provide some such refuge, if the fear of confisca- tion of charter rights should deter Massachusetts from receiving refugees. The difficulty is to un- derstand why the declaration of a baseless claim by the Say and Sele patentees, in the country and during the life of the original owner, should not have been met by a prompt contradiction. This is the strongest secondary evidence of the validity of the grant to Warwick in 1630, and its transfer to the Say and Sele Company in 1631, — that in 1634-35 the latter patentees made active and pub- lic preparations to enforce their claims to Con- necticut and to remove there themselves, without exciting any complaint or opposition on the part of the Plymouth Council or their later grantees. That broad excuse, "the confusion of the times,'* 110 CONNECTICUT. may serve as a partial but hardly as an entirely satisfactory explanation. John Winthrop, Sen., the governor of Massachu- setts, had led the great Puritan migration to that colony in 1630. His son, John Winthrop, Jr., did not reach Boston until October, 1635. He was then a young man of twenty-nine, of good natural parts, well improved at Cambridge and Dublin and by travel on the continent, and he had already shown that philosophical, equable and judicial temperament which made him a trusted leader of men throughout his life. One of the bitterest critics of the early Massachusetts system hesitates before the beauties of the younger Winthrop's character, and. calls him " perhaps the brightest ornament of New England Puritanism." His father's connection with the Say and Sele associates must have been close, and they must have seen in the son the qualities they needed. It thus hap- pened that the son, on his vray to Boston, was di- verted into an interest in Connecticut, which finally made him more vitally important to that colony than the father had ever been to Massachu- setts. Articles of agreement were entered into July 7, 1635, between John Winthrop, Jr., of the one part, and Viscount Say and Sele, Sir Arthur Has- selring, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Henry Lawrence, Henry Darley and George Fen wick of the other. Robert, Lord Brooke, did not sign, but was a party THE SAY BROOK ATTEMPT. Ill in interest. Winthrop was to be fully compen- sated for his time and trouble, was to act as " gov- ernor of the river Connecticut in New England, and of the harbor and places adjoining," for one year, and was to build a fort at the mouth of the river, with a garrison of fifty men, reserving 1,000 or 1,500 acres of good ground, near the fort, for its maintenance. His commission as governor was signed, sealed and delivered to him July 18. Winthrop arrived at Boston just a week before the first considerable migration to the Connecticut "Valley. It is said that the intruding settlers made an agreement with him that, if the real owners, "their lordships," should require them to remove from their new settlements, they were to do so on receiving satisfaction for their improvements, or corresponding locations elsewhere. The agree- ment is referred to in the preamble to the Massa- chusetts commission to the provisional magistrates of Connecticut ; but it is curious that it does not seem to be referred to in the elaborate series of instructions to Winthrop, and letters to the king and various English noblemen in regard to the charter, although it would have materially strength- ened their case under the Fenwick purchase, as showing constructive permission from " their lord- ships " to settle, in default of notice to quit. Win- throp, to whom the instructions were addressed, was the very person who in 1635, as agent for the proprietors, had given them conditional per- 112 CONNECTICUT. mission to settle in the Connecticut Valley ; and yet, in 1661, they allow themselves to appear to his majesty as originally sheer interlopers. In spite of the authority of the father's journal, the statement seems to lack some particulars essential to a clear understanding of it. The mouth of the river had already been seized by an English force, in order to keep it from the Dutch ; but the works constructed must have been of the most primitive character. A party of twenty men, sent by Winthrop, arrived at the fort and took possession November 24, 1635 ; and a little later came Winthrop himself and Lyon Gardiner, who soon became commander of the fort. For some years the garrison endured even more than the usual monotony of a frontier fort. Its men were ambushed and attacked during the Pe- quot struggle, but were restricted to a defensive warfare. Even settlement was really hindered by the fort. It drew danger, from Dutch or Indians, as the candle draws the moth ; and its direct protection was only efficient enough to keep its people within the fort, and in a few scattered buildings very near it. George Fenwick had visited the place the year of VVinthrop's assumption of control. About mid- summer of the year 1639 he returned with much more parade. He had two vessels, which brought also his wife. Lady Alice Boteler, and his family. The name Saybrook was given to the settlement THE SAY BROOK ATTEMPT. 113 in honor of the two leading proprietors, Lord Say and Lord Brooke ; but the contemporary genius for misspelling, reacted upon by the neighborhood of the river and the Sound, made it read Seabrook for many years upon the Connecticut records. The first minister was Rev. Thomas Peters, followed in 1646 by Rev. James Fitch, who re- moved in 1660 to settle at Norwich with most of his church, there to become very much entangled with the affairs of the Indians and the manage- ment of their lands. Besides these. Captain John Mason, a renowned man of war and major general of the Connecticut colony's militia, and Thomas Leffingwell, were the leading men ; but there were many other Saybrook names which the Norwich migration transferred to that part of the common- wealth and subsequently far beyond its borders. The tract of land usually considered as under the jurisdiction of Saybrook was about ten miles in length, divided midway by the Connecticut River, and extending six or eight miles back from Long Island Sound. Small as this territory was, it was of great importance as controlling the only water exit from the Hartford region, and as the seat of the representative of the only paper title within the future commonwealth. The authori- ties of Connecticut showed their usual acuteness by forming close relations with Fenwick. He was admitted to the first conference which formed the New England union in 1643 ; and, as that con- 114 CONNECTICUT. federation recognized only the four colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven, Connecticut shrewdly appointed him as one of her commissioners in 1643 and 1644, with Edward Hopkins as the other. Fen wick was thus identified with Connecticut as closely as he could have been without an actual transfer of the rights which he represented. His second term of service as commissioner, in 1644, enabled him to render most important service to Connecticut in her boundary disputes with Massachusetts, which col- ony laid claim before the commissioners to the Pequot country. Fenwick interposed a protest against any decision which should in any way im- peach his principals' title to the territory in dis- pute, and the commissioners decided to postpone the decision until the patentees could be heard from. The delay served to enable Connecticut to secure a firmer hold on the conquered territory before a final decision became imperative. This diplomatic stroke had hardly been dealt when the Connecticut general court appointed a committee to treat with Fenwick for the sale of Saybrook. The logic of events had been too much for the Saybrook colony. The state of things at home was no longer what it had been in 1634. Whether Jenny Geddes ever threw her stool or not, a train of events had been started, bringing calamities to royalty and relief to the persecuted ; the once supple parliament had taught THE SAYBROOK ATTEMPT. 115 Wentworth the real meaning of "thorough;" and, above all, Cromwell and his Ironsides had charged at Marston Moor. Puritan gentlemen in England had other things to think of than emi- grating to Say brook ; and Fenwick was hopelessly isolated. Connecticut had the purpose and power of growth, but there was no longer hope for Say- brook. The agreement of sale was made December 5, 1644. Fenwick made over the fort, its appurte- nances, and the land in the neighborhood to the colony of Connecticut. Lands not yet disposed of were to be distributed by a committee of five, of whom Fenwick was to be one. The rest of the Warwick patent, from Saybrook to Narragansett Bay, was to be brought by Fenwick " under the jurisdiction of Connecticut, if it came into his power." In return, Fenwick was to have the use of the buildings within the fort for ten years, with an impost on exports of corn, biscuit, beaver and cattle which should pass the fort during that time. As security to Fenwick, the general court ordered in the following February, in its ratification of the agreement, that every master of a vessel should land at the fort while passing it, and deliver to the commandant of the fort a note of the duti- able part of his cargo. In 1646 the amount was limited to j6180 per annum, the total duty col- lected during the ten years being about X 1,600. The imposition of the duty nearly disrupted 116 CONNECTICUT. the New England union. In 1647 Massachusetts filed a protest against it before the commission- ers of the union. She claimed that Connecticut had no right to levy on the Massachusetts towns of the upper Connecticut Valley a tax which ■was to inure to Connecticut's sole benefit in the acquisition of Saybrook. In 1649 the commis- sioners of the other three colonies decided against the protest of Massachusetts. Thereupon the Massachusetts commissioners exhibited an order of their general court, levying a tax on all goods of the other colonies imported into or exported from Boston, ostensibly for the repair of the cas- tle in the harbor. The suspiciously opportune circumstance of the castle's need of repairs just at this time excited considerable anger in the other colonies ; and this was intensified in 1653 by the refusal of Massachusetts to join the other colonies in a war against the Dutch and Indians. Perhaps the feeling in the latter case was the greater on account of the attitude assumed by Massachusetts, that of an advocate of peace and righteousness, averse to an offensive war ; whereas the fact, as it seemed to contemporary observers, was that the governing desire of the Bay colony was to con- vince the other colonies of their impotence, and of their folly in supporting the refusal of Connecti- cut to yield to Massachusetts even in the petty affair of the impost. With the expiration of Fen- wick's ten years' term the retaliatory measures THE SAYBROOK ATTEMPT. 117 were quietly allowed to disappear : probably the castle had been put into good repair by that time. With the conclusion of the agreement of 1644^ Say brook subsided into the position of a Connec- ticut township. Fenwick continued to reside at the fort, but took no prominent part in Connecti- cut affairs. The Connecticut general court re- quested him to return to England at his earliest convenience, and act as its agent in procuring that grant of the entire jurisdiction under the patent which he had promised to get "if it ever came within his power to do so." Lady Fenwick died at Saybiook about 1648, and her husband soon after returned to England, giving up the last vestige of the commercial city which was to have graced the mouth of the Connecticut. He died in 1657, before the colony applied for a charter. The Connecticut authorities were diligent in disseminating the idea, and were perhaps honest in their own belief, that Colonel Fen wick's sale had been a transfer of the patent and of the juris- diction thereunder, for this gave the colony a quasi-legal standing which it had not before. When Massachusetts, during the impost and boun- dary disputes, impugned the standing of Connec- ticut as a colony unauthorized and unwarranted by law, the latter colony always replied that it had a charter or patent in England, but that " the confusion of the times " prevented it from show- 118 CONNECTICUT. ing anything more than a copy. It was when the confusion began to disappear, and the validity of the excuse with it, that the colony took steps to secure a charter from the king. In the instruc- tions to Governor Winthrop, the colonial authori- ties lay great stress on the Fenwick sale as in- volving the equitable transfer of the patent itself, although the terms of the agreement contradict them. They go so far as to say, " Had we not been too credulous and confident of the goodness and faithfulness of that gentleman [Fenwick], we might possibly have been at a better pass ; " and they direct the governor to take steps to recover from Fenwick's heirs the amount paid to him. They even sequestered the colonial estate of Mrs. CuUick, Fenwick's sister and his New England heir, until .£500 were repaid and further claims were remitted. It would be far more than even- handed justice to the fathers of the Connecticut colony to admit that they were the simple victims of the wiles of George Fenwick : if he could so easily delude them, he was more successful than their other contemporaries. They seem to have understood perfectly in 1644 the wares for which they were then bargaining, and were quite aware that this part of the consideration was purely contingent. So impossible was it in 1661 for the contingency to be fulfilled that the letter of the colony to the king takes conspicuous care not to mention the Fenwick agreement at all. Perhaps THE SAYBROOK ATTEMPT. 119 its attitude toward the Fenwick family may best be explained as that of men who had bought a contingency, found it less valuable than they ex- pected, and were unwilling to confess their error even to one another. On the other hand, the romantic life and death of Lady Fenwick ought not to give to her hus- band's character that generous glamour which Con- necticut historians have been too prone to allow him. It should not be forgotten that he deliber- ately sold and appropriated the proceeds of prop- erty of which he was not the sole owner, only the agent. The colonial authorities yielded to his de- mand for .£1,600 for property which was not his, rather than see it sold to the Dutch ; and they paid the sum agreed upon. But the substantial iniquity of the transaction undoubtedly stirred them to a greater eagerness to make use of the invalidity of one feature of the agreement in order to secui'e substantial justice in others. On the whole, the merits of ^;he case seem to be with the colony. CHAPTER IX. CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. It is much to be regretted that the fathers of the Connecticut colony seem to have been too much immersed in the struggle for existence to give us any record of the appearance of men and things in these early years. In this respect, Con- necticut is unfortunate beyond any of her sister commonwealths. Hartford, the subsequent capi- tal of the colony and state, may be taken as an example. There does not seem to be any surviv- ing map, plan, picture, sketch or verbal descrip- tion of the town, or of any public or private build- ing, until about the time of the Revolution. Even the zeal of the antiquary finds " no thorough- fare " inscribed almost immediately on every clue which would have been a promising one in Massa- chusetts. The contemporary letters, journals, etc., seem to take existing things for granted. The minds of the writers were occupied almost exclusively with the actions of men ; and the pregnant incidental hints as to social features, manners and customs, topography, etc., which are so frequently furnished in other colonies by CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 121 writers who had no notion that they were furnish- ing them, are not found in Connecticut. This was due to the peculiar nature of the early struggles in the colony. Difficulties of soil, commerce and general industry were no new matters with them : their wits were working mainly to know what other men might do or could do ; how Massachu- setts men would act about the boundary line ; how the Dutch would act about Long Island and the territory west of the Connecticut River ; how Eng- lishmen would settle their home government ; and what would be the influence on the fortunes of the little congeries of towns which, formed with- out a legal title, had never acquired one except from a man who never had it and did not profess to sell it. Determined as they were to maintain the integrity of their colonial existence, the im- pediments were enormous, and almost all of them lay in possible human action. It is no wonder, then, that the early official and unofficial records of Connecticut deal so largely with this one side of human history, and give us so little of any other. Antiquarian zeal has overcome some of these difficulties. The process of tracing back land ti- tles through the records of land transfers has given us an excellent map of Hartford in 1640, which, though partly conjectural, gives what is probably a very close representation of the town. It lies on the west bank of the Connecticut River, where 122 CONNECTICUT. the river runs nearly due south. Running east- ward, through the southern central part of the town, is the " little river," or " riveret," a swift- flowing brook, whose depth varied with the sea- sons. The bulk of the town was thus to the north of the little river, and to the west of the Connecti- cut. Like the city of Washington, it was at first a city of magnificent distances. Its first settlers laid it out on a scale so generous that it was not necessary to enlarge the city limits until 1853, or to add more than one highway to the original roads during the century and a half between the settlement of Hartford and its incorporation as a city in 1784. Only one tenth of the township was included in the city limits of 1784 ; the city now covers the whole township, and its streets have increased from thirty to three hundred in number within the present century. At the mouth of the little river is the Dutch post Good Hope, still in the possession of its orig- inal owners in 1640, as Berwick-upon-Tweed long marked the remnant of the English claims in Scot- land. Alongside the main river was a strip of meadow land, and along the rising ground which bounded it on the west ran the highway from Bos- ton, which passed through the three river towns, and afterwards became the highway to the whole territory to the south. On the north bank of the little river, fronting a road along its edge, there were placed in succession the houses of Governor CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 123 Haynes, of Rev. Mr. Hooker, of Rev. Mr. Stone, and of Elder Goodwin, " Meeting House Alley " separating Hooker and Stone. Meeting House Alley ran from the little river to a square (now- State House Square), some distance in the rear of Stone and Goodwin, and nearly in the topo- graphical center of the town, which contained the market place, the jail, and the meeting house. The mass of the lots on this side of the town, ex- cept those fronting on the little river, lay east and west, perpendicular to the Boston highway and the parallel roads. The lots to the south of the little river lay mostly north and south, perpendic- ular to the highway along the little river and the parallel streets. Almost all the meadow land on this side of the little river, down to the Dutch settlement, was owned by Edward Hopkins, the colony's leading merchant ; and to the southwest of his tract was the estate of the Wyllys family, on which was that which was to be the Charter Oak. Further up the little river were the tan- yard, located on an island ; and the mill, on the northern shore. Outside of the town were the cow pasture, the ox pasture, the landing, etc., and the roads were named according to the places to which they led. Few particulars are known of the size or appear- ance of the meeting house, or of any other build- ing. All the buildings were very certainly small, though the erection of a sawmill in 1667 is an in- 124 CONNECTICUT. dication of an early improvement in house-build- ing. The windows were hardly more than open- ings for light and air ; and their size was reduced by the scarcity of glass, and the necessity of using oiled linen or other translucent material as a sub- stitute. The meeting house was too small to ad- mit of galleries, or of anything more than the mer- est suggestion of a pulpit. There was no plaster. Instead of pews there were plain and hard benches, and artificial heat was unknown, even in the bit- terest weather. Indeed, the Hartford church had no stoves until about 1815 ; and what Lodge calls " the ferocious practice " of baptizing newly bom infants in church must have had an additional horror in the depth of winter. Finally an armed guard, suggestive of Indian neighbors, was an in- separable accompaniment to religious services, and was provided with seats near the door. In the other Connecticut towns, religious and other meet- ings were called by beat of drum, one of the in- habitants making an annual contract for the ser- vice. Hartford alone had a bell, brought from Cambridge, which was probably at that time the only church or public bell on the continent, with the exception of the one at Jamestown, Va. Its contents now make part of the bell, recast in 1850, belonging to the First Congregational Church of Hartford. New Haven had no church bell until 1681. One of the most difficult and delicate functions CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 125 of a church committee in Connecticut and New Haven towns was the seating of the congregation. A transfer of a family from one seat to another betokened a social rise or fall. In the smaller towns, such transfers were usually made by a ma- jority vote at a town meeting; and the town records have numberless entries of permissions granted to fortunate and rising men to sit " in the justice's pew," or " in the cross pew by the sec- ond pillar," or " in the second pew on the right," the proper places for their wives, on their side of the house, being as carefully specified. Finally the meeting house was used for a long time for every variety of secular purposes, not only as a place for town and other meetings, but as a place of deposit for arms, military provisions, and lost or stolen property. The Hartford church building was not merely the scene of ecclesiastical councils : the meetings of the New England com- missioners, of deputies from other commonwealths, and even the exciting conferences with Andros in regard to the charter, took place here. It was not until toward the middle of the next century that the towns began to see the incongruity of secular business in a dedicated house of worship, and be- gan to erect townhouses and other distinctively public buildings. Bad as were the roads of the United States al- most everywhere until the era of turnpikes set in, and railroads in their turn forced the turnpikes up 126 CONNECTICUT. to a higher standard, the roads of Hartford and its neighborhood had a certain evil preeminence. The excellence of the soil was reflected in the bad char- acter of the roads. Its tenacious clay only needed moisture enough to become a weariness to the flesh of horses and of men. Within the last thirty years, says one authority, wagons have been seen sunk to the hub in the native clay of Pearl Street, close to the center of the city. In 1774 the town prisoners for debt represented to the general as- sembly that the roads were for a considerable part of the year so miry and impassable that no one came to the jail to bestow alms on the prisoners ; and they petitioned that the jail limits should be enlarged. What the roads must have been in still earlier days passes speculation. It may per- haps be that the early years of John Fitch, of Windsor, spent in annual experiences of the hor. rors of Hartford roads, were the influence which turned his attention to improving the waterways of the country by endeavoring to perfect the steamboat. Mr. J. C. Parsons "cannot discover that any land in the town is now in possession of the de- scendants of the original owners, having been con- tinuously in the possession of the family ; some, through female heirs, may possibly be so held." This state of things is common to most Connecti- cut towns, but it does not imply that the original stock is dying out. It is only a symptom of the CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 127 universal readiness to transfer property and assume new propertj'^ relations. There is hardly a Con- necticut town in which the names of the first set- tlers are not as absolutely numerous as at the settlement ; if there is any relative decrease, it is due to the superimposition of a foreign popula- tion. The old names, even the Christian names, show a remarkable persistence, and an equally re- markable persistence in the characteristic of prop- erty-holding, even though their possessors have exchanged family for other property. The origi- nal fecundity is shown in the fact, that, in spite of this persistence, it is the old family names which have shown a disposition to drift out of the com- monwealth by emigration. For this there have been four main channels : in early years, to Ver- mont, and so over the border into New York ; later, to Pennsylvania (Wyoming) and to central New York ; later still, to the Western Reserve of Ohio, and so throughout that State and the West ; and of recent years, to New York city, and thence in every direction. In addition to these main channels, isolated routes of migration have been innumerable, so that Connecticut names are now to be found in every part of the Union. Such a steady stream of migration could not but have hastened this process of alienation of family prop- erty. Those who migrated soon disposed of their share of the patrimony, and it regularly passed away from the name, though not necessarily from 128 CONNECTICUT. Connecticut names and stock. The absence of an- cestral holdings in the State is merely a redistri- bution of the original holdings. The Massachusetts man and woman of 1637-38 are the exact social representatives of the early- Connecticut settlers, except so far as the poverty and meagerness of the Massachusetts life of the time were still further intensified by the difficul- ties of an absolutely new settlement. There are said to have been but thirty plows at the time in all Massachusetts : what estimate shall we make for the new and struggling Connecticut colony? We have, unfortunately, no such Pepys as Judge Sewall for early life in Connecticut, but Sewall's hints as to the hardships of early Massachusetts life may well be reinforced and transferred to our commonwealth. The utter lack of a multitude of things which have come to seem absolute necessa- ries in the eyes of their descendants ; the difficul- ties of travel and communication ; the complete isolation from the outer world through the grim months of a New England winter, during which the sacramental bread in the churches was some- times frozen on the plates ; the bitterness of the winter cold even in private houses, where the ink sometimes froze in the inkstands within a few feet of the great fire ; the utter inadequacy of medical and surgical attendance ; the ignorance of and an- tagonism to the art of amusement in every form ; the incongruous mixture of the civilized and the CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 129 savage, in a society in which a minister, trained in an English university, might be called away from writing a treatise on the dealings of the Eng- lish commonwealth with its former king, or with the American churches, to drive a drunken Indian, out of his kitchen, or chaffer with a hunter for food or clothing, — these were social conditions from which the early settler did not escape by re- moving from Massachusetts to Connecticut, and they are more fairly within the province of the Massachusetts historian. There are, however, certain visible distinctions between the drift of public events in Connecticut and in Massachusetts which make it difficult to believe that there was not some hidden differenti- ation between the people of the three migrating towns and of the five which were left, which has colored their whole subsequent history. The difficulties between king and parliament were at their height when the Connecticut colony was founded ; and for more than half a century the relations of the house of Stuart to its various opponents formed the critical public question for the New England colonies. Throughout this pe- riod there was probably no great difference be- tween the underlying purposes of the two colonies under consideration. Both meant to preserve the public privileges which they had gained, to ex- tend their territory and jurisdiction, and to evade or resist the interference of the home government 9 130 CONNECTICUT. with their autonomy. But the methods of Mas- sachusetts were peculiarly her own. There were strong reasons, in the history, traditions, and con- sistent public teachings of the colony, why she should pose as the pronounced champion of colo- nial liberties. On every occasion she seems to have felt it to be incumbent upon her to assume a more or less decided public attitude, and equally incumbent upon her strongest neighbor, Connecti- cut, to support her by a similar course. In very many cases Connecticut did so ; in fact, the most common criticism of her policy by her own people was that sh§ was too apt to " trot after the Bay horse." But every case in which Connecticut chose to follow a policy of her own seemed to the Bay colony only an instance of unmanly defection rather than of independent action. The consistent policy of Connecticut, on the other hand, was to avoid notoriety and public at- titudes ; to secure her privileges without attract- ing needless notice ; to act as intensely and vig- orously as possible when action seemed necessary and promising; but to say as little as possible, yield as little as possible, and evade as much as possible when open resistance was evident folly. Much of the difference must have been due to the different circumstances of the two colonies. Mas- sachusetts, secure in the possession of a charter, must have felt always that, even if beaten down from any claim, she could fall back, in the last CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 131 resort, upon her legal privileges. Connecticut, while without a charter, must have felt the same hesitation in following some of the leads of her neighbor which an unarmored vessel would feel in following some of the motions of an ironclad ; but the steady continuance of her policy after she had obtained a charter seems to argue some structural difference in the people. Her line of public con- duct was precisely the same after as before 1662. And its success was remarkable : it is safe to say that the diplomatic skill, forethought, and self- control shown by the men who guided the course of Connecticut during this period have seldom been equaled on the larger fields of the world's history. As products of democracy, they were its best vindication. The period closed in 1691 with the loss of the original charter of Massachusetts, the imposition of a new and restricted charter upon her, and the palpable and even conscious inability of her pub- lic men to make good by action the positions as- sumed in the past. The mortification of this de- feat was aggravated by the pronounced success of the Connecticut policy. The best of New Eng- land's historians has not hesitated to avow and to reiterate his conviction, not only that Connecticut left Massachusetts in the lurch, but that she al- lowed her application for a charter to be used by the royal agents as an essential instrument in the disintegration of the New England union and the final humiliation of Massachusetts. 132 CONNECTICUT. Such a conclusion assumes far too much. It would have been just, in the first place, if Connec- ticut had ever imitated the Massachusetts posi- tions, and had given Massachusetts to understand that she had entered the union for the purpose of upholding the Massachusetts policy. On the con- trary, the Connecticut policy was a matter of no- toriety among New England public men from the beginning. The accusation of Massachusetts was wholly an afterthought to cover her own want of forethought in sacrificing democracy to class influence, and in thus drifting into a position where she was hopelessly stalemated. It must always have been baseless, except on the supposi- tion that Connecticut was in some manner bound to follow her neighbor's lead, and to surrender her own right of judgment in every great emergency, a course which Connecticut was not bound or likely to take. In the second place, an admission of the legality, with an impeachment of the jus- tice, of Connecticut's policy, assumes that a decided adherence by Connecticut to the Massachusetts policy would have resulted in obtaining a more complete autonomy for all the New England col- onies, and would have saved the union. But this is mere conjecture, and improbable as well. It is no more probable, at least, than that Massachu- setts would have scored a success equal to that of Connecticut by following a similar line of policy. It is no answer to this to say that Massachusetts CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 133 preferred failure, after an heroic resistance, to suc- cess attained by shifty and temporizing measures : the less said about the heroism shown by the dom- inant class of Massachusetts, in the events which culminated in 1691, the better. Its nullification of the articles of union in 1652-54 had taken the life out of them : they never again showed any vi- tality, and the Connecticut charter simply gave decent burial to the corpse. The facts are, that these commonwealths were then hardly fitted for complete autonomy ; that the Connecticut policy obtained about as much as was practicable or best at the time, while the Massa- chusetts policy obtained considerably less. The spirit which still moves the Connecticut workman to invent anything rather than expend a foot- pound of energy uselessly, seems to have actuated the people from the beginning. They would re- ceive Andros, for example, most deferentially, make no sign of resistance until resistance could take its most vigorous and effective form : then the work was done thoroughly, and almost abso- lute silence followed until the next opportunity for decisive action. No one can study the history of the commonwealth without being struck with the individuality of the people, as shown in their public career ; or, without believing that that in- dividuality was not due simply to circumstances, to their thirty years' struggle for a charter, but that it belonged to them even in Massachusetts, perhaps even in old England. 134 CONNECTICUT. From their first settlement, Hartford and " an- cient" Windsor seem to have gone quietly and steadily on in their natural course of development. Wethersfield had migrated without a minister, and, for this or some other reason, its course of devel- opment ran ill from the first. Within its first half dozen years of life, its neighbor towns and New Haven were compelled to offer " loving coun- sel " as to Wethersfield difiiculties ; and Daven- port, of New Haven, put his into the wise sugges- tion that the minority should migrate again. The minority who acted on this advice settled at Stam- ford and formed a New Haven town. In 1644 another portion of the Wethersfield minority, as has been said, removed to the New Haven juris- diction and formed part of the town of Branford. There seems to have been no defined method of turning a settlement into a political " town," be- yond the mere act of the general court in receiv- ing its deputies, until after the charter was ob- tained. It is diSicult, therefore, to assign any exact date to the political birth of the early Con- necticut towns. The growth of the family may be traced in the steady increase in the number of deputies in the general court itself. There were seventeen deputies in 1649 ; twenty in 1650 ; twenty-two in 1651 ; twenty-five in 1654 ; and twenty-six in 1656-57, this number remaining the maximum until after the union was consummated under the charter. The increase came from the CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 135 successive recognition of the new towns of Say- brook, Stratford, Farmington, Fairfield, Norwalk, Middletown, New London, Norwich, and the Long Island towns — Huntington, Southampton and East Hampton ; but there can be no pretense at accuracy in saying when each of these towns was first represented in the general court. Town rec- ognition seems really to have taken a somewhat different line, hinging on those ancient and im- portant functionaries, the constables. Professor H. B. Adams has said : " We do not suppose that this has always been a conscious standard for leg- islative action in the recognition of towns, or for the actual determination of town or parish units ; but we claim that without a constable, or some power representing the corporate responsibility of the community for the preservation of the local peace, a town would be an impossibility." His evident hesitation in making an assertion which would seem almost a truism to the Connecticut historian is another illustration of the unwisdom of confining the study of the New England town system to its phases in Massachusetts, as if it had been a thing peculiar to that commonwealth. In fact, it can be studied better, for many purposes, in Connecticut than in Massachusetts ; for the town in Connecticut was almost as free as independency itself until near the period of the charter, while in Massachusetts it was circumscribed from the beginning by commonwealth power. Professor 136 CONNECTICUT. Adams will find his supposition, doubtful as it may be under the comparatively artificial Massa- chusetts system, emphatically confirmed under the more natural Connecticut system. We know, for example, that the Indian purchase on which the town of Nor walk rests was made in 1640, and that settlement began about 1650 ; and we infer from various circumstances that the purchase and settlement of Middletown took place about 1646- 47. But the record of their " incorporation " is no more than a vote of the general court, September 11, 1651, that " Mattabeseck [Middletown] and Norwalke " should be towns and should choose constables. As the collection of taxes and the an- nouncement of elections were among the functions of the constable, it seems probable that the ex- press or tacit recognition of the town's constable was in effect until the charter, a recognition of the town itself and of its right to choose deputies. The records really show no other. The difficulty of the general court in dealing with new towns was about parallel with the difficulty of the con- gress of the confederation in dealing with the quasi State of Vermont. A parallel indication of the growth of the col- ony is to be found in the tax-lists. The first dis- tinct increase of taxable property comes December 1, 1645, when the general court granted a " rate " of £400, "to be paid by the country." Of this amount <£340 was to be paid by the three origi- CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 137 nal towns ; X45 by Stratford and Fairfield ; <£15 by S ay brook ; and XIO each by Tunxis (Farm- ington) and Southampton, L. I. In 1652 the " rates " were still confined to the -towns just named, Southampton being omitted. It is an in- dication of the prosperity resulting from sixteen years' work that the assessed value of the property in these seven towns was now ,£70,000, as fol- lows: Hartford, <£ 20,000 ; Windsor, X14,100 ; Wethersfield, Xll,500 ; Farmington, £5,200 ; Saybrook, .£3,600; Stratford, X7,000 ; and Fair- field, £8,900. In the following year, three new towns, Pequot (New London), Mattabesek (Mid- dletown), and Norwalk, are recognized in a draft of men for an armed force, as well as in the rates ; and the assessed value rises to £79,700. In 1661, just before the receipt of the charter, the assessed value rises to £84,137. The usual tax assessed upon this amount was a penny or a halfpenny, constituting a " rate " or a " half rate." Long Island had never been more than nom- inally under the jurisdiction of the Dutch. They had planted a few farms at its western end, but the rest of the island was a wilderness. Among the multitude of conflicting and unintelligible grants made by the council of Plymouth before its dissolution, was one to the Earl of Stirling, covering Long Island. The grantee seems to have claimed ownership only, not jurisdiction. In practice, therefore, when his agent sold a piece of 138 CONNECTICUT. territory, the new owners became an independent political community, with some claims against them, but no direct control. The island was thus in much the same position as the Connecticut ter- ritory before the first irruption of settlers, and offered much the same attractions as a place of refuge for persons or communities who had found the connection between church and state grievous. A company from Lynn, Mass., bought the town- ship of Southampton from Stirling's agent, April 17, 1640. There were at first but sixteen persons in the company, Abraham Pierson being their minister. This was the church which, first re- moving to Branford in 1644, when Southampton became a Connecticut town, finally settled at Newark, N. J. Easthampton was settled about 1648, by another Lynn party, and was received as a Connecticut town, November 7, 1649. The town of Huntington, though part of it was bought from the Indians by Governor Eaton, of New Haven, in 1646, really dates from about 1653. May 17, 1660, it was received as a Connecticut town. There were thus three Connecticut towns on Long Island, in addition to Southold, the New Haven township. Between these and the really Dutch settlements at the western end of the is- land, there were English settlements in the neigh- borhood of Hempstead; but these acknowledged a much closer dependence on the Dutch authori. ties. CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 139 Hardly any of the expansion of Connecticut, prior to the grant of the charter which gave a legal basis to its claims, was dUe to accident. In almost all of it we can see very clearly a provident de- termination on the part of the people to give their commonwealth respectable limits, and to turn to account every favoring circumstance in that direc- tion. Hardly was the Pequot war under way ■when the general court resolved to send thirty men to occupy " the Pequoitt Countrey & River in place convenient to maynteine our right that God by Conquest hath given us." And from this moment Connecticut maintained her right by con- quest to the whole of the present eastern part of the State with a vigor which was in itself strong promise of success. One secret of the .common- wealth's success, in this as in the Saybrook and other cases, was the policy which it followed with adverse claimants, a policy which the politico-reli- gious constitution of New Haven prevented it from imitating. Instead of engaging in a struggle with a rival, the Connecticut democracy always en- deavored to adopt him, to make its interests his, and so to secure even a better title out of conflict. In the case of the Pequot country, it was John Winthrop, Jr., the former agent of the Saybrook proprietors, who developed an inchoate rivalry with the colony for possession of the coveted terri- tory ; and Connecticut's policy, carefully applied, not only strengthened her title to the Pequot 140 CONNECTICUT. country, but gave her one of the best of her long line of excellent governors, and was in the end one of the chief means of obtaining her long desired charter. Winthrop's attention had been turned to the Pequot country. Fisher's Island, "against the mouth of the Pequot River," was granted to him by the Massachusetts general court, October 7, 1640, with a reservation of the possibly superior title of Connecticut or New Haven ; and Connecti- cut, instead of taking any exceptions to the grant, promptly confirmed it. In 1644 Massachusetts gave Winthrop authority to " make a plantation in the Pequot country." He went to the place in the following spring, and in the autumn of 1646 had gathered a few families there, and was begin- ning to put up houses. The claims of Massachu- setts were grounded on the fact that her troops had taken part in the conquest of the Pequots ; and the case was decided against her by the New Eng- land commissioners in July, 1647. Connecticut at once gave Winthrop a commission, September 9, 1647, to execute justice in his town "according to our laws and the rule of righteousness." May 17, 1649, the court established the boundaries of the new town and named its magistrates. One of these two dates, and most probably the former, is to be taken as the town's entrance to the list of Connecticut towns. On the latter date, the court suggested the name " Fair Haven," but the people preferred that of New London. CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 141 The last of the Connecticut towns before the charter was Norwich, an offshoot of Saybrook. Its settlement was approved, under the name of " Mohegan," by the general court in 1659 ; and it •was summoned, October 3, 1661, under the name of " Norridge," to send representatives. The divergence between the Connecticut colony and its sister and rival of New Haven had become marked long before Monk began his march for London. The attempt has been made in this chapter to state some of the elements of strength of Connecticut. It had become a strong, well- balanced political unit, with a clear notion of a territorial goal to be striven for, and of the line of policy to be pursued in striving for it. Its democ- racy gave every man a personal interest in the main- tenance of the colony's claims ; and the results were another proof that " everybody knows more than anybody." Its towns were as free as towns could well be ; the right of suffrage was as nearly as possible universal ; it can hardly be said that there were any dissatisfied elements to be placated, or else to fester in the vitals of the commonwealth ; and the steady bias of the commonwealth toward civil and religious freedom had enabled it to find elements of increased strength in what might have been elements of intestine weakness. For twenty years or more, the " loving brethren " of Connec- ticut and New Haven lived on in entire satisfac- tion with one another's corporate existence. The 142 CONNECTICUT. time had then come when the growing common- wealth found that the separate existence o\ New Haven was a complete obstacle to the natural course of development of Connecticut. The com- parative weakness of New Haven will come out in the narrative of the events which led to the union ; but it is fair to say in advance that one of the most effective of these weakening elements in New Haven was the apparent agreement of a part oi her people with Connecticut rather than with their own colony. Freedom was more attractive in the long run than restriction. CHAPTER X. THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. The organization in which the idea of the American Union first cropped out, to exist a while and then to die away almost unnoticed, was the New England union of 1643. As Massachusetts was the most distinguished and influential mem- ber of this confederation, the full account of its origin and history should in fairness be reserved to Massachusetts historians. It will not be im- proper to say here that such a union had been pro- posed by Connecticut in 1637, just after the settle- ment ; but Massachusetts received the proposal with a demand that her right to Agawam (Spring- field) and to free navigation of the Connecticut should be recognized. Connecticut's answer was so " harsh " that the further consideration of the matter lapsed for some years. It soon turned out that Massachusetts had right on her side, so far, at least, as the jurisdiction over Springfield was concerned ; and the extreme confusion of English affairs, through the struggle between king and parliament, was an inducement to the New Eng- land colonies to suspend all minor differences, 144 CONNECTICUT. and combine for common defense against the In- dians and the Dutch. In 1643 the union was formed, consisting of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven. Connecticut had not yet advanced far enough on the road to a clear comprehension of her future to make any objec- tions to New Haven's separate existence ; but New Haven's hurry to organize a systematic govern- ment and take part in the confederation seems to show at least a dawning suspicion of a possible conflict between her own interests and those of her neighbor. There was not yet any consider- able superiority of one colony over the other : their respective populations ai-e estimated at 3,000 for Connecticut and 2,500 for New Haven. The leading reason for the formation of the union was probably the inability of the home gov- ernment, during the confusion of the civil war, to afford protection to the New-England ers against the claims of the Dutch colony of New Nether- land. With the most amicable feelings on both sides, the Dutch colony, thrust in between English colonies to the south and to the north of it, must have been pressed more hardly as the English col- onies grew, until at last the question of the an- nexation or independent existence of New Nether- land must have called imperatively for settlement. But the feelings on neither side were really ami- cable. The New England settler was an English- man ; and the Englishman of that time had a THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 145 chronic disposition to regard the Dutchman as a commercial rival, and an habitual intruder into places where he had no good excuse for being. As the New England Englishmen found themselves forced into nearer relations with the New Nether- land Dutch, the two parties met with many of the old animosities still unhealed. The grant to the New Netherland company by the States General of Holland, October 11, 1614, had covered all the territory " between New France and Virginia, the sea-coasts of which lie between the fortieth and forty-fifth degrees of latitude," that is, from about the present location of Philadelphia to the Bay of Fundy. This nominal jurisdiction was really con- firmed by the States General to the Dutch West India Company in 1621 for twenty-four years ; but in course of time the growth of English settlement compelled the Dutch to modify this nominal claim, and to rely on the discoveries of Hudson to support their claims to the district between the thirty- eighth and forty-second degrees of latitude, or from about the mouth of the Potomac to the mouth of the Connecticut. As the greatest concession to the English, based on the English charters then in existence, they claimed the coast from Cape May to the mouth of the Connecticut, from latitude 39° to latitude 41°. In answer to all these official and unofficial claims, the English finally relied on the voyages of the Cabots as entitling them to the whole coast, including the parts explored by Hud- 10 146 CONNECTICUT. son, which they declined to take as real discov- eries. But at first, with the possible expedition of one Captain Argal, of Virginia, about 1614, who is said to have compelled "the pretended Dutch governor " at the mouth of the Hudson to submit to the king of England and promise tribute, the English for many years quietly acquiesced in the Dutch settlement. Their objection was to the ex- tent, not to the fact, of the Dutch colony. The Delaware company, including nearly all the leading men of New Haven, had been formed for colonization purposes. Following the New Haven policy of purchase, the New Haven settlers had sent an agent in 1640, who bought from the natives a tract of land on both sides of the Dela- ware River. In the following year the New Haven civil authority asserted its jurisdiction over the purchased territory ; and a company was sent out which settled on the west shore of the Delaware, near what is now known as Salem Creek. This was under the governorship of Kieft ; and Wil- liam the Testy sent two ships in 1642 with a de- tachment of troops, who attacked the settlement, burned its houses and made the settlers prisoners. Remonstrance for this step was almost the first business of the commissioners of the New Eng- land union ; but they got no satisfaction from Kieft. In 1649 Governor Eaton made another appeal to the commissioners for help ; but the commissioners were not disposed to enter upon a THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 147 quarrel at the time. They would refuse to assist any persons from any other colony who should attempt to settle the Delaware purchase without the consent of New Haven ; but they would not maintain the claims of New Haven against the Dutch by force. The failure of the scheme was a blow from which independent New Haven never recovered. Her richest men had ventured their all and lost it, and the colony was in sore straits for some years. The Dutch West India Company perceived clearly the growing strength of the English colo- nies. In reply to the appeal of the new Dutch governor, Stuyvesant, for authority to repel force by force, and for material aid, the home corpora- tion declined to think of war, which, they said, " cannot in any event be to our advantage : the New England people are too powerful for us." Thus left in the lurch by his superiors, Stuyve- sant could do no more than take the best terms obtainable ; and it is creditable to him that he kept his colony in existence more than ten years longer. His first step was to go to Hartford, to meet the New England commissioners in negotia- tion, arriving there September 11, 1650. He took high ground from the beginning. He insisted on having the negotiations conducted in writing; and, in his first letter, he not only protested against the presence of the English in Connecti- cut as an infringement on the undoubted rights of 148 CONNECTICUT. the Dutch, but dated the letter at " New Nether- land," thus calmly assuming every point in dis- pute. The commissioners were not to be caught. They refused to receive the letter and thus ac- knowledge that Hartford was within the Dutch territory. He finally yielded the point, and a long correspondence resulted in an agreement to submit all the questions between Dutch and Eng- lish to four arbitrators, two to be named by the governor, and two by the commissioners. Stuy- vesant named Englishmen as his agents, and the four agreed upon a settlement of the boundary matter, ignoring all other points in dispute as hav- ing occurred under the administration of Kieft. It was agreed that the Dutch were to retain their lands in Hartford ; that the boundary line be- tween the two peoples on the mainland was not to come within ten miles of the Hudson River, but was to be left undecided for the present, except the first twenty miles from the Sound, which was to begin on the west side of Greenwich Bay, be- tween Stamford and Manhattan, running thence twenty miles north ; and that Long Island should be divided by a corresponding line across it, " from the westernmost part of Oyster Bay " to the sea. The English thus got the greater part of Long Island, a recognition of the rightfulness of their presence in the Connecticut territory, and at least the initial twenty miles of a boundary line which must, in the nature of things, be prolonged in THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 149 much the same direction, and which in fact has pretty closely governed subsequent boundary lines on that side of Connecticut. If these seem hard terms for the Dutch, and indicative of treachery on the part of their two English agents, it must be borne in mind that, by the terms of his instruc- tions from his principals, Stuyvesant had to take the best terms he could get. The treaty of Hart- ford was dated September 19, 1650. Peter Stuyvesant was probably not satisfied with the treaty, even though he was compelled to accept it. At all events, he soon furnished fresh occasion for negotiation. In the spring of 1651, the New Haven people fitted out another vessel for their Delaware Bay settlement. It touched at New Amsterdam, and its appearance put the last of the Dutch governors into a terrible rage. He arrested officers and passengers, and only re- leased them with sounding threats of the fate of any future New Haven expedition to the Dela- ware, on their promise to return at once to New Haven. Again the New Haven adventurers ap- pealed to the New England commissioners, and those officials this time espoused their cause. They wrote to Stuyvesant, charging him with a breach of the treaty, though it is not easy to see on what grounds ; and a resolution was passed^ promising protection to any Delaware settlement against all comers, provided it should number a hundred and fifty men. Still there was no colli- sion. 150 CONNECTICUT. In the following year, vague rumors of an im- pending Dutch and Indian war nearly brought about the long expected struggle. As the New England colonies came nearer to the Dutch, the resulting complications with the Indians increased. The two Connecticut colonies, as has been said, had no difficulties with their own Indians after the downfall of the Pequots. Their main difficul- ties arose in the southwestern corner of the present State, in the district where now is the town of Greenwich. The district had been bought by its first owner, Robert Feake, as a part of the New Haven jurisdiction ; but the Dutch had seduced the first inhabitants, under Captain Patrick, who had a Dutch wife, to come under their jurisdiction and accept a place as a Dutch town. It had been agreed at Hartford that Greenwich should be restored to New Haven ; but the usual vices of a border settlement seem to have prevailed here. Later, in 1656, the deputies of Stamford at New Haven complained bitterly of the conduct of the people of Greenwich, of " their disorderly walke- ing among themselues, admitting of drunkenness both amonge the English and Indians, whereby they are apt to doe mischeife both to themselues and others : they receive disorderly children or seruants who fly from their parrents or masters lawfull correction ; they marry persons in a dis- orderly way, beside other miscariages." It was in this Alsatia that the troubles seem to have begun THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 151 which broke out first in the war of 1643 between the Dutch and Indians, when the Dutch called in Captain Underbill, of Stamford, as their comman- der-in-chief, and in the course of which Mrs. Hutchinson, who had found refuge here from her Massachusetts enemies, was done to death by the Indians. Other Indian outrages took place at in- tervals in the neighborhood. A Stamford Indian, found guilty of one of the most atrocious of these, was taken to New Haven and executed by decapi- tation. " He sat erect and motionless," says the New Haven record, " until his head was severed from his body." There was enough trouble with the Indians in this quarter to make it a source of universal alarm when, in the spring of 1652, it was rumored that Stuyvesant had induced all the Indians to unite against the English, and had sup- plied them with ammunition. The evidence of the existence of the plot was in the affidavits of a number of the Indians themselves, a class of evi- dence which ought of itself to have been Stuyve- sant's complete vindication. A majority of the commissioners, however, believed it, and based upon it an ultimatum to Stuyvesant. The accu- sation naturally made Stuyvesant very indignant, and he demanded a committee of investigation. The commissioners sent three distinguished New- Englanders to New Amsterdam to act as such committee. The tone of their letters was not con- ciliatory, or calculated to inspire the governor with 152 CONNECTICUT. confidence in his judges ; and he refused to answer any questions except such as should be approved by persons whom he should select. His reason doubtless was his diffidence of his familiarity with the language in which the examination was to be conducted. But, as the persons whom he selected had " been complained of for misdemeanors at Hartford, and one of them had been laid under bonds for his crimes," the committee took the whole proceeding as a fresh affront, and judges and accused pai-ted in still higher exasperation with one another. On the report of the commit- tee, whose members had obtained new evidence of Stuyvesant's duplicity and treachery on their way home, all the commissioners except those of Massa- chusetts declared for war. Massachusetts referred the question to her ministers, who declared that, while they believed the evidence against the Dutch governor, it was not sufficient to justify a war be- fore the judgment of the rest of the world ; and that the colonies should stand on the defensive, without declaring war. One of their number, who claimed to write on behalf of " many pensive hearts," took more warlike ground, and threatened the commissioners with the curse of the angel of the Lord against Meroz unless they declared war upon Stuyvesant. But the resolution of the ma- jority was more satisfactory to the Massachusetts general court, and it steadfastly refused to take part in an offensive war. The whole controversy THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 153 is particularly interesting for the reason that it was the first in our history which shows the ten- dency which has finally controlled American con- stitutional law. All the parties acknowledged the binding character of the articles of union ; and the controversy went mainly to the construction of them, to the interpretation of the powers of the commissioners under them. The occasion was not, as it would have been in England, a dispute as to what the governing body had better do, but a dispute as to what the governing body had a right to do, thus showing that in the latter case there was behind the nominally governing body a recognized popular sovereignty superior to it. This debate of 1652 might very well be taken as the beginning of constitutional law, in the peculiar phase of the term which obtains in the United States and other countries having a written con- stitution. The unusual bitterness of the controversy had come largely, not from academic differences as to the construction of the articles, but from the gen- eral suspicion that the Bay colony was moved by the question of the tolls at the mouth of the Con- necticut River, ali*eady referred to, and by a desire to convince the associate colonies that Massachu- setts was their real head. Some of the western towns of Connecticut even made ready for war on their own account ; and it was when all prospect of war, either by colonial or home power, had van- 154 CONNECTICUT. ished, that Ludlow in disgust left the colony which he had helped to plant, and went to Virginia. In- deed, the New England confederation was in a state of extreme confusion, and almost in articulo mortis. The commissioners had declared war ; Massachusetts had really introduced the first in- stance of nullification ; and the other colonies found it equally difficult to make war, in obedi- ence to the commissioners, without Massachusetts, or to keep the peace and satisfy their own people. Connecticut and New Haven kept a small cruiser in commission. New Haven decided guardedly that it would not do to begin war under present circumstances ; and it was not until April, 1654, that the Hartford general court formally " se- questered " the Dutch fort of Good Hope, and banished the Dutch ensign from Connecticut soil. But both had great difficulty in restraining their people, and a small insurrection had to be quelled in Stamford. The relations between England and Holland had not been improved by the establishment of the English commonwealth. At the execution of Charles I., the Dutch States General had waited in a body on his son, recognized him as Charles II., and refused even a reception to the English envoys. Cromwell's successful battle of Dunbar, in September, 1650, and his still more successful battle of Worcester just a year later, brought the Dutch to their senses, and they asked an alliance TEE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 155 with, the Commonwealth. The English parlia- mentary leaders, however, wished to make a suc- cessful navy the counterbalance to their too suc- cessful army. They passed the Navigation Act of 1651, which cut their rivals out of the carrying trade. There was an " accidental " collision be- tween the two fleets in May, 1652, when Blake called upon Van Tromp to lower his flag, and Van Tromp answered with a broadside. Again, in the autumn, Blake and De Ruyter met in the Channel in an indecisive conflict ; and in November Van Tromp drove Blake into the Thames, and sailed the Channel with a broom at his masthead. A few months later, Blake, issuing forth again into the Channel with a horsewhip at his masthead, drove Van Tromp in his turn into harbor. While the two great marine monsters were thus rolling heavily into collision, it was but natural that the little fish across the Atlantic should take a keen personal interest in the matter. Every accidental victoi-y of Blake was to them an addi- tional hope of a parliamentary fleet, which should deal out justice to the wicked Dutch governor and his Manhattan associates. New Haven was espe- cially elate, for the relations of her leading men with Cromwell had always been particularly close. It was the battle of Naseby which had brought about that almost solitary touch of romance in Connecticut history, the " phantom ship " of New Haven. The New Haven people, feeling more 156 CONNECTICUT. reason for relying on the rising fortunes of the Cromwell interest, equipped a ship of one hundred and fifty tons, freighted her, and sent her to Eng- land with an agent to endeavor to procure a charter from the new power there. It was in January, 1647, that she sailed, and the ice in the harbor had to be cut in order to open the way for her. Nothing more was ever known of her : the seventy souls on board had gone to their account, and the material loss was so severe a strain on the colony that its leaders began to cast about for a new location, in Ireland, Jamaica, or elsewhere, — the Jamaica proposition being Cromwell's own. In June, 1649, so the story goes, the long-lost ship was seen beating up the harbor towards New Haven. As the townspeople gathered to watch her, at first incredulous, then joyful, then hesitat- ing and awe-stricken, it was seen that there was but one man on her deck ; that he was leaning on his sword, and looked sadly on the gathered mul- titude. As she drew nearer, he pointed once to the sea, and then New Haven's phantom ship vanished from sight. In June, 1653, the joyful news was received that Cromwell had taken sides with the majority of the commissioners, and had enjoined Massachu- setts to desist from her opposition ; and that a fleet of commonwealth ships was at Boston, ready to help the New England union to remove the Dutch flag from Manhattan. The Massachusetts THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 157 general court was angry, but not angry enough to resist openly. It still refused to raise troops for the war, but consented to allow the parliamen- tary commissioners to raise men in Massachusetts, if they could. Arrangements for an expedition of eight hundred men, to attack New Netherland, were iu progress, when they were stopped by the news of peace between England and Holland, which had been concluded April 5, 1654. Stuyve- sant thus obtained ajiother lease of life. There was at first a strong disposition in Con- necticut and New Haven to allow the union to lapse because of what they regarded as the perfi- dious conduct of Massachusetts. New Haven had even formally voted not to choose commissioners. But Massachusetts urged a continuance of the union so feelingly that commissioners were chosen as usual, and their meeting proved to be an ex- ceedingly amicable one. From that time the union went on through the rest of its brief exist- ence with little apparent friction. But it is as evident as anything can be that the heart had been taken out of it by the course of Massachu- setts in 1652. Nullification is nullification, whether the moving cause be worthy or unworthy ; and after Massachusetts had once successfully nullified the plain provisions of the articles, her confeder- ates could never again feel that perfect confidence in her future action which is essential to the use- fulness and even the existence of a league govern- 158 CONNECTICUT. ment. A stronger tendency is evident every year to reduce the functions of the commissioners to matters of administrative routine, while the sev- eral colonies diverge more and more strongly in the protection of their own interests and in their peculiar development. For six years after the peace between England and Holland, the two Connecticut colonies went on in their course of development with few events of exceptional interest. Successive deaths were thin- ning out the ranks of the original settlers. Hooker died in 1647. John Haynes, the first governor of Connecticut, died in 1654, and his family seems to have become extinct soon after. Henry Wolcott, one of the most influential leaders of the same colony, died in 1655. He was more fortunate in his descendants : there was hardly a time for the next two centuries when a Wolcott was not in some post of trust and honor in the service of the Commonwealth. In 1657 and 1658 died Edward Hopkins of Connecticut, and Theophilus Eaton of New Haven. Hopkins had been governor of his colony in alternate years from 1640 until 1654, Haynes being chosen in the other years. He had married the sister of David Yale, a Boston mer- chant ; and his bequest to the towns of Hartford and New Haven founded the Hopkins grammar schools in those cities, as Elihu Yale's beneficence long afterward gave the impetus to the college which bears his name. Eaton had beep chosen THE TWO COLONIES UNTIh THE UNION. 159 governor of New Haven every year from the settlement in 1638 until his death. His loss was almost irreparable to his colony, coming as it did just before the crisis in her history. It is impos- sible here to do justice to his public services and his private worth. But there are some indications that in these respects he had surmounted obstacles which the official records have not fully detailed. His biographers claim that his numerous family *'was under the most perfect government." If the facts found by the church trial of 1644, in which Mrs. Eaton (the governor's second wife) was censured, are to be taken as proved, Eaton's hohie life must have been a constant thorn in the flesh. Mrs. Eaton seems to have been in the habit of venting a very ugly temper in the most outrageous language to the whole family, from her husband down to *' Anthony the neager." She slapped the face of " old Mrs. Eaton," while the family were at dinner, until the governor was com- pelled to hold her hands ; she pinched Mary, the governor's daughter by his first marriage, until she was black and blue, and " knocked her head against the dresser, which made her nose bleed much ; " she slandered Mary, falsely impeaching her character ; and in all points she seems to have been the type of the vulgar notion of a step- mother. She, the wife of one of the " seven pil- lars," put the church to shame by becoming a pronounced Anabaptist, walking out from the com- 160 eONNECTICUT. munion service, arguing with Mr. Davenport from her seat in the audience, and expressing loud and exasperating approbation when he used the famil- iar formula, " On this point I will be brief." There seems to have been a good deal of human nature under the surface, even in New Haven. Davenport was still in New Haven : it was not until 1668, after the union of the two colonies had been accomplished, that he removed to Boston. In both Connecticut and New Haven, the healthy condition of the body politic was shown by the fact that new men were coming up prepared to take the places of those whom death was so rapidly removing. First among these was John WinthrOp. Chosen governor in 1657, deputy governor in 1658, and governor again in 1659, he became at once so necessary to the people of Connecticut that they changed the provision in their constitu- tion forbidding the immediate reelection of a gov- ernor, and he was reelected annually until his death in 1676. His son, Fitz John, following in his father's course, was governor from 1698 until his death in 1707. The Wyllyses, Talcotts, Wol- cotts, Treats, Shermans, and other families were sending a stream of young men into public life, and all of them were well fitted for it. One of the ablest of the new men was John AUyn of Hart- ford. Nominated to the board of assistants in 1661, he was chosen secretary of state in 1664, and held that office for twenty-eight years between THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 161 that date and his death in 1696. The personali- ties of the men of the time get little attention, unless their work is theological, as in the case of Hooker or Davenport, or their non-essential char- acteristics are such as to strike the public attention and so win some advantage for the colony, as in the case of Winthrop. The mass of the leaders pass slowly across the stage, doing their work like men, but leaving us hardly any notion of their per- sonal appearance or traits. The influence of the feeling is shown in the refusal of the Wyllys family to erect any monuments in their family bur^'ing ground. Said one of them : " If Connecti- cut cannot remember the Wyllyses without a monument, let their memory rot." In few cases is this general tendency more disappointing than in that of John Allyn. Hardly any trace of him is left beyond the cramped but legible writing in which he kept the records, and the work which those records detail. And yet it is quite evident that, whenever work was to be done requiring stubborn tenacity of purpose and cautious shrewd- ness of method, John Allyn's name always appears in the center of it. Like so many of his contem- poraries, he seems to have been entirely satisfied with the reward offered by the consciousness of effective work ; and we can only wonder now how much the commonwealth of Connecticut owes to John Allyn. Eaton's place at New Haven had been taken by 11 162 CONNECTICUT. William Leete, who served as governor of that colony from 1661 until the union of the colonies. He was one of the original settlers, and one of the seven pillars of the church at Guilford. After the union, he became deputy governor, 1669-75, and then served as governor from Winthrop's death until 1680, dying in 1683. CHAPTER XI. THE CHARTER AND THE TJNIOIT. Monk's march to London came in the opening days of the year 1660. On the 25th of April, Charles landed at Dover ; and in July the momen- tous tidings reached Boston. On the vessel which brought them came Whalley and GofFe, two of the regicides : England was no longer a place for them. They stayed in Boston and Cambridge until the following February, treated at first with distinguished consideration by the authorities as well as by private persons. The first intelligence that they were under the ban of the new govern- ment made such a change in their treatment that they fled to New Haven, arriving there March 27. A royal warrant for their arrest followed them from Massachusetts through Hartford, but the messengers found their errand blocked at New Haven by the most exasperating obstacles. They had to yield to the magistrates' cautious regard for the Sabbath ; their documents were read aloud in public meeting, instead of being treated as secret-service business ; and, when the Sabbath came, they were regaled with a sermon from the 164 CONNECTICUT. significant text : " Hide the outcasts ; bewray not him that wandereth ; let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab ; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler." Davenport and his people were evidently in full accord with the regicides. Leete and the magistrates seem to have seen the consequences of their action ; but they continued to make use of every legal obstacle to thwart the arrest, and the messengers finally returned to Bos- ton empty-handed, though the two judges had been concealed at New Haven, or within three miles of it, throughout their visit. The " Judges' Cave," on the summit of West Rock, sheltered them for a month, and then they set out on their wanderings. Sometimes in New Haven, Guilford, or Milford, sometimes in their old refuge or like spots, they continued to escape their pursuers for some three years. In 1664, finding that special royal commissioners had arrived, charged with their arrest, they went to Hadley, in western Massachusetts. Their choice of a final refuge shows again the secret tie which seems to have bound together the New Haven people, the minor- ity of the dissatisfied Connecticut churches, and the Cromwellian element in England ; for Had- ley's settlement had been due to the secession of a minority of the Hartford and Wethersfield churches. This was the scene of their asserted appearance to head the settlers in repelling an In- dian attack ; and here Whalley died about 1674, THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 165 and Goffe probably five years later. Their burial- place is really uncertain, though some have be- lieved it to be in New Haven. The authorities of Connecticut were as anxious as those of New Haven that no harm should come to the regicides, and the fugitives found as fre- quent and as secure refuge in Hartford as any- where else. But the difference of method showed itself in this as in other cases. When the regi- cides were really not within their jurisdiction, the Connecticut authorities always seized the oppor- tunity to make their zeal in the king's service evident. They overwhelmed the royal commis- sioners with warrants, letters of authority, and proclamations ; the colony was in a ferment be- cause of their haste to lay hands on the criminals ; they were his majesty's most faithful servants. Under the like circumstances, the New Haven au- thorities always showed a decorous satisfaction in saying No to the commissioners, which went far to discount the sincerity of their denials when the fugitives were suspected to be concealed within their jurisdiction with their privity. They could not but have been reported to the home authori- ties as a dangerous colony, the remaining quintes- sence of Cromwellianism ; and such reports could not but have had a strong influence on the fortunes of the two colonies in the charter struggle which followed immediately. The records of Connecticut show nothing done 166 CONNECTICUT. in regard to the Restoration until March 14, 1660 (61), though the vote then passed refers to a pre- vious decision at an informal meeting of the mag- istrates and deputies. On the date just given, the general court voted that Charles II. should be proclaimed king ; that an address should be pre- pared and sent to him, asking for " the continu- ance and confirmation of such privilidges and lib- erties as are necessary for the comfortable and peaceable settlement of this colony ; " and that the X500 which the CuUick estate was to pay the colony should be reserved to pay the expense of the application. The court of election. May 16, approved a draft of an address offered by Gover- nor Winthrop, appointed a committee to revise and complete it, and named the governor as the colony's agent in England in regard to the patent. This last is the first open mention of what must have been the burning desire of every Connecticut leader, — the obtaining of a charter to give legal title to what had been done by popular author- ity. At the session of June 7, the court finally approved the address which had been completed, renewed the governor's appointment as agent " to procure us a patent," and authorized him to draw on the treasurer for £500. From that time there is not a word about the charter in the records un- til they are blazoned with the triumphant entry of its reception in October, 1662, more than a year afterward. In the interim, the colony, hav. THE CUARTER AND THE UNION. 167 ing done all that it could do, waited in sober pa- tience. Just as Winthrop was embarking for England, New Haven at last proclaimed Charles II. king, more than a year after the news of his accession had been received ; and the step was not taken until remonstrances had been received from friends at home, warning the colony of the evil impression which its continued silence was mak- ing there. The form has been called grudging and half-hearted. In reality, it almost demands the space for insertion in full, for the sake of the refreshing contrast which its simple and manly terms offer to the servility of the style which the habit of the times at court seems to have extorted from Connecticut. It is as follows : " Although we have not received any form of proclamation, by order from His Majesty or Coun- cil of State, for proclaiming His Majesty in this Colony; yet the Court, taking encouragement from what has been done in the rest of the United Colonies, hath thought fit to declare publicly and proclaim that we do acknowledge His Royal Highness, Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, to be our sovereign lord and king ; and that we do acknowledge our- selves, the inhabitants of this colony, to be his Majesty's loyal and faithful subjects." Winthrop set sail for England in August, 1661. 168 CONNECTICUT. He took with him the address and petition to his majesty, which had cost the whole intellect of the colony such prolonged labor ; a letter of instruc- tions from his principals ; and letters to Lord Say and Sele, and the Earl of Manchester, two old Puritans, now of the king's privy council. The instructions directed him to consult with Say and Sele, Brooke, and such of the original patentees as he could find ; to endeavor to obtain a copy of the Say and Sele patent, and have it confirmed to the colony, with such amendments as could be obtained ; and, in case the Say and Sele patent could not be come at, to apply for a new patent for the colony, with bounds extending " eastward to the Plymouth line, northward to the limits of the Massachusetts colony, and westward to the Bay of Delaware, if it may be." The southern limit is not mentioned, unless a recommendation to include the adjacent islands be considered as carrying the limits beyond New Haven and over Long Island. A contemporary protest from Con- necticut against the appointment of a boundary committee, cited by Atwater, would go to show that such was the case. " We conceive you can- not be ignorant of our real and true right to those parts of the country where you are seated, both by conquest, purchase, and possession, though hitherto we have been silent, and altogether forborne to make any absolute challenge to our own." The address to the king is of the most inflated style of THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 169 the Stuart period of English. It begins with a regret that its authors are separated by so vast an ocean from those who are under the immediate in- fluence and splendor of so great a monarch, in the princely palace of his renowned imperial city, the glory of the whole earth ; and that a too early winter had hindered them from long since pros- trating themselves by an humble address at their sovereign prince's feet. It described the settle- ment of the colony just at the beginning of the sad and unhappy times of the wars in England, which its people had since been bewailing with sighs and mournful tears. It told how the people of Connecticut, all through the civil war, had been hiding themselves behind the mountains in that desolate desert, as a people forsaken, choos- ing rather to sit solitary, and wait upon the Divine Providence for protection, than to apply to any of the illegitimate governments which had arisen in England, their hearts still remaining entire to his majesty's interests. It implored his majesty, now that the beams of his sovereignty had not only filled the world's hemisphere, but had ap- peared over the great deeps in the New England horizon, to accept " this colony, your own colony, a little branch of your mighty empire." And it pleaded their poverty as an excuse for their pre- sentation of nothing more than their hearts and loyal affections to his majesty. It is hard to see how Winthrop could have read the document with a straight face. 170 CONNECTICUT. The gratitude of the colony was a lively sense of favors to come : the petition which accompanied the address was as straightforward as the address was circumgyratory. It asked that the king would grant to the colony a patent in the terms of that formerly granted to the Say and Sele as- sociates, or of that granted to Massachusetts ; and that it might include immunity from customs, in order that the colony might recoup by commerce its losses in the Pequot war. The letters to Man- chester and Say and Sele besought their coopera- tion, which was heartily given. Winthrop's winter in London was spent to good advantage. New England historians have wearied themselves in detailing his advantages for such a negotiation in such a court, — his natural powers of mind, developed by sound university education ; his gentle manners, polished by continental travel ; the manly beauty of his face and person ; and the kindly, mature, and solid judgment which governed the whole man. The story is also told of a ring given to Winthrop's grandfather by Charles I., and now returned by the ambassador to the new king ; and the charter of Connecticut is attributed almost equally to the tactful courtesy of Winthrop and the filial affection of Charles. One can hardly help a suspicion, however, that the .£500, which the Connecticut leaders had placed at Winthrop's disposal, had a more considerable influence on the result than the histories have yet admitted. The THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 171 new court had required some time to get warm in its seat before showing plainly the depths of ve- nality to which it was prepared to descend. The time for the disposition of places, and of all kinds of court favors, by bargain and sale, had now fully come ; and it was about this time that Samuel Pepys seems to have had his eyes opened to the fact that this was the way in which many of those about the court did get their incomes. At any rate, there seems to have been no final accounting for the balance of the X500 between Winthrop and the colony. Winthrop had gone primarily on his own business : so says the resolve of May 16, 1661. The colony had ordered the munificent sum of X80 to be paid to the governor as his salary for the year ; and it would not have been likely to have passed over a further claim of X500 for mere expenses, unless those expenses had been somewhat in the nature of a secret-service fund. There is a sentence in the petition to the king which may possibly have some significance. " May it please your majesty graciously to bestow upon your humble supplicants such royal munificence, according to the tenor of a draft or instrument, which is ready here to be tendered, at your gra- cious order." That Charles II. should have drawn up and offered to a Puritan commonwealth a char- ter under which, as Chalmers, sound royal author- ity, says, " over their acts of assembly there was no power of revisal reserved, either to the king or 172 CONNECTICUT. to his courts of justice, nor was there any obliga- tion imposed to give an account of their transac- tions to any authority on earth," is hardly a con- ceivable theory. That a charter drawn up by Winthrop, and passing through some of the many secret channels existing at the court, should have passed the scrutiny of the king, more through favor for the channel through which it had come than through filial affection or liking for a chance ac- quaintance, is at least more easy to believe. For no more democratic charter was ever given by a king than that which Charles signed for Connecti- cut, April 23, 1662, giving it a government which lasted for a century and a half, until the adoption of the new constitution in 1818. The charter constituted a body politic and cor- porate, under the name of " Governor and Com- pany of the English Colony of Connecticut in New England in America," to consist of Winthrop, John Mason, seventeen associates named, and such other persons as should be made free of the com- pany thereafter (i. e., admitted voters), with all the powers of an English corporation and with a common seal. The freemen were to choose from time to time a governor, a deputy governor, and twelve assistants ; each " town, place, or city " was to send two deputies ; and the governor, assistants, and deputies together were to constitute the gen- eral assembly, with power to change times of elec- tion, to admit freemen (that is, to establish the THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 173 requisites for the right of suffrage), to constitute judicatories, to make laws not contrary to those of England, to define the duties of oflBcers and the manner of their election, to impose fines and pen- alties or revoke them and pardon offenses, to repel warlike attacks by force, and to hold the territory within the limits granted in trust for the freemen of the colony. Until the second Thursday of the following October, Winthrop was named governor. Mason deputy governor, and twelve of the charter members assistants. All the freemen and their descendants were to have the rights of natural- born English subjects. Finally, the territory of the colony was to cover "all that part of our do- minions in New England in America bounded on the east by Norrogancett River, commonly called Norrogancett Bay, where the said river falleth into the sea, and on the north by the line of the Massachusetts Plantation, and on the south by the sea, and in longitude as the line of the Mas- sachusetts colony, running from east to west ; that is to say, from the said Narrogancett Bay on the east to the South Sea on the west part ; with the islands thereunto adjoining." Connecticut* was thus to have a domain stretching from Narragan- sett Bay to the Pacific Ocean ; and the charter- less and defenseless colony of New Haven was included within these limits. The charter was first produced and shown in this country at a meeting of the New England 174 CONNECTICUT. commissioners at Boston, September 4, 1662. The New Haven commissioners must have sent the startling intelligence home at once, so that both the interested colonies must have known of it about the same time. The Connecticut general court records for October 9 note that the " pa- tent or charter " was this day publicly read in the presence of the freemen, and that a committee of three had been appointed to take the charter into their custody in trust for the colony. Hart- ford was then declared the capital ; the civil and military ofl&cers of the colony were confirmed in their places ; and a formal letter was drawn up to the constables of the towns, directing them to col- lect the taxes, and to distrain the property of de- linquents. Such laws as were not in conflict with the terms of the charter were validated and con- firmed. The right of suffrage was regulated by an order that all candidates for the privilege should bring a certificate from a majority vote of their town that they were persons " of a civil, peaceable and honest conversation," twenty-one years old or upward, and taxed in the lists for at least .£20 estate. This was a widening of the elective fran- chise, for the qualification had been fixed at X30 since 1657. In addition to these enactments, a long series of resolutions was passed, all intended to strike at the weak spot of New Haven, and break up the political organization of that colony. Their details will be reserved until the statement THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 175 of the events which gave them success has been made. On its part, the New Haven general court, at its meeting of October 15, merely appointed a day of fasting and prayer for guidance " in this weighty business about joining with Connecticut colony." Immediately after the fast, a New Haven town meeting disapproved any such union. At the freemen's meeting, November 4, and the general court meeting on the following day, a letter from Connecticut was read, enclosing a copy of the charter, and demanding the consummation of the union. Two answers were sent. The first inti- mated mildly that New Haven was not *' expressly included " within the charter jurisdiction, and asked that the New Haven colony might remain " distinct, entire, and uninterrupted, as hereto- fore," until they could hear from Winthrop. The second, from the freemen, argued that the charter only empowered Connecticut to acquire and hold lands within the limits assigned, but did not author- ize it to interfere with the lands already acquired by New Haven ; and it besought the Connecticut authorities to wait until they could make appli- cation for a charter, and learn his majesty's real intentions, to which they meant to submit. Here the public records become silent until the follow- ing spring. But the inherent weakness of the New Haven confederacy, arising from its peculiar ecclesiastical 176 CONNECTICUT. system and Its restrictions on the right of suffrage, had already become visible, and were having their influence on the proceedings of both parties to the controversy. For some ten years before, an un- derlying spirit of dissatisfaction seems to have cropped out from time to time ; but, the final out- burst seems to have been due, at least indirectly, to the Quakers. The New England commissioners had recommended the several colonies, in Septem- ber, 1656, to take measures against the Quakers. Connecticut complied so far as to direct that any town which harbored Quakers should be fined ; but the execution of the penalties against the sect was finally left " to the discretion " of the magis- trates. They seem to have exercised so much dis- cretion that the heretics, despairing of any chance of martyrdom in this quarter, gave Connecticut a comparatively wide berth. New Haven, on the contrary, went into the matter with more spirit. The court of magistrates itself undertook the trial of offenders, and every trial increased the number of criminals. The public and indignant criticisms of the Quakers and their hai'borers upon the meth- ods and manners of the New Haven jurisdiction must have been as fire to tow, when there were so many others dissatisfied by reason of more tem- poral circumstances. About 1660, the general court begins to have especial trouble in regard to letters attacking their civil organization and prac- tice. It looked upon all such offenses as not THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 177 merely civil offenses, but as offenses " against the King of Peace, that had so long continued peace amongst them ; " and it .punished them most rigor- ously. The number of its assailants rapidly be- came greater, as did the exasperation of the court, which was hardly ever out of hot water from 1660 until the union was accomplished. In 1661 the dissatisfaction had risen so high that several of those chosen as magistrates refused to take the oath ; and the general court decided to make public declaration of its position. It acknowledged that the non-freemen had complained that " just privileges and liberties " were denied them ; but it declared that this denial was a part of the funda- mental system of the colony, established by law, from which it would not be diverted by any agita- tion ; and it added the hint that it was only neces- sary for the dissentients to join the church in order to qualify themselves for the enjoyment of the rights to vote and hold office. This declaration must have added fuel to the flame ; and the coui-t's meeting in May, 1662, gives evidence of this. The record admits that there was " great discourage- ment upon the spirits of those that were now in place of magistracy ; " and it was no wonder. Cases were multiplying of men who, when arrested, denied the authority of the colony to make laws now that the king was proclaimed, and demanded of the marshal " whether his authority came from Charles the Second ? " These were awkward ques- 178 CONNECTICUT. tions for New Haven to answer. As they multi- plied, the embarrassment of the court, and the hesitation of the doubtful mass of citizens, in- creased with them. The want of a legal basis to the colony's authority was already painfully evi- dent, even while its only antagonists were its own ill-disposed citizens : what was to be the difficulty of the case when Connecticut should set up her claims, and become an eager refuge and support to every one who should resist the authority of New Haven ? It was at this session that Bray Rossiter of Guilford, and his son John, the Mother Carey's chickens of the coming storm, first appeared on tbe scene. The father, as an allowed physician, had claimed exemption from taxation ; when that was refused, he excepted to the colony's right to tax ; and now he, with others of Guilford, was haled before the general court to answer to the charge of having sent some offensive papers to the court, and of having spread others abroad, " to the disturbance of the peace of this jurisdiction." Most of the accused apologized, the lamest apolo- gies being gladly accepted by the court ; but their statements all pointed to the Rossiters as the ring- leaders, and the court hardly knew what to do with them. There were present, says the record with half concealed bitterness, " Mr. Allen and Mr. Willis, of Connecticut, waiting to see an issue of the business, pretending to be friends to us and THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 179 friends to peace, laboring with Mr. Rossiter and his son to bring him to some acknowledgment Of evil." Finally a written statement was accepted from him in which he " owned that in several pas- sages and expressions he had been very rash and inconsiderate," and agreed to submit to the govern- ment " while he continued under it." The Con- necticut charter was soon to relieve him from con- scientious scruples as to the last-named clause. It is noteworthy that, in examining one of the parties, the court said that it " had met with this business both from Stamford and Southold ; " and Southold sent no deputies to this session. A sum- mons was sent to the Southold deputies to see that the taxes were paid, and to report for prosecution all persons refusing payment. It is evident that the New Haven jurisdiction was already among the breakers. This was the state of affairs when the two gen- eral courts met in October, and the Connecticut body heard their invaluable charter read to the freemen. Then followed the first series of orders by which Connecticut spread out her jurisdiction over her neighbor. The people of Southold wrote that they had had notice from "Mr. Willis, of Connecticut," that they were within Connecticut's limits ; and that they had appointed Mr. Young to be their deputy. Young was admitted as a freeman and deputy, and was appointed magistrate for Southold ; and the people of that place were 180 CONNECTICUT. tlirected to choose a constable, to whom Young was to administer the oath of fidelity to Connec- ticut. Similar applications were received from "several inhabitants" of Stamford and Green- wich, of Huntington and Oyster Bay, on Long Island; and these towns, with Mystic and Pawca- tuck in the district claimed by Massachusetts, were directed to choose Connecticut constables, for the constable seems still to have been the pivot of town authority. The court went further, and ordered that word be sent to the inhabitants of "Westchester that they too were within the colony's chartered limits, and that they should follow the same procedure. In the new pride of the charter, the colony was ready to throw down the gantlet not only to New Haven and Massachusetts, but to the Dutch also. So fully had the colony taken its position, that, at the meeting of the following March, it was necessary to do no more, except to vote £20 to Mr. Rossiter. The letter to New Haven, and the answers of the New Haven committee and freemen, already mentioned, occupied the winter ; but the forces which were disintegrating New Haven met no check. The Connecticut committee, in March, 1663, proposed nearly the same terms of union, which were finally adopted ; but New Haven re- jected them, on the ground that she had appealed to the king and could not prejudice her appeal. In May, New Haven sent another remonstrance to THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 181 Connecticut ; but it is noteworthy that her ofB. cers, then elected, took the oath " for the year en- suing, or until our foundation settlements be made null." In August, her committee showed further signs of weakness by proposing a series of a dozen questions as to the terms on which a treaty of union could be effected ; and the answer of the Connecticut committee certainly gave them full assurance of perfect equality and security for all their rights, except the exclusive privileges of church-members, under the New Haven system. In September, the New Haven delegates com- plained to the New England commissioners of the action of Connecticut, particularly of the appoint- ment of constables, " who are very troublesome to us." Connecticut answered, and Massachu- setts and Plymouth decided that, as New Haven had been recognized as an independent member of the confederation, any infringement on her juris- diction would be a violation of the articles of union ; and that any such act in the past ought to be recalled. All this time, however, the Connec- ticut authorities were quietly allowing their new agents in the New Haven towns to carry on their work ; and the results were that before the end of the next year the unfortunate colony of New Haven was deeply in debt, unable to collect taxes, and unable even to pay the salaries of her officers. At the meeting in December, 1663, the New 182 CONNECTICUT. Haven court had received some poor encourage- ment in two letters, one from Winthrop, the other from the English privy council. Winthrop's let- ter was to John Mason, deputy governor, and the Connecticut general court ; but he had sent a copy to New Haven. He remonstrated against the appointment of constables in New Haven towns, and wished that all such proceedings should be suspended until his return home, when he hoped to arrange an amicable union of the two colonies. His language as to his own previous pledges is curiously ambiguous : " And further I must let you know that testimony here doth affirm that I gave assurance before authority here, that it was not intended to meddle with any town or planta- tion that was settled under any other government ; had it been otherwise intended or declared, it had been injurious in taking out the patent not to have inserted a proportionable number of their names in it." Who can make out from this whether Winthrop means to endorse this asserted promise of his or not? The course of the two governors, indeed, is almost inexplicable. Win- throp obtains a charter, covering New Haven ; the New Haven authorities assert, without con- tradiction, that he had twice promised in writing, before setting out for England, that he would not have New Haven included under his colony's ju- risdiction ; and Winthrop finally makes this curi- ously roundabout admission, with which all par- THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 183 ties seem afraid to meddle further. On the other hand, while Leete, the New Haven governor, ful- fills all his duties through the crisis with punctu- ality, his action always carries a suspicion that it is perfunctory ; his heart does not seem to be in the work. No one who has followed the records carefully will be at all surprised by the assertion of Hubbard and Mather, that the action of Win- throp in so framing the charter as to include New Haven was by the special desire of Governor Leete himself ; nor by the assertion of the Con- necticut governor and council in 1675, when Leete was deputy governor and present, with sev- eral of the former New Haven leaders, that *' their [New Haven] conjunction with this colony was desired by the chief amongst them." Leete's action was repudiated by Davenport, in a letter to Winthrop, as " his private doing, without the consent or knowledge of any of us in this col- ony ; " " not done by him according to his public trust as governor, but contrary to it." And yet, so far from repudiating Leete, the people reelected him governor. The facts probably are that Leete and other New Haven leaders were quietly tired of the whole New Haven system, and despaired of their ability to maintain it longer ; that Winthrop ascertained this fact just before leaving for Eng- land ; and that much of the fury of words which was expended on the negotiations was meant to allow events to take their course, while the honest 184 CONNECTICUT. and conscientious upholders of the old system were being satisfied and convinced of the futility of further resistance. The times were out of joint for New Haven ; and while the leaders were not disposed to help overturn their fathers' work, they were no more disposed to stand in the way of events. No doubt Winthrop was relieved to find on his return that Connecticut had gone on obstinately in her course ; and no doubt also Leete was no less relieved to impart the news. The privy council's letter was no more than a circular to the governors of the New England colonies ; but as it was directed to New Haven among the rest, that colony took this as an evi- dence that the king had had no intention of ab- sorbing them in the rival colony. A sounding proclamation was issued at once. It rehearsed the special orders of the council in regard to New Haven, being careful to note the addition of his majesty's sign manual " in red wax ; " it stated the embarrassment which the colony was under in fulfilling the king's directions by reason of the refusal of some ill-disposed persons to pay their legal taxes ; and it cautioned all such persons to cease their opposition at once. It is almost pitiful to see the eagerness with which the colony, which had settled here in primitive independence, now seized on this straw of royal recognition ; and, however one may admit the necessity and benefit of the union, he can hardly help wishing that the manly little colony had not been forced into it. THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 185 Connecticut had succeeded in stirring up a hornet's nest in almost every quarter. Her gen- eral assembly had appointed agents for the colony, with the powers of magistrates, in the New Haven towns on the mainland and Long Island, in the Dutch towns of Hempstead, Jamaica, Flushing, and Westchester, and in the Narragansett or Rhode Island country as far east as Wickford. Stuyvesant had appeared before the commission- ers at Boston, in September, 1663, to protest on behalf of the Dutch ; and the commissioners, while recommending a reference of the matter to them at their next meeting, took ground against any violation of the boundaries agreed upon in the treaty of 1650. The people of the Narragan- sett country were memorializing the Massachu- setts general court. New Haven's protests found a sympathetic audience in the majority of the New England union. Connecticut hardly seemed to have a friend. The state of affairs, however, had one favorable aspect : each of the other par- ties had too many interests of its own to attend to for any unswerving support of New Haven. Connecticut agreed not to make any present claim of exclusive jurisdiction over the Dutch towns ; and a more temporizing policy as to the Massa- chusetts contest left New Haven finally isolated. Nevertheless, that sturdy colony again resolved in December to make no treaty with Connecticut . until affairs had been restored again to their origi- 186 CONNECTICUT. nal condition. It also ordered that distraint be made for unpaid taxes. This last step brought about a significant hint of a readiness to resist by force. On the last day of the year, the Rossiters, who had gone to Hartford and secured a Connecti- cut constable and magistrates, created a terrible hubbub in Guilford before daylight. Guns were fired ; the inhabitants were roused and thrown into great confusion ; and assistance had to be summoned from New Haven and Branford to keep order. Though this was accomplished, the object of the Rossiters was accomplished with it, for it was agreed that tax collection and distraint should be suspended for the present. New Haven's position was now desperate. There was no money in the treasury ; the towns were divided within themselves ; there was no physical force to constrain the disloyal ; and the authorities were either discouraged or faint- hearted. Leete called a special session of the general court in January, 1663 (4), and laid the state of the case before it. It still stubbornly voted not to treat ; and it named Messrs. Daven- port and Street a committee to draw up its griev- ances in writing. The committee's work is com- monly known as " New Haven's Case Stated." It is the most dignified and pathetic document in the whole controversy. It stated the origin of the colony ; its title by purchase ; its recognition by the Dutch, by parliament, by the king, by the THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 187 united colonies of New England, and by Connec- ticut herself ; the promises of Winthrop ; and the turbulent and seditious practices of Connecticut toward her sister colony, contrary to righteousness and peace ; and it demanded that reparation be offered for the past, and security for the future. The document was in the form of a letter to the Connecticut general assembly ; and it is to be re- gretted that Connecticut's answer was by no means so dignified. Its tone is that of triumph and ex- ultation ; and its writers were evidently out of patience with long waiting. There are indica- tions, however, in a most amicable contempora- neous correspondence between the two commit- tees, that both parties had about accepted the fact of union as inevitable, and had pretty well agreed on its terms. At any rate, the New Haven gen- eral court ceased from this time to do any impor- tant business. The inevitable conclusion was hastened by an unexpected event. It was now March, 1664, the month in which King Charles made his grant of the territory then in New Netherland to his brother, the Duke of York. The grant covered the whole of Long Island, and the mainland from Delaware Bay to the Connecticut River, thus in- cluding both Hartford and New Haven within its limits. Little as they liked Connecticut, the New Haven people liked the duke less ; and the only apparent security against his government, for both 188 CONNECTICUT. colonies, was in the charter of Connecticut. The news of the grant was brought to Boston by the fleet and army of Nichols in July ; and the down- fall of the Dutch government at Manhadoes fol- lowed in August. In the same month, Leete called a meeting of his general court, and in- formed them that their committee recommended submission. With great confusion and dissatis- faction, a vote to that effect was passed, then re- considered, and then passed again in about the same words ; but the people were still so stubborn that the vote amounted to little. In September, the New Haven delegates were admitted for the last time, and against the pro- test of Connecticut, to seats in the meeting of the New England commissioners. In October, the Connecticut general assembly appointed a com- mittee to demand the submission of New Haven, and to admit New Haven freemen as Connecticut freemen ; and it also appointed Leete and other New Haven leaders agents of Connecticut, with the powers of magistrates, to administer justice, and ordered all other officers to retain their places and perform their duties until the next election. In November, the representatives of Connecticut attended a meeting of royal commissioners at New York, to settle the limits between New York and Connecticut. This erudite body assigned Long Is- land to "■ the Ducke off Yorke," and all plantations !ying eastward of a certain creek or river called THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 189 " Momoronack, which is reputed to be about twelve miles to the east of Westchester," to Con- necticut. This was accepted as the king's decision by the much-enduring New Haven colony. The general court, with " as many of the inhabitants as was pleased to come," voted to submit, but "with a salvo jure of our former right and claim, as a people who have not yet been heard in point of plea." Connecticut had renewed her first offers of ample security for equality under the charter, and in her answer to the notice of submission asked that all unpleasant reflections might be " buried in perpetual silence." When the general as- sembly met at Hartford in March, 1665, deputies from the former New Haven towns were present ; the proceedings were harmonious ; and Leete and three other New Haven leaders were chosen magis- trates or assistants. The colony of New Haven had ceased to exist, and ecclesiastical supremacy had given way to democracy. In October, 1665, in probable pursuance of terms before agreed upon, the general assembly ordered that two county courts be held at New Haven in June and November. These introduced trial by jury into the former New Haven territory, while they preserved to the people all that could be granted of their former autonomy. In May, 1666, the general assembly proceeded to divide the commonwealth into four counties, the bound' 190 CONNECTICUT. aries of New Haven county extending " from the east bounds of Guilford unto the west bounds of Milford." This made a change in the common- wealth's judicial system. Until 1665, the highest judicial body was the particular court, composed of the governor or deputy and the magistrates. From 1665 until 1711, the particular court was succeeded by the court of assistants, seven of the twelve assistants chosen by the general assembly. The superior court was introduced in 1711, and the supreme court of errors and appeals, composed of the governor and assistants, in 1784. From 1807 until 1855, the latter was composed of supe- rior court judges sitting in bank, and, since 1855, of district judges. The commonwealth's court of assistants, however, did not sit at New Haven until 1701. Connecticut has played no small part in the development of the American Union, and in the peaceful conquest of the great western continent ; and her part would have been sadly marred if the integrity of her natural boundaries had been broken by the continued existence of the separate colony on the south. Her leaders of 1662-65 were bound by every regard to the future of the common- wealth to insist on the absorption of New Haven ; their insistence showed their foresight. And yet, even though the commonwealth emerges from the struggle with its natural outline unbroken, one THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 191 may be pardoned a feeling of regret as New Haven sinks beneath the surface after her persistent fight for life. The county of New Haven does not quite fill the void left by the republic of New Haven. CHAPTER XII. THE COMMONWEALTH. 1662-1763. Before the grant of the charter, the general court of Connecticut had begun to show the char- acteristics of a real commonwealth government. No exact point of time can be stated at which the transformation took place ; but there is a plain difference between the generally recommendatory- tone in which the court was in the habit of ad- dressing the towns in 1 640, and the decidedly man- datory tone into which it had grown in 1660. As soon as the charter had given it the consciousness of a legal title to existence and authority apart from its town units, its drift in the assumption of powers heretofore left to the towns became some- what stronger, until the essential commonwealth interests had been brought under its jurisdiction. And yet it never lost the influence of the forces which had founded the colony. The Connecticut towns, while they were generally content to con- fine their work to the matters of purely local in- terest which had been left to them by the general assembly, had never any hesitation in resisting, by all peaceable means, any action of the supreme THE COMMONWEALTH. 193 legislative body which seemed to them unjust ; and the general assembly, in its turn, was always disposed to treat such town resistance mildly, and to seek for an accommodation rather than resort to force. During the century which followed the grant of the charter, Connecticut had but nine governors, excluding Andros. All of these, with the excep- tion of Wolcott, who was dropped by reason of accusations of extortion, served until death or ad- vancing age compelled the choice of another ; and as the elections were annual, the long terms of ser- vice speak well for the satisfaction of the people with the rulers of their choice, and for the conser- vatism and " steady habits " of the Connecticut people. For some years after 1665 the colony went on in comparative quiet, developing new towns in every direction, and disturbed only by boundary disputes with its neighbors, by King Philip's war, and by the temporary recapture of New York by a Dutch fleet and army in 1673-74. The latter alarm was short-lived. The forces of New England were set in array ; the English towns on Long Island returned gladly to the jurisdiction of Con- necticut for protection ; but peace between Eng- land and Holland restored the province of New York to the duke in 1674. The king issued a new patent for the province, in which he not only included Long Island, but the territory up to the 13 194 CONNECTICUT. Connecticut River, which liad been assigned to Connecticut by the royal commissioners. The assignment of Long Island was regretted, but not resisted ; and the island which is the natural sea- wall of Connecticut passed, by royal decree, to a province whose only natural claim to it was that it barely touched it at one corner. The revival of the duke's claim to a part of the mainland was a different matter, and every preparation was made for resistance. In July, 1675, just as King Philip's war had broken out in Plymouth, hasty word was sent from the authorities at Hartford to Captain Thomas Bull at Saybrook that Governor Andros of New York was on his way through the Sound for the purpose, as he avowed, of aiding the people against the Indians. Of the two evils, Connecti- cut rather preferred the Indians. Bull was in- structed to inform Andros, if he should call at Say- brook, that the colony had taken all precautions against the Indians, and to direct him to the actual scene of conflict, but not to permit the landing of any armed soldiers. " And you are to keep the king's colors standing there, under his majesty's lieutenant, the governor of Connecticut ; and if any other colors be set up there, you are not to suffer them to stand. . . . But you are in his majesty's name required to avoid striking the first blow ; but if they begin, then you are to defend yourselves, and do your best to secure his majesty's interest and the peace of the whole colony of Con- THE COMMONWEALTH. 195 necticut in our possession." Andros came and landed at Saybrook, but confined his proceedings to reading the duke's patent, against the protest of Bull and the Connecticut representatives. It may have been thought that this success would meet the approval of the Hartford authorities, but they were made of sterner stuff. While com- mending the officers and men engaged, they added significantly : " We wish he had been interrupted in doing the least thing under pretense of his hav- ing anything to do to use his majesty's name in commanding there so usurpingly, which might have been done by shouts, or sound of drum, etc., without violence.''^ This lesson of unhesitating resistance was not lost on succeeding officers of the colony. In October, 1693, Benjamin Fletcher, the hot- tempered governor of New York, appeared at Hart- ford with his majesty's commission to act as com- mander-in-chief of the New England militia. In spite of the assembly's protest, he ordered out the militia, and went to the parade ground to review them. The commanding officer was Captain Wadsworth, who had saved the charter from An- dros. Fletcher began to read his commission. Wadsworth ordered the drums to beat ; and, says Trumbull, " there was such a roaring of them that nothing else could be heard." Fletcher angrily demanded silence, and the drummers hesitatingly complied. The instant the reading of the com- mission was renewed, Wadsworth shouted, *' Drum, 196 CONNECTICUT. drum, I say ! " Again the rattle began, and again the governor struggled for silence. When he had obtained it, Wads worth turned to him and said, " If I am interrupted again, I will make the sun shine through you." He then gave final orders to his drummers, and the governor retired without having his commission read. Connecticut suffered comparatively little from the horrors of King Philip's war ; the lesson to her Indians had been too sternly taught for that. It is a little curious to notice how close the storm of war came to her northern and eastern bound- aries without overpassing them. There were burn- ings and massacres through the western borders of Massachusetts, and battles in Rhode Island ; but the Connecticut men regularly fought outside of their own colony. The colony, however, must have been kept in a constant state of alarm by the near approach of hostilities, and her troops were freely furnished, and took an active part. She kept in the field about one third of the New England forces. It was Major Treat, with a Con- necticut force, who relieved the Essex men at Deerfield, and drove off the Indian besiegers of Springfield and Hadley ; and in the great swamp fight, Connecticut's contingent of three hundred men lost eighty killed and wounded, or about half the total loss. In sober, manly, and striking lan- guage, the general assembly gave them a fitting epitaph : " There died many brave officers and THE COMMONWEALTH. 197 sentinels, whose memory is blessed, and whose death redeemed our lives. The bitter cold, the tarled swamp, the tedious march, the strong fort, the numerous and stubborn enemy they contended with, for their God, king and country, be their trophies over death. Our mourners, over all the colony, witness for our men that they were not unfaithful in that day." Andros had come out as governor of New York on its recovery from the Dutch in 1674. All the letters of the Connecticut council, as the upper house of the assembly was called under the char- ter, show a standing distrust of Andros, which was a fitting prelude to their intercourse ten years later. Such distrust, in the case of an able man as Andros seems to have been, was certainly in- evitable. The state of affairs was worthy of no- tice. The Empire State of New York has little reason to envy the prosperity of the State of Con- necticut in 1886 ; the case was far otherwise in 1674. At that time, an able, enterprising cava- lier officer, sent out as governor of the duke's province of New York, found his energies crippled with the management of a territory consisting of two fairly important towns, a few straggling set- tlements on the Hudson, and some disaffected New England townships on Long Island. This western half of Connecticut was just the strip of territory needed to make New York a province in reality, and to enable him to do essential service 198 CONNECTICUT. against his majesty's enemies in Canada ; the duke had at least a claim to it; and the royal governor could not be expected to appreciate at their full value the objections of a set of Hart- ford Puritans to this most necessary absorp- tion. A boozing, incompetent governor of New York was an immense relief to the Connecticut authorities : a man of Andros's abilities had to be, and always was, dealt with at arm's length. His offers of help against the Indians were accepted cordially, but were always restricted to the exact service required. The letters which passed be- tween the two parties show a constant sense of the real situation, in their mixture of distinguished courtesy with occasional railing, and in the con- stant readiness of Connecticut to bristle up in de- fense of some point which the governor was al- ways ready to assure them was not of the least importance. The intercourse, however, gave Con- necticut a very fair knowledge of Andros's char- acter and methods, which must have been of ser- vice in the coming struggle. In the later years of Charles II., royal commis- sioners, headed by Edward Randolph, gave New England much distress, urging upon the home government the general neglect of the navigation acts, and the offensive independence of this quar- ter of America. Massachusetts suffered most ; and her charter, like the franchises of London, was vacated on a writ of quo warranto. Charles THE COMMONWEALTH. 199 died in 1685, and his brother, James II., succeeded him. In July, 1686, Governor Treat received two writs of quo warranto against the colony of Connecticut, issued the previous year, calling upon it to show title for its exercise of political powers or abandon them. In December came another. In both cases, according to the colony's subse- quent letter to King William, the time set for ap- pearance had elapsed before the serving of the writ, so that the colony could make no defense, as perhaps was intended ; but an attorney was ap- pointed, and every preparation made for what re- sistance was possible. Andros had been succeeded by Dongan as governor of New York in 1682 ; and the king was represented in New England by Joseph Dudley, a recreant Massachusetts man, as president of the royal commissioners. Dudley un- doubtedly did part of his work by endeavoring to persuade Connecticut to surrender her charter peaceably to the crown, promising to exert all his influence to procure her one equally favorable. The colony was not to be cajoled : aware of her impotence for open resistance, she followed her traditional policy, arguing and expostulating, never yielding a jot, but not resorting to action until the time for action was fully come. In December, 1686, the Hartford authorities were called upon to measure their strength again with their old antagonist. Andros had landed at Boston, commissioned as governor of all New 200 CONNECTICUT. England, and bent on abrogating the charters. Following Dudlej^'s lead, he wrote to Treat, sug- gesting that by this time the trial of the writs had certainly gone against the colony ; and that the authorities would do much to commend the colony to his majesty's good pleasure by entering a for- mal surrender of the charter. The colony author- ities were possibly as well versed in the law of the case as Andros, and they took good care to do nothing of the sort ; and, as the event showed, they thus saved the charter. The assembly met as usual in October, 1687 ; but their records show that they were in profound doubt and distress. Andros was with them, accom- panied by some sixty regular soldiers, to enforce his demand for the charter. It is certain that he did not get it, though the records, as usual, are cau- tious enough to give no reason why. Tradition is responsible for the story of the charter oak. The assembly had met the royal governor in the meet- ing-house ; the demand for the charter had been made ; and the assembly had exhausted the re- sources of language to show to Andros how dear it was to them, and how impossible it was to give it up. Andros was immovable ; he had watched that charter with longing eyes from the banks of the Hudson, and he had no intention of giving up his object now that the king had put him in power on the banks of the Connecticut. Toward even- ing the case had become desperate. The little THE COMMONWEALTH. 201 democracy was at last driven into a corner, where its old policy seemed no longer available ; it must resist openly, or make a formal surrender of its charter. Just as the lights were lighted, the legal authorities yielded so far as to order the precious document to be brought in and laid on the table before the eyes of Andros. Then came a little more debate. Suddenly the lights were blown out ; Captain Wadsworth, of Hartford, carried off the charter, and hid it in a hollow oak-tree on the estate of the Wyllyses, just across the " riveret ; " and when the lights were relighted, the colony was no longer able to comply with Andros's demand for a surrender. Although tlie account of the affair is traditional, it is difficult to see any good grounds for impeaching it on that account. It supplies, in the simplest and most natural manner, a blank in the Hartford proceedings of Andros wiiich would otherwise be quite unaccountable. His plain purpose was to force Connecticut into a po- sition where she must either surrender the charter or resist openly. He failed : the charter never was in his possession ; and the official records as- sign no reason for his failure. The colony was too prudent, and Andros too proud, to put the true reason on record. Tradition supplies the gap with an exactness which proves itself. Having done all that men could do. Treat and his associates bowed for the time to superior force. Andros was allowed to read his commission, and 202 CONNECTICUT. Treat, Fitz-Jolin and Wait Wintlirop, and Joliu Allyn received appointments as members of his council for New England. John Allyn made what the governor doubtless considered to be the closing record for all time. But it is noteworthy that the record was so written as to flatter An- dres's vanity, while it really put in terms a decla- ration of overpowering force, on which the com- monwealth finally succeeded in saving her charter from invalidation. It is as follows : "At a General Court at Hartford, October 31st, 1687, his excellency. Sir Edmund Andross, knight and Captain General and Governor of His Majesty's territories and dominions in New Eng- land, by order of His Majesty James the Second, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, the 31st of October, 1687, took into his hands the government of the colony of Connecticut, it being by His Majesty annexed to Massachusetts and other colonies under his excellency's govern- ment. ,, „ " FINIS." The government was destined to last far longer than either the governor or his government. But, while it lasted, Andros's government was bitterly hated, and with good reason. The reasons are more peculiarly appropriate to the history of Massachusetts, where they were felt more keenly than in Connecticut ; but even in Connecticut, THE COMMONWEALTH. 203 poor as was the field for plunder, and distant as it was from the *' ring " which surrounded Andros, the exactions of the new system were wellnigh intolerable to a people whose annual expense of government had been carefully kept down to the lowest limits, so that, says Bancroft, they " did not exceed four thousand dollars ; and the wages of the chief justice were ten shillings a day while on service." The feeling in Connecticut is well represented in the story of the answer made to Andros himself, when he asked somewhat suspi- ciously for the reason of the proclamation of a fast- day : " Sir, this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting." There were not lacking incitements to premature insurrection ; there were letters from hot-headed friends in England, telling them that they were " but a company of hens " if they did not revive their charter by force; and the Andros party had private intelligence implicating various leaders in some vague plot for a revolt. But the people were, as ever, self-restrained. The letters of Treat and Allyn to Andros are models of courtesy, as of faithful stewards who thought only of his interests. The colony waited patiently for the precise moment when it could strike most ef- fectively, and then it struck once and for all, with all the strength that was in it. April, 1689, came at last. The people of Bos- ton, at the first news of the English Revolution, clapped Andros into custody. May 9, the old 204 CONNECTICUT. Connecticut authorities quietly resumed their func- tions, and called the assembly together for the following month. William and Mary were pro- claimed with great fervor. Not a word was said about the disappearance or reappearance of the charter ; but the charter government was put into full effect again, as if Andros had never inter- rupted it. An address was sent to the king, asking that the charter be no further interfered with; but operations under it went on as before. No de- cided action was taken by the home government for some years, except that its appointment of the New York governor, Fletcher, to the command of the Connecticut militia, implied a decision that the Connecticut charter had been superseded. Late in 1693, Fitz John Winthrop was sent to England as agent to obtain a confirmation of the charter. He secured an emphatic legal opinion from Attor- ney General Somers, backed by those of Treby and Ward, that the charter was entirely valid, Treby's concurrent opinion taking this shape : " I am of the same opinion, and, as this matter is stated, there is no ground of doubt." The basis of the opinion was that the charter had been granted under the great seal ; that it had not been surren- dered under the common seal of the colony, nor had any judgment of record been entered against it ; that its operation had merely been interfered with by overpowering force ; that the charter therefore remained valid ; and that the peaceable submission THE COMMONWEALTH. 205 of the colony to Andros was merely an illegal sus- pension of lawful authority. In other words, the passive attitude of the colonial government had disarmed Andros so far as to stop the legal pro- ceedings necessary to forfeit the charter ; and then prompt action, at the critical moment, secured all that could be secured under the circumstances. William was willing enough to retain all possible fruits of James's tyranny, as he showed by enforc- ing the forfeiture of the Massachusetts charter ; but tlie law in this case was too plain, and he ratified the lawyers' opinion in April, 1694. The charter had escaped its enemies at last, and its escape is a monument of one of the advantages of a real democ- racy. For fifty years, every man in the common- wealth had felt the maintenance of the common- wealth to be his own personal concern, and had been willing not only to die for it, but to live for it, work for it, and exercise the highest sort of self-control for it. Out of this mass there had been evolved a class of representative men, who were in the highest degree capable of seeing and doing just what was needed. Democracy had done more for Connecticut than class influence had done for Massachusetts. The settlement of the boundaries of the colony was a longer and more fruitful source of dissension than the legal government. On the west, the agreement of 1664 was superseded in 1683 by a new one between Connecticut and Governor Don- gan of New York, Andros's successor, in which 206 CONNECTICUT. the quadrilateral, at the southwest corner of Con- necticut, first makes its appearance. It was agreed that the starting point of the line should be Lyon's Point, at the mouth of " Byram Brook," between the towns of Rye and Greenwich ; thence up that brook to the " wading place," where the common road crossed it ; thence eight English miles north- northwest into the country ; thence easterly to a line parallel to the first, begi lining twelve miles east of Lyon's Point as the Sound runs, and to a place in that line eight miles from the Sound ; thence along this north-northwest line to a point twenty miles from the Hudson ; thence northerly to the Massachusetts border, by a line " parallel to Hudson's River in every point." If the quadrilat- eral first described came at any point nearer than twenty miles to the Hudson, the other northerly lines were to be run so much further to the east- ward as to give New York an equivalent tract of land. This threw Rye into New York, and recog- nized New York's old claim that Connecticut was to come no nearer to the Hudson than twenty miles' distance. It also gave up the line agreed upon in 1664, running north-northwest from Ma- maroneck, crossing the Hudson near West Point, and leaving the district east of it, including New- burgh, Poughkeepsie, and Kingston, under Con- necticut. It has since been rectified in various points, and the proposed line parallel to the Hud- son has been straightened, but otherwise it is the THE COMMONWEALTH. 207 basis of the present line. Rye revolted to Con- necticut in 1697 ; but the king's confirmation of the line of 1683 in 1700 forced the town to return to New York. The whole line was established by survey in 1725 and 1731, re-surveyed by New York in 1860, agreed upon by both States in 1878 and 1879, and ratified by congress in 1880-81. It should be added that the unnatural junction of Long Island with New York in 1664 carried with it the island called Fisher's Island, off the south- east corner of Connecticut, which had been granted to Winthrop by Connecticut in 1641; and it thus gave the southern boundary of Connecticut its odd appearance, running from the mouth of Pawcatuck River, at the eastern end of the Sound, to the cen- ter of the East River, at the western end. The northern boundary of the colony was not fully settled for more than a century. When Con- necticut was settled, the Massachusetts southern line was in the air ; and in 1642 that colony sent two men. Woodward and Saffery, to run the line according to the charter. The surveyors are said to have been ignorant men ; and Connecticut author- ities call them lucus a non lucendo, " the mathe- maticians." They began operations by finding what seemed to them a point " three English miles on the south part of the Charles River, or of any or every part thereof : " thence the southern Mas- sachusetts line was to run west to the Pacific Ocean. The two mathematicians, however, either 208 CONNECTICUT. hesitating to undertake a foot journey to the Pa- cific, or doubting the sympathy of casual Indians with the advancement of science, and being sufiB- ciently learned to know tbat two points are enough to determine the direction of a line, did not run the line directly west. Instead, they took sbip, sailed around Cape Cod and up the Connecticut Kiver, and found wbat they asserted to be a point in the same latitude as the first. In fact, they had got some eight miles too far to the south, thus giv- ing their employers far too much territory ; but they had fulfilled their principal duty, which was to show that Springfield was in Massachusetts. An ex parte survey, and of such a nature, could not of course be recognized by Connecticut. The oblong indentation in Connecticut's northern boun- dary is a remnant of the ignorance of Woodward and Saffery ; for Massachusetts claimed a line run- ning just north of Windsor, and Connecticut finally reclaimed all but this oblong. She made ex parte surveys of her own in 1695 and 1702, and then both colonies appealed to the crown. This was evidently a dangerous tribunal for both ; and in 1714 they agreed on a compromise line much as it is at present. Connecticut received, in return for her concessions, 107,000 acres of wild land in Mas- sachusetts, which was sold for about 82,500 and the proceeds given to Yale College. As surveys became still more accurate, it was found that the present towns of Enfield, Suffield, and Woodstock, THE COMMONWEALTH. 209 which had fallen to Massachusetts by the agree- ment of 1714, were really south of the Ihie, so that Massachusetts was governing territory outside of her charter limits. In 1749 Connecticut ac- cepted the petition of these towns to be restored to her jurisdiction, and they have since been Con- necticut towns. Massachusetts continued to claim the towns, but did not attempt to enforce the claim until 1804, when she finally abandoned it. In 1822 and 1826, the line was run as it now is, leaving the indentation to Massachusetts, perhaps as a memorial to Woodward and Saffery. " How the boundary on the east was ever fixed," says Bowen, " seems a puzzle ; " and he cites, very appropriately, Rufus Choate's description of it in one of its stages : " The commissioners might as well have decided that the line between the States was bounded on the north by a bramble bush, on the south by a bluejay, on the west by a hive of bees in swarming time, and on the east by five hundred foxes with firebrands tied to their tails." Connecticut claimed all the Narragansett country, up to Narragansett Bay, by conquest from the Pequots ; and Massachusetts, on the ground of her essential assistance to Connecticut, claimed a divi- sion of the spoils. Rhode Island was considered an unchartered nonentity by both. In 1658 the New England commissioners really gave judgment against Connecticut, assigning the Mystic River as the boundary between Massachusetts and Connec- 14 210 CONNECTICUT. ticut, thus handing over the whole of Rhode Island and the eastern part of the present State of Con- necticut to the Bay colony. The present town- ship of Stonington thus became a Massachusetts town, and was called Southerton ; and the Ather- ton Company, a Massachusetts association, whose leader, Captain Atherton, had bought large tracts of land in Rhode Island from the Indians, and which had acknowledged the jurisdiction of Con- necticut, now passed under that of Massachusetts. The Connecticut charter in 1662, by carrying that colony up to Narragansett Bay, instead of clearing matters up, complicated them still further. Rhode Island then had an agent in London, soliciting a charter, which was granted in 1663 ; and it assigned as the western boundary of that colony the Pawca- tuck River from its mouth to its source, and thence a due north line to the Massachusetts boundary. To prevent a conflict, Winthrop had made an agreement with the Rhode Island agent, which was made a part of the Rhode Island charter, that the Pawcatuck River should receive the additional title of " alias Norrogansett or Narrogansett River ; " and that, wherever the Connecticut char- ter spoke of the Narragansett River, the Pawca- tuck River should be taken and deemed to be the one intended ! Connecticut at once repudiated this action of Winthrop as ultra vires, erected a town government at Wickford, and set the all- penetrating power of the Connecticut constable to THE COMMONWEALTH. 211 work there. Then followed a period of great con- fusion, Rhode Island arresting Connecticut town officers, and vice versa, in the disputed territory, and Connecticut preparing to make her claims good by force, for the New England commission- ers in 1664 had decided the dispute in her favor. In the mean time, Randolph's royal commis- sioners, whose history in New England was that of a common and public nuisance, took the Narragan- sett dispute under consideration in 1665, without giving the parties any hearing or notice of it, and decided it in their usual impartial fashion. They decided that neither Connecticut nor Rhode Island had the slightest claim to the territory in dispute ; and they took it away from both, and erected it into a separate territory, to be known as the King's Province, belonging solely to his majesty. The title of the Atherton Company to their land pur- chases was decided in the same summary way : it was adjudged null and void, and the settlers were ordered to leave the King's Province. It adds to the oddity of the decisions that no one seems to have asked the commissioners to interfere. The country in dispute was in reality almost a wilderness, with very few settlers. Connecticut therefore allowed the Randolph decision to go with a protest, until it became obsolete as the royal commissioners faded like an unhappy dream out of New England's memory. From time to time she appointed commissioners to meet those of 212 CONNECTICUT. Rhode Island, though the meetings came to noth- ing. Proclamations and arrests enlivened the lot of the lonely dwellers in the Narragansett coun- try; but settlement was retarded by the knowl- edge that the settler had to buy into a lawsuit of the most vexatious character. Rhode Island south- west of Providence was thus practically unset- tled except by Indians, when the events of King Philip's war embittered the controversy by rein- forcing the feeling of Connecticut men that the Narragansett country rightfully belonged to them by conquest as well as by charter. Their soldiers had fought in the swamp fight at Kingston, where the power of Philip was broken ; their patrolling parties had afterwards scoured the country, and swept it of Narragansetts ; and all the time Rhode Island had looked idly on, and had never struck a blow for the coveted territory, for her neighbors or for herself. After renewed confusion, a new set of royal commissioners, in 1633, decided every point in the Narragansett controversy in favor of Connecticut. The prospect for Rhode Island was therefore dark. All of its present territory west of Narragansett Bay and southwest of Providence had been adjudged to Connecticut. All east of the bay, if the grounds of this decision were to hold good as a precedent, belonged to Plymouth. And Massachusetts, to the north, was in waiting with a variety of claims, and a general willingness to act as residuary legatee of the late colony of THE COMMONWEALTH. 213 Rhode Island. It must have seemed certain that the existence of the stout little colony was to be limited to its first fifty years, and that its time had come. But its salvation came from the inability of its enemies to agree. The decision of the com- missioners was not confirmed or considered by the home government, owing to the troublous times of James II. ; and Rhode Island was enabled to deny its weight altogether. Then came Andros, who took Rhode Island's view of the case, and put her into possession of the disputed territory. She held to it, in spite of intermittent attempts of Con- necticut to exercise jurisdiction over it, and in spite of a decision of the English attorney general in 1696 in favor of Connecticut. Indeed, her per- sistency, and the ugly possibility of an appeal to England for a general decision, began to incline Connecticut to a modification of her claims. Un- der the charter of Rhode Island, her western boun- dary was to be the Pawcatuck River to its head, and thence due north to the Massachusetts line. If the Pawcatuck River be followed up to its source, as still given on Rhode Island maps, that point will be found in a pond just east of where the swamp fight took place, near Kingston, within a half dozen miles of Narragansett Bay. A line due north from this point would pass just west of Providence, and would leave Rhode Island only a narrow strip of territory on the west shore of the bay. Connecticut, giving up her first claim to 214 CONNECTICUT. abut on the bay, now held to a literal interpreta- tion of the Rhode Island charter ; and it is not easy to see how her legal claim to the bulk of the disputed soil could be gainsaid. Rhode Island, however, was really fighting for her life ; and her struggle was so persistent that Connecticut at last abandoned her old claim. In 1703 commissioners from both colonies agreed to follow the Pawcatuck River up to a branch called the Ashaway, thence a straight line to a point twenty miles due west of the extremity of Warwick Neck in Narragansett Bay, the northwest corner of the Atherton tract, and thence due north to the Massachusetts line. A subsequent attempt of Rhode Island to revive her ancient claim to the Mystic River as her west- ern boundary led Connecticut to renew her resist- ance to the settlement of 1703 ; but the English board of trade in 1723 reported in favor of the moral claim of Rhode Island, and showed a disposi- tion to make the dispute an excuse for uniting the two colonies in a royal government. Connecticut therefore joined in 1727-28 in running the line of 1703, which, slightly straightened in 1840, has since remained the boundary. The legal grounds of Connecticut's claim seem to have been good ; but common justice to the different relations to the territory in dispute, which was vital to Rhode Island and only important to Connecticut, and common justice also to the obstinate fight made by the smaller colony, may fairly give reason for THE COMMONWEALTH. 216 satisfaction in the final settlement. But it should not be forgotten that this was a case in which the smaller colony, if sufficiently determined, as Rhode Island evidently was, had a great advantage. She was ready to risk everything on an appeal to Eng- land ; for, if she lost this territory in default of an appeal, she had little else to live for. In every crisis of the controversy, therefore, Rhode Island had a weapon in reserve to which Connecticut had no shield, for the last thing she wished was to come again under the general jurisdiction of an English tribunal : she had too many larger inter- ests, outside of the Narragansett country, which such a tribunal would undoubtedly bring into question, while Rhode Island had hardly anything else to risk. This weapon, brought promptly and resolutely into play by Rhode Island whenever it was necessary, gave her a victory, to which she was fairly entitled by circumstances, at any rate. Two disputes as to the soil of the colony remain to be stated. In 1635, just before the council of Plymouth disbanded it undertook to divide up the whole of New England into eight parcels, which it distributed among its members. The only one which gave any annoyance to Connecticut was that of the Marquis of Hamilton, running from the mouth of the Connecticut River to Narragansett Bay, and extending sixty miles back into the coun- try. Hamilton sent over an agent to examine his grant; but, being a royalist, he was unable to 216 CONNECTICUT. make any serious effort to colonize during the com- monwealth period. At the Restoration, his wife, now Duchess of Hamilton, opposed the charter of Connecticut ; and her claims were referred to the royal commissioners for New England, who re- ported against them in 1665, but in 1683 referred a new claim to the king. The ground taken by Connecticut was mainly that of limitation, — that the Hamilton family, having utterly neglected to prosecute their claim to the territory for far longer than twenty years, and until others had settled and improved it, were debarred from en- tering it now. On this ground, endorsed in 1696 by the law officers of the crown, the council of trade finally decided in favor of Connecticut in 1697. The other case, which kept the colony in trou- ble for years and was finally extinguished by the Revolution without any real decision, was the claim of the Mohegan Indians. John Mason, one of the founders of Windsor, afterwards settled at Saybrook, was the military man of the colony. The records generally refer to him as " the Ma- jor." After the Pequot war, he and his family seem to have had an hereditary friendship for the Mohegans, which was a burden to the white par- ties to it. The Mohegans seem to have made treaties of land cession with prodigal generosity when drunk, and to have lied about them circum- stantially when sober. In 1640 they ceded their lands to Connecticut by an instrument which gave TEE COMMONWEALTH. 217 that colony power to establish plantations where it would, reserving certain lands to the Indians, and agreed to prevent other whites from settling in their territory without the consent of the Con- necticut magistrates. The territory covered New London county and part of Windham ; and it would be difficult to frame a more complete trans- fer than that made by the Indians. Mason settled at Norwich, in the Mohegan country, in 1659. Two different stories were told by the Indians about the deed of 1640. One was that it was given to Mason by Uncas when the latter was at war with the Narragansetts ; and that it was only to be used by Mason if Uncas were conquered; as he was not. This story was varied from time to time by another, quite inconsistent with the first, but less severe upon their friend Mason. It was that the deed of 1640 was understood by them as a mere trusteeship in Mason, as a man who understood the English people and English law, and could maintain the rights of the Indians. Mason's name is not even mentioned in the deed. Nevertheless Mason seems to have accepted this version. In 1671, the year before his death, acting as if the deed of 1640 had been made to him as trustee instead of to the colony of Connecticut specifically, Mason deeded back a large tract to them, entailing it upon them and making it inalienable. In 1680, again, Uncas obtained from Connecticut a confir* 218 CONNECTICUT. mation of his remaining lands, expressly resigning all jurisdiction over all of them. Within a year or two he died ; his tribe was split into fragments ; it was impossible to trace any legitimacy of blood ; and the Indian claims fell into confusion worse confounded. The grandson of Mason, and the son of Mr. Fitch, the minister of Norwich, who were fast friends of the Indians, made their cause their own, and in 1705 they brought it to trial be- fore a royal commission, headed by Governor Dud- ley of Massachusetts, and composed of his party. The trial was a curious one. If there was any cause of action for the plaintiffs, it was impossible to find it; the judges were determined to make the case a point of attack on the charter of Con- necticut ; and the defendant protested and refused to appear, on the ground that the commission had no powers to adjudicate the colony's title to exist- ence. The commission decided against Connec- ticut, and the colony appealed to the crown. From that time the case dragged along until the Revo- lution, decided again and again in favor of the colony, and appealed by the Mason family, whose personal interests had become interwoven with the Mohegan claims. After the Revolution, the Indians, content with the State's reservation, made no further movement to reopen the case. The commonwealth, its legal existence having been maintained and secured and its boundaries established, had a quiet and generally uneventful THE COMMONWEALTH. 219 history so long as peaceful relations with the mother country were kept up. Buttressed on all sides by other colonies, as in King Philip's war, it suffered little from the colonial wars except in men. But its immunity from immediate danger had no effect in checking its readiness to make common cause with the other colonies. Soldiers were provided freely by the colony, and did their part manfully. But the brief story of Connec- ticut's colonial wars will fall better under the financial history with which they are closely con- nected. CHAPTER XIII. ECCLESIASTICAL AEFAIRS. 1636-1791. It was probably inevitable, under the circum- stances of time and place, that the first effort to establish a democratic commonwealth should be complicated with an ecclesiastical system entirely foreign to its real nature. Religious homogeneity almost compelled it. To the first settlers in Con- necticut, though not for the same reason as in New Haven, civil and ecclesiastical affairs were convertible terms. The township and the church were coterminous : the town, by which term, as distinguished from the territorial township^ was meant the body of voters within the township, settled civil and ecclesiastical affairs indifferently in the same town meeting ; and as about all the voters were at first church - members and agreed closely in creed and methods, the dual system produced little friction for a time. It was inevi- table that lapse of time should disturb the origi- nal homogeneity and bring trouble. The effort in New Haven to put off the evil day by the practi- cal absorption of the state in the church led to the downfall of the commonwealth. The long contin- ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 221 ued efforts in Connecticut to reconcile church and state under a free town system gave rise to diffi- culties whose history might fill volumes, and task the learning of an expert in church history. Ma- ther, no mean expert, said of one of the opening struggles that its origin was as obscure as that of the Connecticut River. The attempt of a mere layman to penetrate such a labyrinth must neces- sarily be hazardous ; and we are to venture in no further than relation is found to the peculiar development of the commonwealth. It will easily be seen that a reconciliation be- tween churches which acknowledged no earthly master, and a commonwealth legislature whose final authority was to be supreme, was a work of no little difficulty. The long and comparatively successful maintenance of the concordat in Con- necticut seems to have been due to the character of Hooker and the impress which he left on the ecclesiastical traditions of the colony. He and Davenport were fair types of the methods of the two colonies. Both were masterful men, even for that time. Davenport applied his force directly, and failed. Hooker relied on influence, and suc- ceeded. Most of Hooker's successors, in spite of an occasional slip into direct aggression, followed his methods with like success. With no official voice in legislation, and no direct appeal even to their arbitration, there was hardly an important piece of legislation which was not tested by their 222 CONNECTICUT. approval or disapproval ; and it is to their honor that they were content with the substance of power, based on the confidence of their people. Only this mutual confidence made the concordat possible. Many an act of the general assembly, which seems an interference with the liberty of the churches, was based in reality on the tacit approval of the ecclesiastical element of the col- ony. They were the voice of the ecclesiastical, speaking through the civil power. At the beginning, the Connecticut and New Haven churches alike were Congregational and Calvinistic. Each church claimed complete con- trol of its own affairs. In cases of doubt or dis- pute, it would submit to the decision of a council of neighbor or allied churches ; but the selection of the churches which were to form the council was always a matter for mutual agreement, or fresh disputes, between the two parties. The church knew no superior. It was begun by a common agreement in articles of faith by those who proposed to become members. The ceremony of the selection of the " seven pillars," already described, was peculiar to the churches of New Haven, Milford, and Guilford, and seems to have been in their cases an expedient of the leaders for the establishment of their politico-ecclesiastical system. A well-organized Connecticut church was at fii'st supposed to have two ministers. One was the pastor, whose duties were mainly the ex- ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 223 hortation, encouragement, and pastoral care of the members ; the other was the teacher, whose work was the doctrinal defense of the church and the instruction of its people. The ruling elder was the executive officer of the church ; but its success depended largely on the cooperation of the ruling elder with the pastor. The functions of the dea- cons were those which have always been familiar in those officers. Back of all of them was the vote of the church, a Calvinistic democracy, un- defined in its powers, and ready, on occasion, to claim the full powers of an ecumenical council. When the union had been completed, there were fifteen of these churches in the colony : the Long Island churches, organized in the same way, had passed under the dominion of New York. The first churches were mostly small. Those of Hartford and New Haven were of course the largest. The church of Wethersfield, when it split and the defeated party removed to Stamford, numbered but seven communicants, the orthodox majority numbering four and the heterodox mi- nority three. Pierson's church at Southampton, on Long Island, numbered but sixteen. This paucity of numbers, however, was due to the promptness of the first settlers in organizing their churches. The church really began with the set- tlement. The first item in the Norwalk town records provides for the restraint of wandering swine ; the second, for the erection of a minister's house ; the third, for a pound. 224 CONNECTICUT. The first great church dispute, which rent the Hartford church from 1654 until 1659, has been so complicated with the names of the actors and with doctrinal points, that one who is not a pro- found theologian can hardly make anything of it. There are indications, however, that an explana- tion may be found in the effort to accommodate the original church and state system to the chang- ing conditions of the people, and that the actors, however prominent, were merely floating on the surface of opposing currents whose nature even they did not understand quite clearly. Three points are of interest : the church establishment ; the connection of church and state, or rather town ; and the change in the people, with its ef- fects. The first code of Connecticut, in 1650, required that all persons should be taxed for church as well as for state ; and the taxes for support of the min- ister, and for other ecclesiastical purposes, were to be levied and collected like other taxes. So long as a trace of the establishment lasted, even down to the adoption of the constitution of 1818, the connection with the civil power continued. The church society used the civil tax lists in levying its rates ; the conditions of suffrage in society meet- ings were the same as in civil town meetings ; and the penalties for voting by unqualified persons were the same. The civil power collected the taxes for the church by distraint. If the church ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 225 refused or neglected to support its minister, the general assembly settled the proper rate of main- tenance and enforced it on the church ; and if a church remained without a minister for more than a year, the general assembly could name a proper amount for ministerial purposes, and compel the church to raise and expend it. The principle of such connection was the ecclesiastical system of the commonwealth from 1639 down to 1818 ; and the successive " enfranchisements " of other sects were simply permissions to them to use the secular arm according to what had been at first the special privilege of the establishment. Considering the churches recognized in 1650 as established, the commonwealth forbade any persons to form a new church within the colony without consent of the general court and of the neighboring churches. The man, therefore, who, not being a member of one of the established churches, found himself within the territory of a church, was unable to vote in purely church matters ; but he was compelled to vote taxes and pay taxes for the support of a minister in whose call he had had no voice. From their estab- lishment, the churches had been strict in regard to baptism, and their inquisitions into the per- sonal experience of candidates for membership were searching. As the numbers increased of those who could not respond to such inquisitions and were thus barred from the church, dissatis- 15 226 CONNECTICUT. faction must have increased with them. It often took the shape of coanplaints that the children of such persons were refused baptism ; but it may be suspected fairly that the natural wish to share in the control of the church whose expenses they helped to pay had a great deal to do with it. Either the right of suffrage must be restricted to church -members, or all the voters must be let into the church. In New Haven, church-member- ship had swallowed democracy ; in Connecticut, was democracy to swallow church-membership? The Cambridge platform, adopted by a council of the New England churches held at Cambridge, Mass., in 1648, was intended to be the model for the church system of New England, and it governed the Connecticut churches for sixty years. Its im- portance was more in its recognition of church in- dependence than in any formulation of a creed. But, in spite of its recognition of church indepen- dence, there was in it the seed of state interference, so far at least as Connecticut churches were con- cerned, for it insisted " that the magistrate is to see that the ministry be duly provided for." In Connecticut the magistrate was really the town ; and the town's democracy would hardly be willing to support the church without at least trying to control it. The attempt was soon made by the general court, as the mouthpiece of all the towns, in the course of its efforts to settle the Hartford difl&culty. ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 227 In February, 1657, the general court called for a council of the New England churches at Boston, to consider certain propositions of the general court. The object of these propositions was well understood to be the widening of church-member- ship. The New Haven churches rejected the sugges- tion of such a council, and the purely independent element in Connecticut sympathized with them, for the decision of such a council looked straight to state interference as a means of enforcing it. Nevertheless the council met, and sustained the new rather than the old view. It declared that baptized infants were bound, on arriving at years of discretion, to " own the covenant " and become formal church-members ; and that the church was bound to accept them, if they were not of scandal- ous life and understood the grounds of religion, and was bound to baptize their children, thus con^ tinning the chain of claims to church-membership to all generations. This made church-membership rather an affair of the head and of morals ; and it was deeply execrated by the New Haven churches, and by at least a strong minority of the Connecti- cut churches, for it really gave every baptized per- son a voice in church government. It was com- monly known as the Half-way Covenant. In 1664 the general court formally approved the council's decision, and " commended " it to the churches under its jurisdiction, which now covered New Haven. So far as it ventured to do so, the 228 CONNECTICUT. general court thus made the Half-way Covenant, ■with its loose system of admission to the church, the ecclesiastical law of the commonwealth. But it was from the first a political rather than an ecclesiastical idea ; it never was welcome to the Connecticut churches, and some of them never accepted it. To return now to the Hartford difficulty, which had been woven into every step of the progress toward the Half-way Covenant. Its nominal be- ginning was after the death of Hooker in 1647. Goodwin, the ruling elder, wanted Michael Wig- glesworth as Hooker's successor ; and Stone, the surviving minister, refused to allow the proposition to be put to vote. The Goodwin party, twenty- one in number, including Deputy Governor Web- ster, withdrew from the church ; the Stone party undertook to discipline them ; a council of Con- necticut and New Haven churches failed to recon- cile the parties ; the general court kindly assumed the office of mediator, and succeeded in making both parties furious ; and finally a council at Boston in 1659 induced the Goodwin minority, now some sixty in number, to remove to Hadley, Mass. A larger struggle followed Stone's death in 1663. There were now two young men. Whiting and Haynes, in the places of Hooker and Stone ; and the new incumbents, in addition to their opposi- tion to one another, seem to have been about equally tactless. Haynes headed the Half-way ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 229 Covenant party. He was supported by the church, and the ratification of this form of church disci- pline by the general court in 1664 strengthened his position. Whiting, with those who still held to the pi'imitive doctrine of the necessity of individual experience and strict investigation of it before ad- mission to the church, was compelled to remain in a church which must have seemed to him and his party almost a heterodox body. Five years of this sort of life was necessary to convince both parties of the necessity of a compromise. In May, 1669, the general court advised that all persons approved in law and sound in the funda- mentals of the Christian religion should "have allowance of their persuasion and profession in church ways ; " that is, that they should have lib- erty to constitute another church within the town limits. This innovation had evidently become in- evitable. In October, Mr. Whiting appeared be- fore the court, applied for permission to form a new church, and received it. The Second Church of Hartford was thus formed the next year by Mr. Whiting and thirty-one families ; and the first breach in the original identity of town and church was accomplished. Further, as the members of the new church necessarily received the privilege o£ diverting their share of the taxes to the support of their own church, the principle of this more democratic precedent guided the slow emancipa- tion of all the other sects down to 1818. But it 230 CONNECTICUT. is not a little odd to find that the new church, founded as a protest against the Half-way Cove- nant, adopted that practice from its very first meeting. However unwillingly the churches might accept the Half-way Covenant, it could not but affect their church -membership very seriously. The number of " strict Congregationalists " steadily de- creased, while the number of " large Congregation- alists," leaning to Presbyterianism, was as steadily increasing. " A church without a bishop, and a state without a king," was still the theory; but the state had now a regulator in the shape of a supreme legislature, and this was enough to bring about a desire for a similar regulator for the church. The general court evidently leaned to- ward a council of the churches, much after the fashion of a Presbyterian synod, as a fly-wheel to keep the churches in harmony on points of fun- damental importance, while allowing disagreement on minor points. The ministers had been in the habit of holding neighborhood meetings, and, after the union, county meetings ; but these were volun- tary, and their proceedings were limited to the special objects for which they had been called. This, however, was a germ for an establishment ; and the absolute power of individual churches ^to decide upon the qualifications of candidates for the ministry, and certain scandals resulting therefrom, furnished the occasion. ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 231 In 1708 the general court directed that the churches of each county should send their minis- ters and " messengers," or lay representatives, to meet at their county town ; that the county assem- blies should settle upon what they considered the best system of church order ; and that delegates from the county assemblies should meet at Say- brook, at the coming Commencement, to draw up for the general court's adoption a commonwealth church system. The synod met in September, adopted the Savoy Confession as modified by the Boston synod of 1680, and formed the Saybrook platform as an ecclesiastical system for the commonwealth. It directed that " consociations " of neighboring churches should be formed in each county ; that a church, or an excommunicate person with the consent of the church, should have the right to bring disputes before the consociation ; that a pastor or church refusing to be bound by the de- cision of the consociation should be put out of communion ; and that there should be an annual meeting of delegates from all the consociations. The scheme was at once ratified by the general court, and the churches united by it were " owned and acknowledged established by law ; " but per- mission was reserved to any church to " sobei-ly differ or dissent from the united churches hereby established." This was about the measure of rights given to dissenters in England by the act 232 CONNECTICUT. of 1689, under William and Mary. The dissent- ing churches were to be taxed for the support of the established churches. The establishment was a modified Presbyterianism. There was no formal coercive power ; but the public provision for the minister's support, and the withdrawal of it from recalcitrant members, formed a coercive power of no mean efficacy. With its adoption, the Congre- gational churches of Connecticut passed into their semi-Presbyterian stage of existence ; indeed, to- ward the end of the century, President Dwight uses the terms " Congregational " and " Presby- terian " as about convertible. The Saybrook platform brought order at once into the Connecticut system ; but worse than dis- order came with it. The tendency of such an or- derly system to a barren intellectualism, difficult enough to resist at the best, became far stronger when the church was dependent on the state for material support. Within thirty years, the worst symptoms of a purely state religion began to show themselves, and it required all the vitality of the churches, and a tremendous internal convulsion, to banish them. The great revival of 1741, be- ginning in the church of Jonathan Edwards at Northampton, Mass., and intensified by the preach- ing of Whitefield, Gilbert Tennant, and others, struck the first blow at the hitherto secure position of the Saybrook platform. Wandering revivalists disturbed many of the ministers, and their com- ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 233 plaints found a sympathetic audience in the gen- eral court. That body passed an act in 1742 which protected the churches rather more than the Saybrook platform had given any reason for anticipating. It forbade under penalties the en- trance of an ordained minister into the parish of another minister to preach there without the invi- tation of the settled minister and his church ; it increased the penalty in the case of an unlicensed person ; and it ordered any foreigner or stranger, licensed or unlicensed, who should preach in vio- lation of the act, to be sent as a vagrant from " constable to constable " out of the colony. The Connecticut churches had changed very much since the time of Hooker, but not enough to make it likely that such legislation as this would pass unchallenged. Churches all over the colony became divided within themselves ; the " new lights," as the maintainers of freedom for the new methods were called, were hurried by zeal into the most fantastic doctrines and practices ; and the colonial ecclesiastical system was again all at sea. One church chose a minister, ordained him, quarreled with him, silenced him, cast him out of the church, and delivered him up to Satan, and all within the space of a year. The extrav- agance of the new lights afforded the " old lights " a fair opportunity of proceeding to extremes with a good grace. General court and assembly joined in arresting, excommunicating, and prosecuting 234 CONNECTICUT. ministers who violated the act and church-mem- bers who went to hear them. When Whitefield made a second tour through the colony in 1745, the general court even denounced him by resolu- tion as a promoter of errors and disorders, and cautioned the ministers not to admit him to their pulpits, and church-members not to listen to him. Before 1748, the different consociations had ex- pelled about all the " new lights " among their ministers, one of the consociations remarking com- placently in one case that it had now blown out one new light, and that it meant to keep on until it had blown out all the rest. Meanwhile separations among the churches had gone on apace. When a minister was disbarred by any of the consociations, that portion of his flock which agreed or sympathized with him left their church with him, and organized a church of their own. When a schism arose in a church from any cause, it was not long before it ran into some phase of the old and new light controversy, and a separation took place. There were thus a number of separate churches in the colony, and their posi- tion was peculiar. From its foundation, the law of the colony had been that any man who should refuse to contribute according to his ability to the support of the settled ministers should be com- pelled to do so by levy and distraint, as in the case of other taxes. At the same time, provision was made, and in 1669 and 1708, as has been said, was ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 236 enacted 'into statute, that members of unestab- lished churches might " have allowance of their persuasion and profession in church ways or assem- blies without disturbance." This, however, was intended to secure quiet to licensed dissenting churches, and to enable members of new Con- gregational churches, when licensed by the gen- eral court, to transfer their share of the taxes to their own ministers. Unlicensed Congregational churches were worse off than either, for they were taxed for the support of the Established churches, and were open to prosecution besides. This arrangement had worked very fairly for some sixty years. When a separation took place, as in Hartford, it was ratified by the general court, and the members of the new church paid their rates only for the support of their own min- ister. No one was legally a minister unless rec- ognized by the general court, and then he was en- titled to a measure of state support. About 1706 the ecclesiastical calm had been interrupted by the Church of England. One of its missionaries began to preach in Stratford, and in 1722 another was permanently settled there. It was but natu- ral that the members of this church should object to supporting their own minister and paying rates for the Congregational minister as well ; and they had a strong disposition to appeal from the laws of Connecticut to those of Great Britain, which was the last thing the colony wanted. It is a 236 CONNECTICUT. tradition that the establishment of the Episcopal Church in New Haven was secured by an offer to pay the fines for dissidence, coupled with a de- mand for a copy of the proceedings for transmis- sion to the home government. In 1727 the gen- eral court passed an act which cut the tie that had so long bound town and church together. Hitherto there had been but one church in a town, unless the general court permitted a sepa- ration. Now any society of the Church of Eng- land might be formed in a town; its members were thereupon excused from paying rates to the settled or Congregational minister ; their obliga- tion to pay taxes was transferred to their own minister ; and the old church was to be known as the " prime ancient society." The latter, however, still retained the taxing power over all persons not members of any church. In 1729 the act of 1727 was extended to cover the case of Quakers and Baptists. The new churches formed by the new-light schism claimed to be Congregational: the tyran- nical legislation of 1742 had taken them out of the scope of the act of 1669, and their members were still held bound for taxes to support the very ministers from whom they had seceded. Some congregations became nominal Baptists in order to get the benefit of the act of 1729. Others simply refused to pay, and the settled ministers put every engine of the law in motion against ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 237 them. Their property was levied upon and sold for a small fraction of its real value ; in default of satisfaction by property, they \7ere arrested and taken to jail, with the scandalous accompani- ment of the scenes naturally arising from a vio- lent resistance ; and a faint flavor of the Inquisi- tion began to pervade the ecclesiastical system of the colony. When the cause of the new lights took this form, the end was not far distant. One church after another, on the occasion of almost any dispute with its minister, took the opportu- nity to repudiate the Saybrook platform, and to reassert the primitive freedom of the churches ; the number of malcontents was steadily increas- ing; and about 1780 the general court gave up the struggle and the Saybrook platform together. In 1791 it practically granted the right of free in- corporation to all religious bodies ; but persons unconnected with any church were still required to pay rates to the established Congregational or- ganization until the constitution of 1818 made all such contributions voluntary. In spite of the act of 1727, other sects than the Congregational were really exotics. It was not until 1789 that the first Methodist society was founded at Stratford, where the Episcopalians had begun their organization. The Baptists and other sects had existed in small numbers ; but all the sects were weak, and membership in them was to some extent a removal from the sympathies of the 238 CONNECTICUT. mass of the people. To the Episcopalians, whose church had lorded it at home as the Congrega- tional church now lorded it in Connecticut, this ^tate of affairs must have been particularly exas- perating. Their feeling of isolation was increased by the difficulty which they experienced in obtain- ing a bishop. It was not until 178-1 that Bishop Seabury was consecrated by the Scottish bishops, having failed of ordination at the hands of the English bishops, on account of the necessity that the candidate should take the oath of allegiance to the crown. For one reason or other, every dissenting sect in Connecticut had its own grievances, and felt itself to be more or less an alien to the common- wealth. This worst political feature of any ec- clesiastical restriction showed itself again and again in local politics before the Revolution, still more during the Revolution in the development of the Tory party in the State ; and it was the ba- sis of almost all party opposition after the Revo- lution, until, coalescing with the rising tide of de- mocracy, it overthrew the charter itself in 1818. The establishment of Yale College, as it was an essential part of the colony's ecclesiastical sys- tem, may best find a place here. The Connecti- cut general court, in establishing a free-school sys- tem in 1644, had done so on the express ground that it was " one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 239 Scriptures ; " and the selectmen of the towns were cautioned, as a fundamental part of educa- tion, to see to it that parents and masters gave children weekly instruction in " some short ortho- dox catechism." A college was evidently needed as the capstone to the system ; and New Haven, under the impulse of Davenport, began thinking of such an institution in 1641. It was allowed to slumber because of the protest of the leading men of the Bay : they urged that all the resources of all New England were barely enough to support Harvard, and that an attempt to establish a new institution would merely ruin both. In 1652 the project was formally given up for the time, but the New Haven authorities had been directed, five years before, to reserve one of the home lots for the college. When the time seemed to have come, in 1698, for reviving the project, the general synod of the colony took the work in hand, intending to call the new college " The School of the Church." During the following year, the notion of church control was given up ; but ten ministers were named as trustees. Their first meeting probably took place in the year 1700 ; and it was later in the same year that the famous meeting took place at Branford, when each minister laid upon the trustees' table his contribution of books, saying, " I give these books for the founding of a college in this colony." The whole number was about 240 CONNECTICUT. forty volumes : so small was the germ from which has sprang one of the great institutions of learn- ing of the United States. In October, 1701, the general court chartered the college, in order to enable it to hold lands and receive gifts and bequests ; and an annual grant amounting to about <£60 sterling was voted to aid in its support. The trustees fixed upon Saybrook as the place for the college, and Abraham Pierson as its first rector. But Mr. Pierson was settled as minister at Killingworth, and his people would not consent to his removal. Until his death, the library and students remained at Killingworth ; but the Commencements took place at Saybrook. The first of them was on the 13th of September, 1702, when Nathanael Chauncey, the first grad- uate, took his degree. Degrees, apparently hon- orary, were given at the same time to four others who had already been graduated at Harvard. It is a pleasing circumstance to record that a large part of the instruction of the early classes had been given by the trustees, in default of other in- structors. Mr. Pierson died in 1707, and Mr. Andrew was chosen in his place. Part of the students went to • his residence at Milford, and the rest to Saybrook ; and the college was thus divided until 1716. When the trustees met at the Commencement of 1716, they found the college almost broken up. Divided instruction and government, aided by the ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 241 eager struggles of other towns to obtain the final location of the college, and crowned by an out- break of smallpox, had scattered the students in every direction, and there were the germs of half a dozen possible colleges. In October the trus- tees voted to fix the college at New Haven, and persisted in spite of an opposition which divided the whole colony and was carried into colonial politics. In 1717 the general court endorsed the removal, and voted a grant to aid in the erection of buildings. All through these years, good friends in England had been sending over books, the foundation of the noble library which is now so great an ornament to the college. One of these benefactors was Elihu Yale, a man of New Haven ancestry, who had gone into the East India trade and become a " nabob." He had shown a strong interest in the college ; and it would probably be doing the excellent trustees no injustice if one presumes them to have thought that his interest would be increased if the institution were removed to New Haven and named after him. At any rate, the first Commencement held at New Haven, in 1718, was marked by the adoption of the title Yale College, with a dedicatory memorial to Mr. Yale. Yale started in the race long after her rival at Cambridge ; and it is interesting to speculate on the results of the equality which she would have attained at the beginning, if Mr. Yale had been able to carry out the generous intentions 16 242 CONNECTICUT. which he certainly felt for the college which bore his name. Unfortunately, he died intestate before he could do what he meant to do ; and the college received no more aid from him. Never was human distinction so cheaply purchased as that which has perpetuated the otherwise almost unknown names of John Harvard and Elihu Yale. If a college were a living thing, one might fancy Yale drawing a long breath of satisfaction as it struck its roots deep into its new soil. It had found its proper place : New Haven would not be New Haven without the college, nor would Yale be quite Yale without New Haven. But its troubles were by no means over. The dissatisfac- tion at the removal would not down : there was an irregular Commencement in progress at Weth- ersfield while the college was receiving its new name ; and an attempt by the sheriff to remove the library from Saybrook led to a riot, in which many of the books were lost. These difficulties were healed by the prudence of the general court, and Timothy Cutler, of Stratford, was chosen rec- tor in Mr. Andrew's place. He proved to be a most efficient and popular head ; but in 1722 the good people of the colony were astounded to learn that the new rector, one of the tutors, and two neighboring ministers, had embraced Episcopacy, and were going to England to be ordained. They carried out their intention, and became the fathers of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut. But they ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 243 left the college in distress ; and it was not until 1725 that a successor to Mr. Cutler was found, in the person of Rev. Elisha Williams. Under his rectorship Yale at last began to prosper. Berke- ley, subsequently Bishop of Cloyne, made his visit to America, and recognized Yale's claims to a leading educational place by gifts which were, for the time, very munificent ; and Mr. Williams at his resignation in 1739 left the college firmly es- tablished. His successor, Rev. Thomas Clap, of Windham, was the first in the long line of distinctively Yale presidents. His predecessors had been Connecti- cut ministers, set for a time over a special work. He sank everything else in his presidency. He introduced the modern systems of cataloguing the library ; he formulated the laws and customs of the college ; and in 1745 he obtained a new char- ter for " The President and Fellows of Yale Col- lege." The day of the *' collegiate school " had gone by, and the real Yale College had fairly be- gun its career. In 1750-52 the general court aided in erecting Connecticut Hall, and allowed President Clap to hold a lottery to complete the work. In 1755, when disputes connected in one way or other with the new-light controversy were distracting the Connecticut churches. President Clap showed his executive ability and promptness by establishing Yale as a separate church, thus removing it from the scene of active strife ; and 244 CONNECTICUT. further, in order to avoid any conflict over the matter, he very shrewdly refused to ask the gen- eral court for permission, claiming the right, as an incorporated college, to do so. The opposition to the college seized this opportunity to attack it before the general court, on the ground that it was " too independent ; " but President Clap appeared as its attorney, and defended it successfully. He seems to have been one of those college presidents who, endowed by nature with abilities sufficient for eminence in any department, have devoted them all to the development of the college. The college preacher who had been called in 1755, Rev. Naphtali Daggett, retained his posi- tion until his death in 1780, having acted as pres- ident for a time on the death of Mr. Clap in 1767. During his professorship in 1779, the British made their attack on New Haven. Among the hasty levies which went out to oppose them was the stout old college preacher, armed with his shot- gun. When the others took to their heels, he stood his ground, loading and firing in the most unministerial fashion. A British detachment charged him and captured him ; and the officer in command inquired, not very gently, " What are you doing here, you old fool, firing on his majes- ty's troops ? " " Exercising the rights of war," said the doctor, grimly. He was to be exercised in the rights of war in a different way. In his own words, " They damned me, those who took ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 245 me, because they spared my life. Thus, 'midst a thousand insults, my infernal driver hastened me along farther than my strength would admit in the extreme heat of the day, weakened as I was by my wounds and the loss of blood, which, at a moderate computation, could not be less than a quart. And when I failed in some degree through faintness, he would strike me on the back with a heavy walking-staff, and kick me behind with his foot. At length, by the supporting power of God, I arrived at the green in New Haven. ... I ob- tained leave of an officer to be carried into the Widow Lyman's and laid on a bed, where I lay the rest of the day and the succeeding night, in such acute and excruciating pain as I never felt before." President Ezra Stiles, called in 1777, was a worthy successor to President Clap. He was suc- ceeded by Timothy Dwight in 1795, by Jeremiah Day in 1817, by Theodore D. Woolsey in 1846, by Noah Porter in 1871, and by Timothy Dwight in 1886. Modern Yale began under President Dwight, in 1795. Able as preceding presidents had been, he was the first who reached a really national reputation. At the same time the rising opposition to Yale control in the State reacted by intensifying its support, so that it was for the time the ruling power. John Wood, in 1802, thus describes the political structure of Connecticut, from a democratic standpoint : " This State has 246 CONNECTICUT. not formed any constitution since the Revolution ; but ancient superstition and the prejudice of cus- tom have established an hierarchy, which is di- rected by a sovereign pontiff, twelve cardinals, a civil council of nine, and about four hundred pa- rochial bishops. The present priest, who may be honored with the appellation of pope, is Timothy D wight, President of Yale College. . . . The an- nual Commencement at Yale College takes place in September, a short time previous to the elec- tion of the legislature. At this time, the presi- dent is attended by his twelve cardinal members of the corporation, the governor, the lieutenant governor, and seven other senior members of the first legislative house (which compose the lay part), and the greatest part of the clergy. On this occasion, the governor and other civilians are subordinate to the president, and they feel deeply impressed with a sense of their subordination, knowing that he can kill or make alive at the next annual election, — that he emphatically holds the keys which command their political damna- tion or salvation. The pope, being thus sur- rounded by his cardinals, his civil councils, and his parochial bishops, determines the order and detail of the ensuing election. Each one returns home with a perfect understanding of the part he is to act." He then goes on to draw a highly col- ored picture of the manner in which the clergy, the " parochial bishops," control the elections un- der direction of Pope Dwight. ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 247 All this was but a deeply prejudiced view of the feeling which Connecticut, and particularly the clergy, were coming to have toward the col- lege. The little State's little college was fast be- coming a national institution. Its former meagre system, under which instruction was given by the president and a few tutors, was giving place to the organized staff of professors which now num- bers a hundred. From the beginning of this cen- tury, Yale's development has not only been strong, natural, and healthy : it has also tended steadily into university development. The original col- lege has been the nucleus around which have been clustered successive coordinated departments of study. The Medical School was added in 1813; the Theological School in 1822 ; the Law School in 1824 ; the Sheffield Scientific School in 1847 ; the Art School in 1864 ; and the Peabody Mu- seum of Natural History in 1866. In 1886 the title Yale College was changed to that of Yale University. In its sphere, the State's develop- ment has been limited by circumstances, while that of the college has been free from necessary limitations ; naturally, therefore, the devotion of the State to the college has not been able to keep up the closely paternal relations which John Wood found so exasperating in 1802. But the State and city cannot but be proud of the institution which Davenport conceived. Clap preserved, and Dwight sent on its way to its present rank as a great uni- versity. CHAPTER XIV. FINANCIAI. AFFAIRS. 1640-1763. A DEMOCRACY usually finds its vulnerable side in financial errors, and any decadence in the qual- ity of its individual units is most quickly reflected here. Connecticut's success in repairing her own blunders is an evidence that there was at least no decadence in her colonial history. The common- wealth shared with the other New England colo- nies the early difliculties arising from want of me- tallic currency, or from clumsy attempts to supply the want by various attractive but fallacious ex- pedients. At first, the little ready money which the settlers brought with them served for their trade with one another, while the Indian trade was carried on by means of Indian money. It soon became necessary to use the Indian money, wampum, wampum - peage, or simply peage, in traffic among the whites ; and it passed current at the rate of six pieces, later four pieces, to the penny, or a fathom for five shillings. The use of this was not uncommon even during the early years of the next century. In addition, there were all sorts of substitutes for money: beaver-skins, FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 249 codfish, farm products, live stock, bullets, and nails served either for small change or for large pay- ments. Much of the legislation, in Connecticut and in other New England colonies, which has been stigmatized as a sort of sumptuary legisla- tion, fixing prices for goods, was really intended to put a legal value on them so that they might serve as currency, either in liquidating private debts or in paying taxes. In case of doubt, the goods were " prysed," or appraised, by arbitrators selected by the two parties. " Bay shillings," of the Massachusetts coinage of 1652, became current in Connecticut soon after their issue, in spite of the efforts of the Bay col- ony to keep them at home. But clipping soon put them into doubt, and the colonists were driven back to primitive substitutes. The jour- nal of Mrs. Knight, who passed through Connecti- cut in 1704, tells us that there were then in use in that colony four distinct sorts of currency. " Pay " was barter, property at the prices which the general court had affixed to it in acceptance for taxes for that year. " Money " was metallic currency, or wampum for the token money. " Pay as money " was property, at rates fixed by the parties, not by the general court. " Trust " was a price, with time given. The court records often speak of the first as " country pay," not because the articles came from the country, as one might suppose, but because its rates of value were fixed 250 CONNECTICUT. by the " country," a term often used for the col- ony or state, and that in strict accordance with good English precedents. Payment " in specie " meant payment in articles specified by the agree- ment, or, in default of that, in articles at rates specified by the general court's acts. It was not limited to money until gold and silver were made the only legal tender. The " money " used in larger payments was mainly Spanish pieces-of- eight, that is, of eight reals, afterwards supplanted by the Spanish milled dollar, each about equiva- lent to six New England shillings; and the per- sistence of this equivalent value of six shillings to the federal dollar long afterward is a curious sur- vival of ancient values. As all these substitutes varied in value or in price, and as the real money was generally of somewhat doubtful quality, all the difficulties of arithmetic were added to the natural difficulties of trade ; and, as always hap- pens under such circumstances, the sharpest and least scrupulous reaped all the profit, while the mass of the people, too busy with other things to study the intricacies of finance, paid the piper. Not content with this state of affairs, the colony was imprudent enough to seek relief in the thorny paths of paper money emissions. This part of the commonwealth's history is intimately con- nected with her wars. The first set conflict of Connecticut with the Canadian French came after the recovery of the FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 251 charter. The accession of William and Mary to the English throne had been followed at once by- war between England and France, in which the colonies were involved without any great desire for it. Connecticut's position was peculiar. She was shut off from any imminent danger by New York and Massachusetts ; and yet she was in a position from which she could give quicker and more ef- fective aid to the exposed settlements of those colonies than their centres of power could render. Help from Hartford could reach Albany or the towns of western Massachusetts sooner than it could be sent from New York or Boston. Con- necticut was therefore usually at war in defense of her neighbors rather than of herself ; but her aid was never given grudgingly or scantily. At the first rumor of war, Connecticut had sent Captain Bull to Albany with a detachment for the defense of that place, and another detachment to New York city for a similar purpose. Leisler then held New York city, while the Albany dis- trict was in a state of incipient rebellion against him. Suddenly the French and Indians burst into Schenectady, where no sufficient watch was kept, massacred the people, and burned the place. Bull had warned the people to keep a better watch, but to no purpose. Leisler and his oppo- nents both charged the calamity upon the false security produced by the intrigues and promises of the opposite party ; and all the thanks received 252 CONNECTICUT. by Connecticut came in the form of accusations by both parties that she had encouraged the ras- cals of the opposition. There is a good commen- tary on her disinterestedness in the fact that De Callieres' plan of campaign contemplated only an attack on Albany and New York, with no design on Connecticut. In conjunction with the other New England colonies and New York, Connecticut agreed to take part in the land expedition up the Hudson, which was to cooperate with Governor Phipps's sea expedition against Quebec. Fitz John Win- throp was placed in command of the joint forces, with Milborn, Leisler's son-in-law, as commissary. Milborn does not seem to have known enough to provide food or transportation for the army ; and, in default of these very necessary factors of suc- cess, Winthrop was compelled to retreat. Leisler took the side of his son-in-law, heaped volumes of abuse upon Winthrop, and finally ordered him under arrest. It is said that the Indians attached to the army released him, " to the universal joy of the army." The Connecticut general court ex- pressed itself emphatically in his favor, and the tone of Leisler's letters is enough to confirm their judgment. For the remainder of the war, Con- necticut's part was confined to furnishing troops whenever any of her neighbors called for them. The case was much the same in Queen Anne's war, which broke out in 1702, but was aggravated FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 253 by the prograiume pursued by Governor Cornbury of New York, a cousin of the queen, and Governor Dudley of Massachusetts. Dudley's object was to unite all the New England colonies under his government ; but he was shrewd enough to per- suade Cornbury that he meant merely to attach Connecticut to New York. So Connecticut was kept busy in satisfying the requisitions of her neighbor governors for troops and material aid of all kinds, while the two governors were all the time planning to vacate the charter of Connecticut. A bill for that purpose was brought before parlia- ment, and was only defeated by the most untiring efforts of Ashurst, the colony's agent. Dudley's attempt to enforce the Mohegan claims, already mentioned, was a part of the scheme. Dudley's whole scheme proved abortive in 1705 ; and the colony no doubt took great satisfaction, when he next sent a request for troops in 1707, in returning aflat refusal. Two years after, in 1709, on a requisition from the queen for three hundred and fifty men to attack Quebec, and for four hun- dred more for a land expedition against Montreal, Connecticut promptly filled her quota ; and about one hundred of her men were among the dead who were the principal result of the campaign. The next year, three hundred men were raised and took part in the capture of Port Royal. In the following year, four hundred men were raised to give stupid Hovenden Walker the pleasure of wrecking them in Canadian waters. 254 CONNECTICUT. Until 1709 the colony had fought through all its work on a money basis, raising or lowering the tax-rates from time to time as necessity required or permitted. Its limit had now been reached. The taxes had risen to seven or eight pence in the pound, a ruinous rate for a poor and struggling agricultural commonwealth, whose own govern- mental expenses were kept down to the lowest point. In June, 1709, "the great scarcity of money, the payment of the public debts and charges of this government, especially in the in- tended expedition to Canada," led the general court to order the issue of .£8,000 in paper cur- rency. It was to be received at a premium of five per cent, in payment of taxes ; no legal-tender clause was inserted, as in other colonies ; and a special tax of ten pence in the pound was ordered for payment in two annual parts. Further levies made it necessary to order the issue of ,£11,000 more in the same year, with the provision of a tax for payment in six annual parts. From this time the issues went on with bewildering rapidity. In all cases it speaks well for the underlying good sense of the authorities that provision was made for special taxation for the redemption of each issue ; but the evil consequences of such issues could not be altogether avoided. The original avoidance of the legal-tender feature lasted until 1718, and then it was introduced under a bashful cover. Debtors who tendered bills of credit were FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 255 relieved from execution and imprisonment. Fur- ther, counterfeiting had become alarmingly com- mon ; and the general court had come to rely more and more, in every emergency, on fresh emissions of bills of credit. And in 1733 the once cautious colony had become so demoralized as to establish what was really a land-bank, issuing £30,000 in bills, and dividing the amount in loans equally among the five counties. In spite of continuous efforts to provide in advance by taxation for the redemption of each issue, the balance against the colony was growing larger ; the purchasing power of the paper was depreciating ; and, though this effect was disguised from most people by the legal- tender feature, yet there was not a man in the col- ony who could not appreciate it, as it came in the rise of prices of commodities : silver rose in price from 8s. per ounce in 1708 to 18s. in 1732, and to 32s. in 1744. As usual, the price of labor lagged behind in the rise, while the price of all that the laborer ate or wore was rising faster, so that the laborer paid the cost of most of the factitious in- crease of business. The authorities themselves be- came careless, so that, for the first time in its his- tory, the accounts of the colony became so puzzling during this period that it is practically impossible to make anything out of them. The best that can be made of them is that, down to 1740, ,£156,000 of paper had been issued, but that all but about £6,000 of this had been redeemed by taxation; 256 CONNECTICUT. and that there were still outstanding about .£33,000 issued and loaned to the various counties, making about .£39,000 in all for which the colony was now responsible. From the time of Walker's luckless expedition there was peace in the colony for nearly thirty years, such peace as the colonists might have had nearly always but for the fact of the existence of a " home government." In 1739 this " home government" saw fit to declare a war against Spain, which swept France into its circle in 1744, and was only ended by the peace of Aix-la-Cha- pelle in 1748. It was only when the French took part in it that the more northern colonies became fully involved : until then, Oglethorpe and the new colony of Georgia bore the brunt of the con- flict. But the northern colonies did not altogether escape : the home government had prepared an entertainment for them, in Admiral Vernon's Car- thagena expedition, more elaborate than Walker's and almost as unlucky. Connecticut contributed her proportion of the men, one thousand in num- ber, whom New England sent to Carthagena, of whom hardly a hundred returned ; and the ex- penses of the armament called for a further issue of £45,000 in paper, X 8,000 to be applied to the redemption of former issues, or " old tenor," and £23,000 to be loaned out, and the interest applied to redemption purposes. This issue was called " new tenor." In obedience to a demand of the FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 257 board of trade, the legal-tender provision was struck out. The extension of the war to France in 1744, and the brilliant and successful expedition against Louisburg, brought fi'esh expense, which Connecticut met by fresh issues of " new tenor," bringing her whole emissions for the war up to the enormous sum of .£131,000, on a tax valuation of a little more than X 900,000 in 1T43. These bills soon began to depreciate in their turn, but never fell quite so low as those of the old tenor ; at the worst, one of the former was equal to three and a half of the latter. Steadily enforced taxation, and the receipt of some X 29,000 in coin, which was the colony's share of the parliamentary grant in reimbursement of the expenses, were sufficient to wipe out the outstanding paper, which had amounted in 1751 to about X 340,000, reckoning both old and new tenor in old tenor, as was cus- tomary. By 1756 the colony had pretty nearly got rid of her paper. This consummation had been helped by an act of parliament in 1751, for- bidding the issue of legal-tender paper and of paper currency of any kind, unless limited to the taxes of the current year, or secured by taxes payable within five years. It was also helped by the more uncomfortable fact that the colony took advantage of the depreciation of her own paper to redeem it at about eleven per cent, of its face value. Connecticut's experience with the treacherous expedient of paper currency had not been sufficient 17 258 CONNECTICUT. to guard her against all future resorts to it, but it was sufficient to save her from its worst phases for all time to come. In June, 1704, Queen Anne had issued her proclamation, stating a table of values for the various foreign coins then current in Great Britain and the colonies. Such money, at the English equivalents there named, now got the popu- lar name of " proclamation money," or " lawful money," the state of affairs being what would now be called a resumption of specie payments. Dur- ing the paper flood, the proclamation had been little regarded, but it now came into operation. When the French and Indian war broke out, Con- necticut at once met its initial expenses by the issue of paper payable within three years in " law- ful money," with interest at five per cent., and without any legal-tender clause ; and this policy was followed steadily through the war. In all cases, a tax was laid to redeem each emission ; the paper, being of varying value according to the amount of accrued interest, circulated very little as currency ; and there was little depreciation or con- fusion. The whole amount issued was X 359,000, and it all seems to have been paid at maturity or before. Connecticut took her full part in the warlike operations for which all these issues were intended. She had sent eleven hundred of her sons, and a sloop of war of her own, on the expedition to Ijouisburg in 1745, when the colonies, abandoning FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 259 all reliance on the shiftless home government, sur- prised it and themselves by taking a fortress which, by all military rules, should have been impregnable. Her part in the French and Indian war has been somewhat obscured by her strenuous opposition to the plan of union devised at Albany in 1754, at Franklin's suggestion, as if she had been an ob- stacle to the efl&cient prosecution of the war. The plan proposed a general government of the colonies by a president-general and a grand council ; and one secret of Connecticut's opposition to it seems to have been its provision that all nominations of commissioned officers, by land and sea, should be by this central government. From the time of Andros down, every attack on the charter of Con- necticut, either by the crown or by neighbor col- onies, had come in the form of an attempt to get control of the colony's militia ; and the colony had come in her turn to have an almost fanatical determination to commission her own officers. It was this, rather than any unreasonable democracy, which led her into opposition to the plan which always seemed to Franklin the fairest that could have been devised for both parties. At the beginning of the war, Connecticut was called upon for one thousand men as her share of the army which was to win the battle of Lake George. The contingent of the much larger colony of Massachusetts was but a trifle larger ; but Con- necticut not only met the call at once, but author- 260 CONNECTICUT. ized the governor to raise five hundred more, if they should be needed. Her senior officer,, Phineas Lyman, was second in command of the army, of which William Johnson, of New York, was com- mander in chief. The fortune of the two halves of the battle was similar in one respect. Major Williams, of Massachusetts, who commanded the routed advance party, was killed almost at the first fire ; and it was Nathan Whiting, a New Haven officer, who rallied the men and managed the re- treat to the main body. Johnson, having been wounded enough to justify him in retiring, left the field at the beginning of the main action ; and it was Lyman, of Connecticut, who for five long hours carried on the fiercest conflict then on record in colonial history, in which almost the entire French regular force was put out of existence. The real victor did not have even the satisfaction of seeing his name misspelled in the " Gazette." Johnson, according to President Dwight, had the ineffable meanness to ignore him altogether in his report, and to accept the honor of knighthood for the victory which Lyman had won. The histories have treated Lyman very much as his superior officer did. In the unfortunate campaigns of 1756 and 1757, Connecticut regularly raised more than twice the number of men assigned to her as her quota. Her men underwent every vicissitude of the war ; and her public men must have had a training in FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 261 democracy such as their fathers had never quite enjoyed. In this war, the characteristics of de- mocracy and aristocracy were for the first time brought directly into contrast on American soil. The Connecticut democracy had produced a class of men of its own ; all were tested as to their ability, advanced as they were competent to serve the public, and then kept in office until they were ready to retire to a well-won old age. Rotation in office and favoritism were equally incomprehensible to the Connecticut mind. Now it was brought to meet the varying product of the English aristo- cratic system : sometimes a gallant soldier, like Howe or Wolfe ; sometimes a statesman of genius, like Pitt ; more often an imbecile, like Webb or Loudoun or " Mrs. Nabbycrombie," who owed to family or court influence a position for which Con- necticut would never have paid them more than one year's salary. Lyman, commissioned as major general, was senior officer of the Connecticut troops, and Whit- ing his second. Under them were most of the men who afterwards became distinguished as the com- monwealth's contribution to the defense of Ameri- can independence, the most prominent of whom was Israel Putnam. A native of Salem, Mass., of which his forefather had been one of the first set- tlers, he had removed to Pomfret, Conn., in 1739, and it was near that place that his adventure with the wolf gave him a reputation throughout the col* 262 CONNECTICUT. ony for absolute fearlessness. Entering the war as a lieutenant, he came out with the grade of lieutenant colonel, having gained his advance, with the thanks of the colony's legislature, through a succession of wood-ranging adventures which would need a volume for the telling. Lyman, however, would have led Putnam in revolutionary rank and success, but for his unfortunate trust to court honor and gratitude. Going to England in 1763, to secure a grant of land for the disbanded soldiers, he lingered there for eleven years, in all that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick ; returned in 1774, broken in mind as well as in spirit ; and died in West Florida the following year. The Connecticut troops were in all the cam- paigns of 1758 ; they took their share in the awful butchery of Ticonderoga, and in the second cap- ture of Louisburg. The colony's efforts were so exhausting that, when it was called on for 5,000 men in the following year, it shrank, for the first time, from fulfilling it. The general court at first resolved that it was impossible to raise more than 3,600 men, because of the efforts of the past three years, and of the numbers of its citizens who had enlisted in the royal provincial regiments or among the boatmen. On the urgent request of the gov- ernor, the number was increased to 4,000 ; and another session, two months later, finally raised this to 5,000, the number first called for. The encouragement afforded by the capture of Quebec FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 263 made it easier to renew this effort the next year ; and in 1761 it was called on for but two thirds the usual number. In 1762 the colony was called on for 1,000 men for the expedition to Havana. Ly- man had command of all the provincial forces, 2,500 in all ; and Putnam was now in command of Lyman's own regiment. In this, as in the expedi- tion against Carthagena, there was a great deal of what was then known as " glory : " wounds, disease, and death for the many ; booty, pleasure, and rep- utation for the few. Only a handful of the men who left Connecticut for the expedition ever re- turned ; and this one event probably deprived the colony of the services of many an officer whose ex- perience would have been invaluable twelve years later. With the close of the French and Indian war, Connecticut was brought at last into close practi- cal relations with her sister colonies : the union which she had rejected, through a somewhat ex- treme provincialism, in 1754, had been forced on her by circumstances, although it had not been put on paper, or definitely expressed in its terms ; for that, a more severe exigency was necessary. But the pressure of well-understood common necessi- ties had taught her people the duty of unselfish ex- ertion for the common defense. She was now pre- pared, as she had never been prepared before, to take her place as a coordinated commonwealth in an American union. Before turning to the process 264 CONNECTICUT. by which this was accomplished, it is proper to notice the steps by which the colony, which was to extend from Narragansett Bay to the Pacific Ocean, was restricted to the limits with which she entered the Union under the Constitution. CHAPTER XV. COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. — WYOMING AND THE WESTERN RESERVE. The century following the grant and establish- ment of the charter was a period of quiet but al- most uninterrupted growth for Connecticut. Com- paratively undisturbed by wars or by the inter- ference of the home government, with no royal agent within her borders to frame indictments against her policy and methods, and to press them upon the king's attention, she went steadily on her way to that which her people wanted most, — the undisturbed power of gaining a livelihood and of worshiping God under democratic government. Her charter had secured to them most of these objects ; the obstacle to the attainment of the rest was the unkindly nature of her soil. In 1680 the colonial government sent, in answer to a request of the board of trade for detailed in- formation, a statement of the colony's condition. Its quaint and sometimes apparently guarded lan- guage carries in it many indications of the almost hopeless weakness of the colony, and of the stout hearts of the men who were maintaining it. The 266 CONNECTICUT. draft of the letter is from the hand of John Allyn. He estimates the fighting men, or " trained bands," of the colony, at 2,507, which might imply a pop- ulation of between ten and twelve thousand, or about three persons to the square mile, — about half the proportion of Nebraska in 1880. The peo- ple had "little traffique abroad," and the bulk of their trade was in " sending what provissions we rays to Boston, where we buy goods with it, to cloath vs." The country was mountainous, full of rocks, swamps, hills and vales ; most that was fit for planting had been taken up ; " what remaynes must be subdued, and gained out of the fire as it were, by hard blowes and for smal recompence." The principal towns were Hartford, New London, New Haven, and Fairfield, with twenty-six smaller towns, in one of which " we have two churches." The buildings, however, were not so bad, *' for a wilderness ; " they were of wood, stone, and brick, many of them, says Allyn with pardonable pride, *' 40 foot long and 20 foot broad, and some larger : three and four stories high." On second thoughts, Allyn struck out these latter specifications, perhaps fearing that such a picture of opulence might excite the greed of the home government. The exports were farm products, boards, staves, and horses, mainly sent to Boston, but some small quanti- ties to the West Indies, there to be bartered " for suger, cotton wool and rumme, and some money." Tobacco was grown for home consumption. There COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 267 were but twenty merchants in the colony, and few of these had a foreign trade. There were very few servants, and only about thirty slaves, imported from Barbadoes at £22 each. The largest ship of the colony was one of ninety tons*, twenty-eight others ranged from eight to eighty tons. Labor was scarce and dear ; wages were 2s. and 2s. Qd. a day ; and provisions were cheap, so that there was little necessity for poor relief. Beggars and vagabonds " were not suffered," but, when discovered, were bound out to service. There were no duties imposed by the colony on exports, and only a duty on imported wines, to be used as a school fund. The property of the col- ony was estimated for taxing purposes at about .£110,000. But, in all such estimates, it should be remembered that about two fifths of it was more in the nature of a poll-tax, the tax being in- creased according to a somewhat arbitrary sched- ule of supposed wealth or position in the various trades and professions, so that it took the place, in part, of an income tax as well. In spite of the poverty of the colony, its vitality was shown by the steady increase in the number of its towns. Allyn gives their number as twenty- six in 1680. Six of these, Lyme, Haddam, Sims- bury, Wallingford, Derby, and Woodbury, had been incorporated since the union of the two col- onies ; and three more, Waterbury, Glastenbury, and Plainfield, were to become towns before the 268 CONNECTICUT. end of the century. In the development of these new towns there were two distinct processes, ac- cording to the nature of the case. A speculator or a company might buy lands from the Indians, with the approval of the general court, in some lo- cality outside of the bounds of any town. As soon as the rates became sufficiently large to need the extension of the general court's taxing power over the little community, a committee was appointed by that body to bound out the town : it was then expected to choose constables, and send delegates to the general court. The other process contin- ually tended to become the only one. A town, when first established, usually had extensive boun- daries. Those persons who settled in the outflying districts of the township found it more and more troublesome, particularly in winter, to resort to the old church for preaching. "When there were enough of such dissatisfied persons to support a minister of their own, they applied to the general court for permission to form a church. For the church was really a territorial term, quite as much so as the township ; and the setting off of a new church meant the diminution of the area of the old church, and the inclusion of all persons within the new bounds in the new church. As this involved a diminution of the resources of the old church, it regularly met with strong opposition, and was only successful after several petitions. The erec- tion into a town followed at the discretion of the COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 269 general court. Plainfield may be taken as a com- bination of the two processes. Originally settled as " Quinnabaug plantation," it was important enough in 1700 to become a town. The general court therefore incorporated it, named it Plain- field, and gave it, as was an essential step, a spe- cial brand for its horses, in this case a triangle. In May, 1703, some discension having arisen, the court ordered the territory to be divided into two parts, the western settlers to pay their rates for the support of the eastern minister until they had " an approved minister " of their own. Their choice having been approved, the general court proceeded in October to constitute the people of the westei'n half of Plainfield a distinct town, under the name of Canterbury, with a horse brand of its own. The charter seems to have contemplated a gen- eral meeting of the governor, lieutenant governor, assistants, and deputies as the general assembly, still often called the general court ; and this was the form which its meetings at first took. In 1678 the court ordered that the governor, lieuten- ant governor, and assistants should be a council to act for the commonwealth during the recesses of the court. This was the prelude to the inevitable introduction of a bi-cameral system. In 1698 the general court ordered that the council should sit as a separate house, and the deputies as the other, and that laws should be passed only by the assent of both houses ; and the arrangement went into 270 CONNECTICUT. force the next year. This change was followed by the adoption of a doable capital. Among the first measures of conciliation proposed by Connec- ticut to induce New Haven to accept the charter was that New Haven should be made a coordinate capital of the commonwealth, as well as county town of a distinct county. New Haven's rejection of the terms caused the former proposition to lapse for the time ; but it was put into force in 1701. It was decided that the May session of the general court should be held hereafter at Hart- ford, and the October session at New Haven. This arrangement lasted until 1873, when Hart- ford was again made sole capital. The long period of peace and comparative pros- perity during the first half of the last century was prolific in new towns. From 1700 until 1745 thirty of them were incorporated, very nearly as many as were in existence in 1700. There was an equally steady growth in population, though all the figures for it must be mere estimates. It is estimated by Bancroft at 17,000 for the year 1688, and by Trumbull at the same figures for 1713. In 1755 the board of trade estimated it at 100,000 ; and Bancroft at 133,000, with 3,500 slaves. It is not possible to get neai'er to the truth ; but the constantly increasing quotas of Connecticut to New England armies during the years between 1690 and 1763 are enough to show the growing population of the colony. At the COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 271 date last named, a comparison of Bancroft's esti- mate for Connecticut with that for Massachusetts (207,000), and for whites in Virginia (168,000), will show that the seed planted on the banks of the Connecticut had grown into one of the stateli- est trees on the continent. It had grown so large as to feel the cramping influence of its surround- ings. In 1762 all the soil of the colony had been al- lotted to townships, and new towns formed after that year were carved out of townships already in existence. Long before that time, population had begun to show a disposition to swarm. The first effort in this direction was due to the boun- dary settlement of 1713-14 between Connecticut and Massachusetts. In consideration of certain concessions in straightening the line, Massachu- setts gave Connecticut a parcel of her western lands. Some of these (60,000 acres, according to the New York attorney general's report in 1752), though then believed to be in Massachusetts, wei'e really in the district to be known as Vermont. These lands were sold by Connecticut to private parties, and their purchases drew off the atten- tion of a considerable number of her people to this territory. The erection of Fort Dummer in 1729 offered some promise of protection to set- tlers, and those who had long owned these wild lands began to think of settling upon them. At first, a few young men were sent thither in the 272 CONNECTICUT. summer to work the land, returning home for the winter. New York claimed jurisdiction over the whole territory, under the iniquitous grant to the duke, which had been extended up to the Con- necticut River in defiance of the Massachusetts and Connecticut charters. So far as these two colonies were concerned, the claim had been given up ; but New York still maintained it against New Hampshire. Governor Wentworth, of New Hampshire, insisted that the limits of his colony extended as far west as the two colonies to the south, though it is not easy to see on what ground. He proceeded to make grants of land in the dis- puted territory, very many of them to Connecti- cut settlers. He cared for little except the pro- ceeds of the sales, and left civil organization to the settlers. The result was that the Connecti- cut town system was again transferred to a wil- derness, there to begin a struggle with the central- ized system of New York. The Vermont towns were even more independent than their proto- types ; and their " independence and unbridled democracy" formed one of the arguments by which New York obtained a judgment in her fa- vor from the home government. Connecticut blood and town and personal names were strongly represented in the " Hampshire Grants ; " indeed, some of the towns in the grants held their first town meeting in Connecticut before the removal of their settlers. Ethan and Iia Allen, Warner, COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 273 the Chipmans, Chittenden, and a host of other Connecticut men, took a leading phice among those who resisted the authorities of New York, with, perhaps, a touch of hereditary bitterness ; and when the territory erected itself into a State in 1777, it assumed the significant title of " New Connecticut," the more appropriate name of Ver- mont being substituted in the course of the year. The details of the struggle are not within our province. It need only be said that the New York authorities seem to have found most embar- rassment in dealing with the new and vigorous form of local government which had become es- tablished in the territory, and that the final establishment of the State of Vermont may fairly be claimed as another success of the Connecticut town system. Here dropping this extra-legal effort at com- monwealth expansion, we come to the strictly le- gal attempt to enforce the charter boundaries, and its failure. The effort evidently arose from an instinctive perception that the practical bounds of the commonwealth would seriously cramp its growth, and reduce its rank among the States, as they have since done. The charter bounds ex- tended west to the Pacific Ocean : this would have carried Connecticut over a strip covering the northern two fifths of the present State of Penn- sylvania. Stuart faithlessness interfered with this doubly. Almost immediately after the grant of 18 274 CONNECTICUT. the charter, Charles granted to his brother James the Dutch colony of New Netherland, thus inter- rupting the continuity of Connecticut. Rather than resist the king's brother, Connecticut agreed and ratified the interruption. In 1681 a more serious interference took place. Charles granted to Penn the province of Pennsylvania, extending westward five degrees between the 40th and 43d parallels of north latitude. The width of the province would have been from the northern out- skirts of Philadelphia to about the present city of Utica in New York, thus taking in five degrees of Connecticut's grant, and all western New York except the lake-shore. Geographical knowledge "was not very profound; and Penn seems to have founded his capital city before discovering that he had unluckily placed it too far to the south, out- side of his own province and in the Baltimore grant. What was to be done ? The solution of tlie difficulty deserves more credit for its ingenuity than for its ingenuousness, and Bancroft absolves Penn from responsibility for it. The language of his grant was from " the beginning of the 40th parallel " to " the beginning of the 43d." What was " the beginning of the 40th parallel " ? Evi- dently, said the Pennsylvania argument, the 39th. And " the beginning of the 43d " ? As clearly, the 42d. Ergo, Pennsylvania extended south from its present northern boundary to Annapolis, taking in the city of Baltimore on the way. The COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 275 war having thus been carried into Africa, the of' far was made to compromise with the Baltimore family on the present boundaries, from about latitude 39° 45' to latitude 42°, and, after half a century's struggle, the compromise was adopted. New York was more than satisfied with the ar- rangement, as it carried her southern boundary a full degree to the south ; and all the parties seem to have ignored Connecticut. The territory taken from Connecticut by the Penn grant would be bounded southerly on the present map by a straight line entering Pennsyl- vania about Stroudsburg, just north of the Dela- ware Water Gap, and running west through Hazel- ton, Catawissa, Clearfield, and New Castle, taking in all the northern coal, iron, and oil fields. It was a royal heritage, but the Penns made no at- tempt to settle it, and Connecticut until the middle of the eighteenth century had no energy to spare from the task of winning her home territory " out of the fire, as it were, by hard blows and for small recompense." This task had been fairly well done by 1750, and in 1753 a movement to colonize in the Wyoming country was set on foot in Wind- ham county. It spread by degrees until the Sus- quehanna Company was formed the next year, with nearly 700 members, of whom 638 were of Connecticut. Their agents made a treaty with the Five Nations July 11, 1754, by which they bought for £2,000 a tract of land beginning at the forty- 276 CONNECTICUT. first degree of latitude, the southerly boundary of Connecticut ; thence running north, following the line of the Susquehanna at a distance of ten miles from it, to the present northern boundary of Pennsylvania ; thence one hundred and twenty miles west ; thence south to the forty-first degree and back to the point of beginning. In May, 1755, the Connecticut general assembly expressed its acquiescence in the scheme, if the king should approve it ; and it approved also a plan of Samuel Hazard, of Philadelphia, for another colony, to be placed west of Pennsylvania, and within the char- tered limits of Connecticut. The court might have taken stronger ground than this ; for, at the meet- ing of commissioners from the various colonies at Albany, in 1754, the representatives of Pennsyl- vania being present, no opposition was made to a resolution that Connecticut and Massachusetts, by charter right, extended west to the South Sea. The formation of the Susquehanna Company brought out objections from Pennsylvania, but the company sent out surveyors and plotted its tract. Settlement was begun on the Delaware River in 1757, and in the Susquehanna purchase in 1762. This was a temporary settlement, the set- tlers going home for the winter. A permanent venture was made the next year on the flats be- low Wilkes Barre, but it was destroyed by the Indians the same year. In 1768 the company COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 211 marked out five townships, and sent out forty set- tlers for the first, Kingston. Most of them, in- cluding the famous Captain Zebulon Butler, had served in the French and Indian war ; and their first step was to build the " Forty Fort." The Penns, after their usual policy, had refused to sell lands, but had leased plots to a number of men on condition of their " defending the lands from the Connecticut claimants." The forty Connecti- cut men found these in possession when they ar- rived in February, 1769, and a war of writs and arrests followed for the remainder of the year. The Pennsylvania men had one too powerful ar- gument in the shape of a four-pounder gun, and they retained possession at the end of the year. Early in 1770 the forty reappeared, captured the four-pounder, and secured possession. For a time in 1771 the Pennsylvania men returned, put up a fort of their own, and engaged in a partisan warfare ; but the numbers of the Connecticut men were rapidly increasing, and they remained mas- ters until the opening of the Revolution, when they numbered some three thousand. The Con- necticut general court passed a resolution in 1771, maintaining the claim of its colony to its charter limits west of the Delaware. In 1774 it erected the Susquehanna district into a town, under the name of Westmoreland, making it a part of Litch- field county, the farthest northwest of the origi- nal counties ; and its deputies took their seats in 278 CONNECTICUT. the Connecticut legislature. In 1776, Westmore- land town was made a distinct county, and its civil organization was complete. Connecticut laws and taxes were enforced regularly ; Connecticut courts alone were in session ; and the levies from the dis- trict formed the twenty-fourth Connecticut regi- ment in the Continental armies. The sordid, grasping, long -leasing policy of the Penns had never been able to stand a moment before the on- coming wave of Connecticut democracy, with its individual land-ownership, its liberal local govern- ment, and the personal incentive offered to indi- viduals by its town system. So far as the Penns were concerned, the Connecticut town system sim- ply swept over them, and hardly thought of them as it went. But for the Revolution, the check oc- casioned by the massacre, and the appearance of a popular government in place of the Penns, nothing could have prevented the establishment of Con- necticut's authority over all the regions embraced in her western claims. In July, 1778, after the Continental Congress had refused to allow the temporary return of the able-bodied men whom the Westmoreland people had sent freely into the army, the Tories and In- dians, under John Butler and Brandt, fell upon the almost defenseless settlement. They met no unresisting victims. The old men and boys, the town dignitaries who had been administering civil affairs, mustered into rank, and only yielded and COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 279 fled after a loss of half their number. The women and children were spared for the greater horrors of the overland retreat to Connecticut ; and the Connecticut possession vanished again into thin air. Detached parties returned from time to time, gathered scanty crops under constant dan- ger from Indians, and kept alive the claims of in- dividuals and of the commonwealth. But West- moreland county, as it had been, was no more. The articles of confederation went into force early in 1781. One of their provisions empowered congress to appoint courts of arbitration to decide disputes between States as to boundaries. Penn- sylvania at once availed herself of this, and ap- plied for a court to decide the Wyoming dispute. Connecticut asked for time, in order to get papers from England ; but congress overruled the mo- tion, and ordered the court to meet at Trenton in November, 1782. After forty-one days of argu- ment, the court came to the unanimous conclusion that Wyoming, or the Susquehanna district, be- longed to Pennsylvania and not to Connecticut. It came to light, more than ten years afterward, that the court had secretly agreed on two points for its guidance : (1) whatever its decision might be, it was to assign no reasons for it ; and (2) the minority was to yield to the majority, in order to make the decision unanimous. The knowledge of these antecedent conditions takes away much of the force of the decision ; but they were not 280 CONNECTICUT. known in 1782, and Connecticut yielded at once. For this yielding, however, there were probably reasons apart from the justice of the decision. It was just at this time that the Western terri- tory was the controlling question in politics. Virginia, under a strained and very dubious inter- pretation of her northern boundary, claimed the whole Northwest, in addition to Kentucky. The States whose western boundaries were fixed had two points of objection : Virginia would get none of this territory if the authority of the crown were reestablished ; and they did not intend to spend their blood and money in order to obtain the Northwest for Virginia. Connecticut's western claims, though based on a clear, not on a doubt- ful, charter statement, were too much on a par with those of Virginia to be easily separated from them. There was an instinctive sense, outside of Virginia, that the national existence of the United States was bound up with the jurisdiction over this Northwest territory ; and Connecticut's share in the feeling was enough to balance even her selfish interests. She even imperiled the latter by yielding to the decision ; for it is hardly pos- sible to reconcile the decision of 1782, which ig- nored the charter, with the acceptance by congress of the Connecticut cession of 1786, which im- pliedly recognized the charter and the very claims which had been rejected in 1782. There was no bargain, for Pennsylvania in 1786 voted not to COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 281 accept the cession, on the ground that it recog- nized the charter. Connecticut simply made way intelligently, if somewhat regretfully, for the coming nationality. The cession of 1786 of course put an end to all Connecticut's ambitions of commonwealth expan- sion : she was to be forever restricted to the terri- tory lying between Massachusetts and Long Is- land Sound, and between Rhode Island and New York. And yet the legal title of Connecticut to the territory which she gave up by this cession was beyond dispute. It has been suggested that the crown made the grant under ignorance, sup- posing that North America was far narrower than it proved to be. But the Plymouth council, when it gave up its charter in 1635, notified the king that their grant was " through all the main land, from sea to sea, being near about three thousand miles in length^ There was not a geographer in England but knew that the Connecticut grant, in its turn, was three thousand miles long. It was adduced as a prior grant by the English com- missioners against the French in 1752, in order to assert title across the Mississippi. Its validity was recognized by the Albany congress of 1754, Penn- sylvania being represented. The establishment of the Mississippi as a boundary line between the colonies and Spain was founded on these western charters of indefinite extent. The peace of 1783, which laid claim to the Mississippi as a western 282 CONNECTICUT. boundary for the United States, was a renewed ajB&rmation of the charters which had carried the claims of the United States up to that river. Fi- nally, the acceptance of the Connecticut cession by the United States in 1786 was a renewed con- firmation of the charter's validity, on which the further claim of the United States was based. The fact that Connecticut had yielded to the erection of the new colony of New York was of interest only to the two colonies involved, — Con- necticut and New York ; no third party, as Penn- sylvania, could gain or lose any rights thereby. It would have been absurd to ask Connecticut to surrender a claim so sound in law, and so for- tified by repeated recognitions, without any rec- ompense. Her proposition, that she should re- serve a tract of about the same length and width as the Wyoming grant, west of Pennsylvania, in northeastern Ohio, was accepted ; and this was the tract known as the Western Reserve of Con- necticut. It contained about three and a half millions of acres. In 1792 some five hundred thousand acres in the western part of the Reserve were devoted to the relief of those persons who had been burned out and plundered by the Brit- ish : this was known as the "Fire Lands." The rest was sold under the direction of a legislative committee, and the proceeds were devoted to the school fund of the commonwealth. It was not very productive until Senator James Hillhouse COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 283 was appointed sole commissioner in 1810. He held the position for some fifteen years, and in- creased the principal to nearly $2,000,000, with an annual income of over $50,000. This principal still remains intact. The unfortunate Wyoming settlers, deserted by their own State, and left to the mercy of rival claimants, had a hard time of it for years. The militia of the neighboring counties of Pennsylva- nia was mustered, to enforce the writs of Pennsyl- vania courts ; the property of the Connecticut men was destroyed, their fences were cast down, and their rights ignored ; and the " Pennamite and Yankee War " began. The Yankees were evi- dently getting the worse, and their friends at home were not deaf to their grievances. The old Susquehanna Company was reorganized in 1785- 86, and made ready to support its settlers by force. New Yankee faces came crowding into the dis- puted territory. Among them was Ethan Allen, and with him came some Green Mountain Boys, the promise and potency of more, and pungent memories of the manner in which Vermont had solved a similar diflficulty with New York. It was an open secret that the intention was to organize a new State, and weary Pennsylvania and con- gress into a recognition of it. Its constitution had been drafted, and its state officers tacitly agreed upon. Pennsylvania in 1786 passed an accommodation 284 CONNECTICUT. act, by which the lands of actual settlers were confirmed to them, and the district was erected into the county of Luzerne. Unfortunately, there were dissensions between the old settlers and the new-comers of the Wyoming district, and Penn- sylvania suspended the accommodation act in 1788, and repealed it in 1790. There were re- newed struggles, and in 1799 the act was sub- stantially reenacted, and the controversy came to an end. The settlement had the result of car- rying into Pennsylvania a large infusion of Con- necticut blood, the source of the prevalence of Connecticut names in this part of Pennsylvania. CHAPTER XVI. THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. The close of the French and Indian war marks the period when Connecticut's democratic consti- tution began to influence other commonwealths. Her charter was an object-lesson to all of them. It was the standard to which their demands grad- ually came up ; and their growing demands upon the crown caused an equally steady approximation toward the establishment of a local democracy like that which Connecticut had kept up for a hundred and fifty years. The passage of the Stamp Act by the English Parliament was met at once by a protest from the Connecticut general assembly, followed by in- structions to its agent in London to insist firmly on " the exclusive right of the colonies to tax themselves and on the privilege of trial by jury," as rights which " they never could recede from." It had good reason to speak plainly, for the prin- ciple of the act struck more heavily at Connecti- cut than at any other colony except Rhode Is- land. No other colonies had been so completely free from any appearance of royal interference as 286 CONNECTICUT. these ; and Connecticut's lack of commerce had prevented it from feeling even those forms of royal interference which the commercial interests of Rhode Island had brought upon it. To Con- necticut the act was simply intolerable, and she not only spoke but made ready for action. Jared Ingersoll, of New Haven, was sent to London as special agent to remonstrate against the passage of the act. When his mission had failed, he accepted the office of stamp agent for Connecticut, by advice of Franklin, and set out for home. He found things there in a ferment. The governor and some of the leading men were willing to submit, rather than risk the loss of the charter, but the instinct of the democracy taught it that this was the time to put its charter priv- ileges into security forever. The ministers were preaching against the act ; the towns were order- ing their officers to disregard it, promising to hold them harmless ; Trumbull had become the head of a popular movement ; and volunteer organiza- tions, calling themselves " Sons of Liberty," were patrolling the country, overawing those who were inclined to support the home government, and making ready to resist the execution of the law. Ingersoll seems to have been sufficiently impressed with the strength of the home government to be willing to avoid a conflict ; and he meant now to execute faithfully the office which he had accepted only to make its provisions more tolerable to his THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 287 countrymen. The meeting between him and them was that of the flint and steel. The Sons of Lib- erty were out and in waiting for him as he rode from New Haven to Hartford ; and he entered the capital under the escort of a thousand horse- men, farmers and freeholders, who had compelled him to resign his office. He had not lost his head or shown any craven frailty : he had simply made up his mind that he had gone far enough in an unpleasant duty, and that " the cause was not worth dying for." He had, however, carried his resistance up to the verge of temerity ; and, as he rode on his white horse at the head of the trium- phant mob, he said afterward that he realized at last what the book of Revelation meant by "Death on the pale horse, and hell following him." Governor Fitch died in 1766, and, after a three years' service of William Pitkin, Jonathan Trum- bull, the first " war governor " of Connecticut, succeeded him. He held the office until 1783 ; he was the trusted associate of Washington, and the latter's familiar way of addressing him when ask- ing his advice or assistance is said to have been the origin of the popular phrase " Brother Jona- than." The family has been one of the most noted in the history of the commonwealth. It has included Governor Jonathan Trumbull, his sons John (the painter), Jonathan, governor from 1798 until 1809, and Joseph, commissarj'^ general 288 CONNECTICUT. of the Revolutionary army ; John Trumbull, the author of " McFingal ; " Benjamin Trumbull, the author of one of the standard histories of the State ; James Hammond Trumbull, the recognized authority on the Indian languages and the history of the State ; his brother, H. C. Trumbull, a leader in missionary and Sunday-school work ; and ex-Senator Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois. The reign of the Trumbulls was ushered in brilliantly by the governor. In him the people had found the man they needed, and doubt and hesitation fled before him. The rapid succession of events which followed the Boston Tea Party — the Boston Port Bill, the Massachusetts Act, and the preparations of Massa- chusetts for active resistance — met prompt sym- pathy and support in Connecticut. The non-im- portation agreement had been universally signed in 1768-69, and, if contemporary accounts are to be trusted, was kept far more faithfully in Con- necticut than in some of her neighbor colonies. Unofficial preparations, with the quiet approval of the oflScial authorities, were now made, so that, when hostilities began, Connecticut was the first colony to take her place abreast of Massachusetts. In all this there was not one iota of change in the traditional policy of the colony. In the pro- ceedings which led to the loss or serious modifica- tion of the Massachusetts charter in 1691, Con- necticut had taken no part with the attacked col- THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 289 ony, partly because the latter had no intentions of real resistance, and partly because such resistance, under the circumstances into which Massachusetts had got herself, was evidently hopeless. In 1728 likewise, when Massachusetts was engaging in a war of annoyances with her royal governors, Con- necticut had instructed her London agent to take no part with Massachusetts, but to secure the colony's maintenance of her charter quite inde- pendently of her. The Connecticut general as- sembly had a great trust confided to it, and it was not disposed to risk it in Quixotic enterprises of this sort. In 1769-70 Massachusetts had at last been wrought up to concert pitch : her people ev- idently meant to fight ; there was a fair chance of success, since the other colonies showed their in- tention of supporting her ; the enterprise was neces- sary, was no longer Quixotic, and Connecticut went into it heart and soul. Nothing in the history of this commonwealth is so noteworthy as the pre- vailing characteristic of its people, — their judicial power of estimating the chances of success, their self-restraint under every provocation until the chances seem to be reasonably good, and their un- reserved abandonment to action when the time for action seems to have fully come. It is Con- necticut tradition that the first step of the gen- eral assembly in 1763 was to appoint three of its ablest men to argue in favor of the right of parlia- ment to tax the colonies, and three fairly matched 19 290 CONNECTICUT. opponents to argue against it ; that the argument, consuming several days, took place before the as- sembly under a pledge of secrecy from all con- cerned ; and that its result was the unanimous agreement of the members against the right of parliament, and in favor of the lawfulness of resist- ance. The story is fairly typical of the Connecti- cut way of looking at questions of the kind, its determination to anchor tenacity of purpose fast in legality of object, and to insist first on being right. One may well speculate as to the results on American history if such a people, instead of being cribbed into four thousand square miles of territory, had been able to impress their character- istics on the population of the magnificent domain which was theirs by charter. At first, the preparations for resistance were made by the towns, which acted, in the traditional Connecticut fashion, as if they were little com- monwealths in themselves. They met, voted sol- emn condemnation of the ministry, appointed committees of safety, and appropriated money to buy arms and powder. Every town sent its con- tribution to the poor of Boston, and every com- mittee felt bound also to send a long letter of con- dolence. The general assembly then began prepa- rations to direct the storm. In May and October, 1774, it appointed military officers where they were needed ; directed every military company in the colony to be drilled, with fines for non-attend« THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 291 ance ; and sent delegates to the Continental Con- gress. The recommendations of tliat body against importing or exporting goods from or to Great Britain were endorsed by the general assembly, and wei'e faithfully carried out. But it is, again, a curious survival of primitive conditions that the towns thought it necessary for them also to meet and endorse the action of congress and the assem- bly. The town republics, which had given birth to the commonwealth, were still conscious of an abundant vitality. The battle of Lexington led to the first offen- sive movement by the Americans ; and it is a sin- gularly fitting testimony to Connecticut's readi- ness to help Massachusetts, that, while the latter was defending herself, this offensive movement for her relief, the capture of Ticonderoga and its stores, came from Connecticut. The general as- sembly refrained from officially sanctioning it ; but it was undertaken with its approval, and it .paid the bills for the expedition two years after- ward. The opportunity for the venture was of- fered by the close connection which had so long existed between Connecticut and Vermont. Silas Deane and ten associates, having assurances of the assembly's approval, took the money, some X800, out of the treasury, giving their receipts therefor ; took a party of Connecticut volunteers to Vermont ; raised a force among the kindred spirits of that region ; and made the capture 292 CONNECTICUT. which brought encouragement and relief to the blockading army before Boston. Long before this, however, the men of Connec- ticut had been in motion for Boston. The first message from the governor to Putnam, announ- cing the fight at Concord and Lexington, found the veteran at work in his field. He left the plow in the furrow, galloped to the governor's resi- dence, and received orders to go to Boston forth- with. He rode thither in eighteen hours, without dismounting, and was followed by the volunteers of his colony, many of whom had undergone train- ing in the French and Indian war. With Put- nam, as leading ofi&cers, were David Wooster and Joseph Spencer, also veterans ; they were com- missioned by congress as brigadier-generals, and Putnam as major-general. It is a little curious that Arnold, though a Connecticut man by birth, did not receive any special recognition from the colony, his commissions and employments being mainly from Massachusetts. The general assembly ordered the emission of £100,000 in bills of credit, to provide for the equipment of eight regiments, which were ordered to be enlisted from the militia. One result of the far-sighted preparations of the commonwealth was, that, when the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, and the ammunition of the fort's defenders con- sisted of but sixty-three half-barrels of powder, thirty-six of them were a present from the colony THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 293 of Connecticut. Like all the other New England colonies, she sent men who were unaccustomed to discipline, and were not easily brought under prompt military obedience ; but Bunker Hill was enough to show that they could at least fight when placed before an enemy. If there was a flag in the line, it was theirs ; they held the rail fence until the retreat was secured ; and their leader, Putnam, put his own life at stake again and again in the effort to check the retreat at Bunker Hill, and at every step on the road off the peninsula. Indeed, it is a mooted question whether, in the general confusion of the day, Put- nam should not be considered the commander of the American forces engaged. The colony itself was corjiparatively safe from invasion except on the coast, where there was an attack on Stonington by a British vessel. Never- theless, those who had not gone to the seat of war were not disposed to remain idle. Connecticut was practically unanimous on the great question ; New York was badly divided, and the Tories there were men of influence and determination. The man of most influence among them was Riving- ton, the publisher of the " New York Gazette," the Tory newspaper organ. Early in September, 1775, Captain Isaac Sears, having raised a troop of Connecticut horsemen, rode into New York city, raided the " Gazette " office, and carried off the types and apparatus. Early in 1776 Gen- 294 CONNECTICUT. eral Lee seized New York city with some 1,200 Connecticut troops, and held it until Washington's army was transferred thither after the evacuation of Boston. Then Putnam was put in command of the city and its environs, and drove off the Eng- lish fleet. One of the ornaments of the city had been an equestrian statue of King George, cast in lead and gilt. Just a week after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, this was carried off by night to the house of Oliver Wolcott, in Litchfield county, and there cast into bullets, making 42,088 cartridges. While the zeal of the people thus outran official discretion, the Connecticut authorities also had all that they could attend to, though in a soberer way. Governor Trumbull's correspondence with Washington had already assumed that close and confidential cast which it maintained throughout the contest. The assembly was busily engaged in raising men, and providing for their support by the issue of bills and by taxation. It is not too much to say that for a time almost the entire bur- den of the struggle lay upon Connecticut ; and the unflinching manner in which it was met and sustained is made more conspicuous by the fact that the colony was not individually menaced as were colonies which refused to bear any fair pro- portion of the burden. The Department of the North, in 1775, had 2,800 men in the field ; 2,500 of these were Connecticut troops. When Wash- THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 295 ington's army settled down around New York, more than half of his force of 17,000 men had been contributed by Connecticut. It was not wonderful that Washington should write to the governor that he had " full confidence in your most ready assistance on every occasion, and that such measures as appear to you most likely to ad- vance the public good, in this and every instance, will be most cheerfully adopted ; " nor that he should speak of the assembly in such terms as these : " I have nothing to suggest for the consid- eration of your assembly ; I am confident they will not be wanting in their exertions for support- ing the just and constitutional rights of the colo- nies." Even Washington's emphasis had some- thing of reserve and self-restraint about it ; and his unreserve in this case derives additional force from his well-grounded complaints of the action of colonial authorities in general. One of the captains of Knowlton's Connecticut regiment was Captain Nathan Hale, a graduate of Yale in 1773, a young man of fine personal pres- ence and of high intelligence. His family was settled in Coventry, Conn. ; and his ancestor had been the first minister of Beverly, Mass. While Washington was lying near Fort Washington, af- ter the retreat from Long Island, it became im- peratively necessary for him to obtain accurate intelligence from the British camp. He called for a volunteer from the younger officers of the 296 CONNECTICUT. army, and Hale was the only one who offered him- self. His offer was accepted, and his mission had been accomplished with skill and success, when he was recognized by a Tory relative in the Brit- ish lines, who sent word to headquarters that an American spy was at work in the camp. Adver- tised and described throughout the lines, he yet had sufficient address to make his way as far as the outposts before he was arrested. The testi- mony of his relative convicted him, and he was hanged on the following morning. Not so much his fate, as the manner of it, exasperated the peo- ple of the commonwealth. He was denied the company of a minister ; the poor consolation of a written message home was refused ; and it was the common report that the reason for this bar- barity of punishment was that " the rebels might not know that they had a man in their army who could die with such firmness." In the traditional Connecticut spirit, having undertaken the work, he did not flinch from its consummation. His last words were : "If I had ten thousand lives, I would lay them down in defense of my country." The words meant something in his mouth. On the coast, the preponderant navy of the king was very annoying, but principally in its at- tacks on chicken-roosts and sheepfolds. Yankee ingenuity exerted itself to get rid of the annoy- ance. David Bushnell, another young graduate of Yale, of the class of 1775, living at Saybrook, THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 297 stimulated by the necessity of the case, brought out his " American Turtle," which was to antici- pate the modern system of torpedoes, and blow the British fleet out of water. The Turtle contained a magazine of explosives, and a connected system of clock-work, and could be kept under the control of the operator on shore, so as to rise and fall at his will. The first attempt, made by a person unfamiliar with the mechanism, resulted in a tre- mendous explosion, not under the vessel aimed at, but near enough to put the naval officers into a terrible fright. Another attempt had better suc- cess, and this increased the terror. Still another, in 1777, gave rise to the panic among the British forces at Philadelphia which Hopkinson celebrated in his " Battle of the Kegs." Long afterward, in 1813, on a similar occasion, the too impertinent intrusion of the British fleet on the shores of Con- necticut was rebuked and checked in the same fashion. A British vessel was allowed to capture a vessel in which explosives had been connected with a clock-work. The Ramillies barely escaped destruction, and her angry commander inflicted a bombardment on the offending town, Stonington, demanding as the price of exemption that the in- habitants should promise to set no more torpedoes afloat, a demand which was promptly refused. The interior of the commonwealth, secure alike by its distance from the seat of war, by the uni- versal loyalty of its population, and by the primi- 298 CONNECTICUT. tive simplicity of a people who knew all tlieir neighbors for miles, and could detect any one at- tempting an escape, was a most excellent place for the detention of prisoners. The jails, the public buildings, and even the private houses of the northern townships, were made places of deposit for prisoners of war or for political prisoners. Hither came the Tory oflELcials of New York, the prisoners from Long Island, and others ; and the lenity of their treatment stood in strong contrast with the condition of the Americans who returned from the horrible prison-hulks of the British forces, starved, diseased, and treated with every shade of heathenish cruelty short of absolute cannibalism. Their return home is particularly creditable to the colonists in that it seems to have made no differ- ence in their treatment of their own prisoners, or rather guests. It must be acknowledged that the substantial unanimity of the people had been secured by strong, if unofficial, measures. The authorities ■winked assiduously at the operations of the town committees who made it their special business to see that Tories recanted, left the town, or were placed where they would do the least harm. We have no means of ascertaining exactly how far it was necessary for these committees to go. Terrible accounts of their doings, of their riotous proceed- ings, tarrings and featherings, etc., are given us by the Rev. Samuel Peters, a Tory clergyman of TEE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 299 the Church of England, who was driven from the colony during the opening troubles, and afterwards took a terrible revenge by publishing a " History " of Connecticut in London. But Peters stands also as the only authority for the phenomena at Bel- lows' Falls, where the water of the Connecticut River runs so swiftly that an iron crowbar cannot be forced into it, but floats on the surface ; for the inhumanity, to give it no worse name, of Hooker, in giving to the Connecticut Indians Bibles infected with the smallpox, so as to put them out of the way of the rising young colony ; for the amusing manner in which the inhabitants of Windham, alarmed by the noise of an invading army, kept guard against it all night, finding in the morning that it was no more than a flying column of frogs on the way to water ; for those singular members of the Connecticut fauna, the " whapperknocker " and the " cuba," whose untamable ferocity, so well known to all naturalists, the veracious " Doctor " takes pleasure in describing from personal obser- vation ; and for such a mass of other lies as Mun- chausen himself might have been proud to father. Unless this mass of fiction is also to be taken on Peters's authority, it is difficult to see how his authority is to count for much as to the asserted mistreatment of Connecticut Tories. Outside of Peters's statements, and the vague newspaper stories current at that day, the strongest case made against the Connecticut fathers of the 800 CONNECTICUT. republic is in their use of the Simsbury copper- mines as a place of confinement for Tories " and other notorious offenders." The existence of cop- per at Simsbury was suspected as early as 1705 ; and the town leased the mines to various compa- nies, who brought over miners from Germany and spent their money freely, but got little of it back. The ore contained from fifteen to twenty per cent, of copper, but was too refractory to do more than lure speculators into bankruptcy through assayers' reports. Governor Belcher wrote in 1735 that he had spent $75,000 there since 1721. Coins, called " Granby coppers," from the residence of the coiner in the neighboring town of Granby, were made from the metal in 1737-39 ; but the copper was so nearly pure, and so much in demand for jewelers' alloy, that they have almost disappeared. In 1773 mining ceased, and the colony spent about $375 in fitting up the mine as a prison. The main shaft was near the top of a small hill ; and the buildings at the mouth, the wall surrounding them, and the naked hill sloping down in front of it, must have added a shade of horror to the unknown future in the mind of the Tory who was approaching it. Certain it is that hardly anything was so dreadful to the Tory mind as the prospect of incarceration at Simsbury. In 1781 congress applied for per- mission to use it as a prison for state offenders ; but the almost immediate cessation of hostilities relieved the national authority from any such ne. cessity. THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 301 The number confined here, both of ordinary of- fenders and of Tories, probably never exceeded thirty at any one time ; but the number of insur- rections and escapes was disproportionately great, showing that even copper-mines will not a prison make. The shaft was nearly a hundred feet deep ; but the cells were in the galleries, none of them more than sixty feet below the surface. In spite of the frequent escapes, public confidence in the security of the place was unimpaired, and it was the ordinary state prison from 1790 until 1827, when the new prison at Wethersfield took its place. In defense of the establishment of the prison in such a location, it may be urged that such a step was not considered improper anywhere at the time ; that the terrors of the place were more in imagination than in reality; that the health of the prisoners was good and was not af- fected unfavorably by their location ; and that special practices of that time must not be judged by the more civilized theory of a later era. So late as 1807, a traveler who visited it could go no further in reprehension than to say : " For myself, I cannot get rid of the impression that, without any extraordinary cruelty in its actual operation, there is something very like cruelty in the device and design." How much more lenient must have been the judgment of a sound Whig of 1775 when he saw a Tory consigned to the Simsbury New* gate! 302 CONNECTICUT. Patriotic solicitude must have been reinforced by religious intolerance. The Episcopal Church had always been an alien in Connecticut. Its founders had broken away from the Established or Congregational Church ; their success had di- minished the resources of the latter ; their minis- ters had to cross the ocean to be ordained, and to take a special oath of allegiance to the crown ; they were his majesty's opposition in a colony ■which liked neither majesty nor opposition ; and they were strongly suspected of a design to reduce this, with the other colonies, to some form of episcopacy. The latter belief, which had a special weight in bringing about the final revolution, was increased in Connecticut by the fact that, when- ever the Episcopal Church had come into collision with the colonial authorities, its first and most ef- fective weapon had always been a threat of appeal to the home government. There was probably hardly a man in Connecticut who, being a Whig and a Congregationalist, did not believe that every Episcopalian was either an open or a secret Tory, and that the Episcopalian ministers were their leaders and guides. The Episcopal churches in the colony were shut, and the ministers were si- lenced, except Rev. John Beach, an Episcopalian missionary at Reading and Newtown, who persisted in praying for the king as usual, in spite of rough treatment at the hands of the Whigs. For the time, the Episcopal Church in Connecticut was sus* THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 803 pended, and its members were almost outlawed, for the colonial authorities would give them only. a grudging protection. The reestablishment of peace brought the reestablishment of the Church ; and, thirty years later, the sons of its members had the pious satisfaction of disestablishing the Church which had persecuted their fathers. The connection between the Episcopalians of Connecticut and of New York city had always been close, and it cannot be supposed that the suf- ferings of the Connecticut Tories had been looked at with indifference in New York. As the tide of war rolled off through the Jerseys toward Phila- delphia, stripping Connecticut of a large portion of its able-bodied men, the time seemed to have come for a blow that should teach the Congrega- tional colony that its enemies had still some of the terrors of war at their command. Tryon, the royalist governor of New York, with a force of two thousand men and twenty-five vessels, sailed east- ward through Long Island Sound, and landed at Saugatuck, about twenty miles from Danbury, •where a considerable amount of Continental and State stores had been gathered. A hasty march overland brought them to Danbury, April 26, 1777, where they destroyed not only the stores, but the bulk of the town, carefully sparing Tory property. There were some Continental soldiers in the neighborhood, and two officers of rank, Wooster and Arnold. The latter rallied all the 304 CONNECTICUT. men available, regulars and militia, and headed Tryon on his retreat, at Ridgefield. In the battle, Wooster was mortally wounded, and Tryon broke through and resumed his way to the Sound. Ar- nold kept up the pursuit until the British took refuge on the shipping and sailed away. The ex- pedition was followed by one from New Haven in retaliation. Colonel Meigs crossed the Sound with nearly two hundred men in whaleboats to Sag Harbor, attacked the place a little after midnight, captured it, and burned twelve vessels, with a large amount of stores. He then recrossed the Sound with ninety prisoners, and without losing a man. In the mean time Connecticut had become a State. In May, 1776, the people had been formally released from their allegiance to the crown ; and in October the general assembly passed an act assuming the functions of a State. The important section of the act was the first, as follows : " That the ancient form of civil government, contained in the charter from Charles the Second, King of Eng- land, and adopted by the people of this State, shall be and remain the civil Constitution of this State, under the sole authority of the people thereof, in- dependent of any King or Prince whatever. And that this Republic is, and shall forever be and re- main, a free, sovereign, and independent State, by the name of the State of Connecticut." The form of the act speaks what was doubtless always the THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 305 belief of the people, that their charter derived its validity, not from the will of the crown, but from the assent of the people. And the curious language of the last sentence, in which " this Republic " de- clares itself to be " a free, sovereign, and indepen- dent State," may serve to indicate something cf the appearance which state sovereignty doubtless presented to the American of 1776-89. It is not safe to take " the United States "of 1887 as ex- actly equivalent, in the eyes of the people, to "the United States" of 1776-89. The nation was born ; but its constituent units were often painfully unconscious of the birth. The main theatre of war continued to be out- side of the State ; but her troops shared in all its dangers and hardships. The one great business of the State authorities was to fill up the State's quota of men and provide for their maintenance ; that of the towns was to fill up their quotas, and to follow the ever- shifting continental currency by changing the necessary salaries as it changed. No one can follow the town records without receiving an increased respect for the persistent devotion of the people to the common cause. There seems to have been little attempt to shift burdens to the shoulders of others ; but each town accepted its share as a necessary fact, and strained every en- ergy to meet it. It would have been hardly pos- sible that such devotion should have been purely unselfish ; the fact was that, safe as the State was 20 806 CONNECTICUT. in general, there was hardly a moment when it was not exposed to the possibility of harassing par- tisan warfare. The British headquarters in New York city were so near, and transportation by ship was so easy, that the whole coast of the State was exposed. In addition to the services of her regular levies, the purely State troops were com- pelled to serve tours of duty on the coast; and detachments were posted in the various exposed towns. Putnam had been in command of the American forces, and his headquarters had been at Peekskill, within supporting distance of the new post at West Point, whose importance he had been the first to see and secure. He removed his headquarters to Reading in 1778, and from that place fulfilled his old duty, while aiding in the de- fense of the exposed portions of his own State. It was during this period of service that he met with the adventure at Horse Neck, which is one of the best known of his eventful life, though it was probably one of which he thought the least. One of the most urgent needs of the " rebels " was salt. It was made roughly at various places on the coast, and, with all its inevitable impurities, was grateful enough to the people. One of these salt-works was at Horse Neck, and a British force came up from New York to destroy it. Putnam delayed so long in providing for his men's retreat that his only way of escape was to plunge on horse- back down a long flight of stone steps, his baffled pursuers reining in at the top and contenting THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 307 themselves with firing inefEectually at him as he went. Early in the winter of 1779-80, Putnam under- took a visit to his home in Pomfret, but was struck with partial paralysis on his journey. He never recovered from it, but was disabled until his death in 1790. Washington thus lost the ser- vices of one on whom he had always leaned largely. He was perhaps the most uneducated officer in the army ; his name was synonymous in the British view with bad manners and coarse- ness ; his portrait is that of a gross, heavy man, as far removed as possible from the popular no- tion of the Connecticut Yankee ; but his prompt decision, natural intelligence, and unswerving de- termination were just the qualities that would rec- ommend him equally to his men and to the com- mander-in-chief. They are shown in his letter of the previous year to Tryon, in a case in which the latter had threatened retaliation. If it is not gen- uine, it is a most skillful forgery, for it speaks the voice of Putnam in every line. It is as follows : — " Sir : Nathan Palmer, a lieutenant in your King's service, was taken in my camp as a spy. He was tried as a spy ; he was condemned as a spy ; and you may rest assured, sir, he shall be hanged as a spy. I have the honor to be, &c. Israel Putnam. His Excellency, Governor Tryon. P. S. Afternoon. He is hanged^ 308 CONNECTICUT. The Fourth of July in 1779 fell on Sunday, and the people of New Haven had made arrangements to celebrate the Declaration of American Inde- pendence on the day after. Before the exercises had fairly begun, the town was thrown into con- sternation by the news that Tryon's fleet and forces, numbering 3,000 men in some forty-eight vessels, had dropped anchor near West Haven at five o'clock that morning, and were on the march for New Haven. They came in two detachments, of 1,500 men each, one marching from West Ha- ven, the other attacking and capturing a small fort at Black Rock on its way. The first detach- ment met some resistance, and entered the town by the Derby Road. By one o'clock in the after- noon all resistance had been overcome, and the invaders had met at the green, then an unsightly common. The town was given up to plunder un- til the following morning, when the British retired as suddenly as they had come. They had been guilty of many acts of the most bai'barous cruelty, the accounts of which are preserved in tradition or print ; they had inflicted a money loss of some ^6 25,000, but the buildings of the college and the other public edifices were undamaged. Sailing along the coast, Try on landed at Fair- field, July 8, and destroyed that place. Here public and private buildings alike were fired. The same was the case at the village of Green's Farms the next morning; and then the British THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 309 commander called off liis dogs for a little space. They crossed the Sound to Huntington Bay, and remained there until July 11. Recrossing the Sound to Norwalk, they spent the day in the work of destruction. When they took their departure, the quiet little town had disappeared but for the smoke of its torment, which hung over the spot where it had been. By this time the population of the interior was mustering to meet Try on at his next landing, and he prudently retired to headquarters. He had inflicted upon Connecti- cut a loss of about .£250,000, as appeared by the proven claims for which the general assembly, as before stated, allotted 500,000 acres of north- western lands in 1792. But he had not broken the spirit of the people ; and his own loss in men, nearly three hundred, was enough to convince him that such attacks were no longer to take rank as purely plundering expeditions, but were to be attended with some danger to life and limb. Such knowledge was sufficient to appease his martial ardor, and he vexed Connecticut very little more. Try on had been so injudicious as to give special protection to the property of Tories in his work ; and the Tories had been so imprudent as not only to receive the protection but to exult in it. A few of them had taken the inevitable next step, by retiring with Tryon's fleet ; but others had the weakness or folly to remain. In May, 1778, the 310 CONNECTICUT. general assembly had begun the process of confis- cation against avowed or absconding Tories, under the euphemism of " settling their estates ; " the Tryon episode naturally had the effect of stimu- lating the energy of the State authorities in en- forcing the process, and of provoking even a more bitter feeling of the Whigs against those Tories who retained their former dwelling-places. Some of the names which had been most influential in the history of the colony disappeared at this time from the records of the State, and their property passed into other hands. But some of the former holders remained, and their influence in subse- quent politics is a fair witness to the clemency of Connecticut. Dr. Peters himself returned to his former parish in 1806, for a visit, and found that even his " History " had been condoned. He died at New York in 1826 ; and his nephew was gov- ernor of Connecticut in 1831-32. The Connecticut authorities had been indefati- gable in raising and provisioning troops, and her people had been equally earnest in offering their services. In the number of men contributed she stood second of the States with 31,939 men, Mas- sachusetts being first with 67,907. Considering differences of population, and more especially dif- ferences in immediate danger, Connecticut's quota stands out well beside the 25,678 of Pennsylva- nia, the 17,781 of New York, the 6,417 of South Carolina, or the 2,679 of Georgia. In general THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 311 orders of June 16, 1782, Washington spoke of the Connecticut Brigade as " composed of as fine a body of men as any in the army ; " and he ex- pressed a wish for a general review of the men, to decide the relative proficiency of the Connecticut men. In another order, issued two days after- ward, he thus expressed his high opinion of the State's line : " The General informs the Army he had great occasion to be satisfied at the review of the Second Connecticut Brigade yesterday, espe- cially with the soldier-like and veteran appearance of the men, and the exactness with which the fir- ings were performed. He felt particular pleasure in observing the cleanliness and steadiness of the second Regiment under arms." And the historian of the commonwealth may be pardoned for taking a " particular pleasure " in noting the fact, that, with the exception of a briefer compliment to a Massachusetts brigade, this is the only instance in Washington's Revolutionary orders of such public commendation of any State's quota. In almost all cases Connecticut men were drafted into ser- vice outside of the State, to make good the defi- ciencies of less zealous States. She had, in addi- tion, to maintain almost all the defense of her own borders, and that while Long Island Sound was under complete control of the enemy's ships. Her success in so doing almost stopped civilized life around the Sound. The Connecticut Tories were driven to Long Island, while the Long Island Whigs 312 CONNECTICUT. crossed into Connecticut ; and the waters of the Sound were harassed by almost continual skir- mishing. When the French forces were quartered within the State, her people enjoyed a season of comparative tranquillity. When they were with- drawn for the march on Yorktown, which was planned by Washington and the French leaders in a meeting at Wethersfield, Arnold, now in the British service, made his raid on New London, and the State, as usual, was compelled to meet the shock almost unsupported, Arnold, a native of Norwich, knew the country around New London well, and its defenseless con- dition was no secret to him. Two small works had been thrown up, forts Trumbull and Gris- wold ; but the former was open at the rear, and had a garrison of but twenty-three men, who were ordered to retreat to the other fort at the approach of danger. Colonel William Ledyard was in com- mand of both forts. Arnold's landing on the morning of September 6, 1781, seems to have been a surprise to every one in the town ; and his 1,700 roen were at work on both sides of the river before any effective preparations could be made to meet him. Indeed, no such preparations could have been made, even with a day's notice ; there were no troops to draw upon. Fort Trumbull was taken with a rush : Ledyard drew in his men to Fort Griswold ; and while Arnold reserved to himself the congenial task of burning the town, THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 313 its dwellings, warehouses, and shipping, the next in command, on the other side of the river, was directed to storm Fort Griswold. The British soldier is a noble animal ; but the notion that he will not strike an enemy who is " down " should be relegated to the ante-Buff on= ian period of natural history. Badajos was nei- ther the first nor the last witness to the contrary ; and too many British officers have put on record their impressions of the British soldier in the mo- ment of victory for us to be surprised at such a little matter as happened at Fort Griswold. Tlie unusual circumstance in this case was that the of- ficer in command was the greatest brute, appar- ently, of the storming party. After an obstinate resistance, in which Ledyard exhausted every means of defense, and all the British officers of high rank had been carried off dead or dying, the storming party, of which a Major Bromfield was now left in command, poured in. " Who com- mands this fort? " called Bromfield. "I did, sir ; but you do now," said Ledyard, offering his sword. Bromfield, infuriated by the unexpected slaugh- ter, seized the sword and plunged it into Led- yard's breast. With such an example from one in authority, the soldiers' instincts came out at their worst ; the defenders were bayoneted where- ever they sought refuge, until all but about twenty- five of the one hundred and fifty men in the fort were killed or desperately wounded. The fire of rage dying out for want of sound material, wa8 314 CONNECTICUT. revived by the collection of the wounded ; and thirty-five of these were placed in a cart and rolled down the slope, among rocks and stumps, to be dashed to pieces at the bottom for the amuse- ment of the soldiers. The plea has been offered that the laws of war allowed military execution of the sort upon a fort which persisted in a hopeless defense ; but this point of the laws of war has probably never been so strained before as in this case, and, in any event, the wounded have com- monly been held exempt. As Arnold passed out of New London harbor, the Revolutionary struggle passed away with him. It had been a time of sudden and tremendous growth, this transformation of the colony into a State, of the disappearance of old ideas and of old loyalty, of burnings and plunderings, of life-long separations through the fortune of war, of family and social disintegration, of heavy taxation amid stringent poverty, of great burdens manfully borne ; but the fancy is almost forced to picture, as the crowning episode of the war, the old com- monwealth sitting among the ruins which her re- creant son had wrought, and watching him as he sailed away to be worse and less than a foreigner to her forevermore. It may be only a natural shrinking from an unnatural crime, or it may be a remnant of ancient controversies, which has made the historians of Connecticut so careful to note the fact that Arnold was by blood a Rhode Island man. CHAPTER XVII. THE ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. The relations of Connecticut to the articles of confederation were peculiar. For a century and a half, the full energy of the commonwealth had been at work to maintain the autonomy secured by the charter, and to exclude from the soil of Connecticut every vestige of authority not owning the people of Connecticut as its legitimate source. From this standpoint, the articles, with their ex- press and tacit attempts to reserve and strengthen state sovereignty, were the exact representatives of Connecticut feeling. The vote in favor of them would have been practically unanimous in 1781, the year in which they went into effect. Other considerations soon compelled attention. One of the first results of the adoption of the ar- ticles, as has been stated, was the ousting of Con- necticut from her western claims, with the excep- tion of a reservation which seemed pitiful alongside of Virginia's royal reservation for the satisfaction of her debts and obligations. Instead of the main- tenance of vast claims in the Northwest, her busi- ness was now to secure her independence of her 316 CONNECTICUT. nearer neighbors : and this was difficult enough. The desolation wrought by the Revolutionary con- flict, with the features peculiar to it in this quarter of America, was of continuing effect : the towns of the Connecticut coast were poverty-stricken, their merchants were bankrupt ; there was no energy to spare among the people for the revival of foreign commerce, and the imports of the State were of necessity made through Boston or New York. Here they found no amicable treatment, under the provisions of the articles of confedera- tion which allowed each State to levy taxes on im- ports. Something like one third of the expenses of the New York government were paid by taxa- tion levied so as to be borne by imports into Con- necticut ; even this burden was not enough to de- velop a domestic commerce in the subordinate State; and the only resource available was the poor one of turning to pay, in like manner, one third of the expenses of the Massachusetts government. State sovereignty was very fine in theory ; but a state sovereignty bottomed on the sole power of the State was found by Connecticut to be a very poor / resource for her. It was not long before the lead- / ing minds of Connecticut were ready to give up this naked and deceptive state sovereignty for state rights, bottomed on the guaranty of a na- tional power. In February, 1781, just before the articles actu- ally went into effect, congress notified the States ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 317 that it would be absolutely necessary for them to surrender to congress a limited power to levy taxes on imports, in order to satisfy the public debt. It was essential that every state legislature should agree to this, and the assent of Connecticut, with all but one of the other States, was balked by the veto of the smallest of the States, Rhode Island. Before Rhode Island could be reasoned with, Vir- ginia repealed her assenting act, and the veto was made more positive. For the next half-dozen years the position of Connecticut was unchanged : her people, instinctively willing for national taxa- tion, were moved by what may seem an unreason- able jealousy of the Society of the Cincinnati, and were unwilling to see a national taxing power under its control or in its interest. For this, how- ever, there was some excuse. The feeling of the military authorities toward the privates of the Revolutionary armies would seem odd to men of the present day. To Washington, for example, it was always the oflScers who were the "gentlemen of the army ; " the privates were food for powder, well enough off with. rations, clothes, and glory. When " half-pay for the army " was proposed by congress in 1778, it was only for the commissioned officers ; $80 apiece in continental money at the end of the war was thought a quite liberal provi- sion for the insignificant privates. It may very easily be seen that such notions as these were not likely to be popular in an ultra-democratic State 318 CONNECTICUT. like Connecticut ; and it is probable that her Rev- olutionary privates were as bitter in their opposi- tion to the Society of the Cincinnati as those who had not entered the army at all. It was not " the old leaven of Silas Deane," as Hamilton thought, but the instincts of democracy, that fought against caste distinctions in the army, as elsewhere. In April, 1783, a still more limited proposition to grant taxing powers to congress, with a recom- mendation to change the basis of contribution from land to number of inhabitants, was sent out to the States. Connecticut assented at once, with New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Virginia, North and South Carolina ; but the other States assented so slowly or so grudgingly that the proposi- tion hung fire. When New York gave it the coup de grace in 1786, Connecticut had been on the side of the proposed reformation in every vote. She sent no representatives to the Annapolis Convention of 1786 ; and Knox attributes her neglect or refusal to " jealousy." With all respect to his judgment, i) must be noted that the meeting of that body took place in the height of the anti- Cincinnati ex- citement ; that this seed of discontent was removed before the Philadelphia Convention met ; and that Connecticut's delegates to that body showed that her previous "jealousy" had been of a nature to which neither Knox nor any other typical Revolu- tionary officer could do substantial justice, much less deal kindly with it. ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 319 In May, 1787, the general assembly of Connec- ticut appointed William Samuel Johnson, Roger Sherman, and Oliver Ellsworth delegates to the federal convention at Philadelphia, with instruc- tions to meet the delegates of the other States, and " to discuss upon such alterations and provisions, agreeably to the general principles of republican government, as they shall think proper to render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union." The convention met May 14 ; a majority of the States were ready for business May 25 ; and Ells- worth attended May 28, Sherman May 30, and Johnson June 2. From the first appearance of Ellsworth the Connecticut delegation was in the thick of every struggle. It has been said that its members " aspired to act as mediators " in the convention ; if so, the aspiration was justified by its fruits, for the ability of the delegates was reinforced by the peculiar position of their State. Sherman, though of Massachusetts by birth, was of that family which has always been strong in the Con- necticut Valley, and has since blossomed into new power in Ohio. Johnson, of the Stratford blood which had introduced Episcopacy into Connecticut, was yet a devoted and trusted Whig throughout the Revolution. Ellsworth, subsequently chief justice of the United States and of his State, was of a Windsor family. The three were probably the ablest lawyers in the State, represented all 320 CONNECTICUT. shades of opinion in it, and all its territorial divi- sions, and were united only in the desire for a good national government. No interest in the State could claim more than one of them ; they be- longed to the whole State and to the Union. The attitude of Connecticut has been repre- sented as that of a " small State," intent only on obtaining every possible reservation of state sover- eignty. Such a representation is grossly unfair. There was no reason for it a priori. The State had nothing to gain by it. Her territorial limits were distinctly closed for the future ; and she was wisely and justly determined that the new govern- ment should not take the form proposed by Vir- ginia, a congress of two houses, both chosen by the States in direct proportion to population, with a president and judiciary appointed by this congress, so that a caucus, or " deal," by a few large States would give them absolute control of the govern- ment in all its branches. This latter proposition would in reality have been the greatest of calami- ties for a real development of national spirit and power. Connecticut desired a sound and practical national government, and the path to it was marked out for her delegates by their own com- monwealth's development and history for one hun- dred and fifty years. Through this long period, Connecticut had been the only colony, with the exception of Rhode Island (unrepresented in this convention), which ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 321 had had a governor and council, chosen by majority vote and by almost universal suffrage ; her dele- gates were therefore quite prepared for the pro- position that at least a part of the new federal government should be chosen in much the same way. On the other hand, in the development of new towns, Connecticut had always been careful to maintain the substantial equality of each town- ship in at least one branch of her government ; her delegates were therefore quite prepared for the proposition that at least a part of the new federal government should similarly recognize the equality of the States. Her combination of commonwealth and town rights had worked so simply and natu- rally that her delegates were quite prepared to suggest a similar combination of national and state rights as the foundation of the new government. The circumstances were enough to clear their mental vision, to enable them to look calmly and judiciously at every new proposition, and to make them real " mediators." This is the crowning glory of the system which Hooker inaugurated in the wilderness, and of the commonwealth of Connecticut. For a century and a half, she had been maintaining the rudimentary form of that mixture of the national and federal elements which are now united in our federal government and give it its strength. This system had bred up a race of public men who were accustomed to it. Their chosen men went as delegates to the convention, 21 322 CONNECTICUT. and were urged at every step in the line whicli Hooker had marked out for them, and which their commonwealth had been making straight for them for a hundred and fifty years. It is hardly too much to say that the birth of the constitution was merely the grafting of the Connecticut system on the stock of the old confederation, where it has grown into richer luxuriance than Hooker could ever have dreamed of. The proceedings of the convention, in dealing with the legislative, executive, and judicial ele- ments of the constitution, are so voluminous and complicated, and Sherman, Ellsworth, and Johnson made up so large a part of almost every debate, that the reader of the convention's proceedings may easily become confused, and will be apt to conclude that, able as these men were, they simply contributed detached portions of the work ; and thus the essential service of the Connecticut com- monwealth may be altogether lost sight of. It is far better to fix the attention on one point of time, the most critical, perhaps, of the convention, and thus to see how the whole force which had been accumulating for one hundred and fifty years came in at the right time to turn the convention into the exact track which made permanent success pos- sible, against the desires of the mass of the mem- bers. It should be remembered, also, that Con- necticut delegates had strong grounds of appeal to the confidence of their fellows through the course ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 323 of the commonwealth in the public affairs of the previous half-dozen years. She was evidently dis- interested, with no selfish schemes to work for and no selfish object to gain. Her population gave her respect in the eyes of the large States. Hei democracy gave the small States confidence in her. Her position was one of unusual advantage ; but it would have been worthless but for the long years of preparation which had been begun in the three little towns on the banks of the Connecticut. The two plans which came to the front in the opening hours of the convention — the " Virginia Plan," presented by Randolph, and the " Jersey Plan," pi'esented by Patterson — are usually de- scribed as respectively the " National " and the " State Sovereignty " plans. Nothing could be more misleading than such a classification ; neither had anything of the spirit of nationality in it. The Virginia plan, giving control of both houses of congress to numbers, and control of the executive and judiciary to the two houses, was merely a scheme to secure the bulk of the spoils to the com- bination of a few large States ; the Jersey plan, continuing the articles of confederation, with the power of coercing insubordinate States, was a counter-scheme to insure the safety of the small States against the large ones. The futility of the appellation " national " may be seen in the disgust with which the large-State men looked at their own plan when Connecticut had forced a really national 824 CONNECTICUT. element into it. They no longer loved their off- spring. The discussion of the two plans ran on through the month of June. Between the two parties, and belonging to neither, was Connecticut, and her unswerving position was first made public on the 11th of June. Here were two sets of States : one voting steadily for proportional representation in both of two houses, the other voting as steadily for a single house and absolute State equality in that. In the first class were usually Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia; in the second, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Mai'vland. It is odd that great expectations of coming immigration kept the Southern States in the column of " large " States, while New York, without a thought of her coming western expansion, posed contentedly as a " small " State. The discussions of the successive items of the rival plans were conducted daily in committee of the whole house, and Connecticut seized the opportunity to declare her position, June 11. On motion of Sherman, slightly amended by King, it was voted that representation in the first branch of the national legislature should be pro- portional, not equal. This was a "large State" proposition, but Connecticut voted for it, placing herself in the large-State column, and making the vote seven in favor, three against, and one (Mary- land) divided. Then Sherman, seconded by his ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 325 own colleague Ellsworth, as if to make the attitude of their State more pronounced, moved that each State have a vote in the second branch (the sen- ate). This was a practical incorporation of the small-State proposition, and the large States voted it down, six to five. From this time on, the pro- position of State equality in the upper, and pro- portionate representation in the lower house of congress was renewed again and again by the Con- necticut delegates, was commonly cited as -" the Connecticut proposal," and was regularly voted down by six to five until July 2. This steady vote of Connecticut with the small States made that a minority not to be disregarded ; and, as passion rose higher until a public threat was made that the small States would confederate and find a foreign power which would take them by the hand for their protection, the cool, deliberate, and per- sistently offered compromise of Connecticut be- came harder to resist. On the 2d of July, the large-State delegates showed the first symptoms of breaking, by referring the Connecticut proposal to a committee of one from each State. We have no means of knowing the proceedings of the commit- tee, but they must have been interesting. It is only known that Franklin's influence was cast for the Connecticut proposal ; and that it was reported favorably, July 5. The report met a storm of opposition. Madison " only restrained himself from animadverting on the report from the re- 326 CONNECTICUT. spect he bore to the members of the committee." Wilson angrily exclaimed that the committee had exceeded their powers. On the 7th of July, North Carolina came over to the Connecticut proposal, and the report of the committee was at last adopted by a vote of six States for it, Pennsylvania, Vir- ginia, and South Carolina against it, and Massa- chusetts and Georgia divided. The great question was settled, and the Connecticut proposal went on the 26th of July to a committee of detail, which reported the constitution of the senate, much as it was finally adopted. With this achievement, Connecticut's work in the convention was really finished. Her delegates constantly lent the great weight of their legal ability and strong common sense, reinforced by the general confidence in them, to the subsequent debates ; but their leadership, assumed unwillingly and only from a sense of duty, was dropped aa soon as the occasion which called for it was over. The system of complete local liberty, with a limited but concentrated central power, under which the Connecticut river towns had filled out their boundaries and had struggled desperately but vainly for expansion abroad, had passed into a wider field, where it was to have a wider success. Governor Huntington was a hearty supporter of the proposed constitution ; the assembly unani- mously called a convention to consider it ; and that body met at Hartford, and ratified the consti. ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 327 tution, January 9, 1788, by a vote of one hundred and twenty-eight to forty. Ellsworth and John- son received the deserved honor of being chosen as the State's first representatives in the senate of the United States; and the commonwealth of Con- necticut became merged in the greater common- wealth of the United States, its own lineal suc- cessor. CHAPTER XViri. INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. The development of Connecticut under the constitution has been a curious but natural conse- quence of her preceding history. All her institu- tions had tended to the development of an abound- ing individualism among her people. Thrown into any situation, a Connecticut party set at once about organizing civil government, and the indi- vidual began the promptest and most efl&cient pre- parations for taking care of himself. It was the institutions of the commonwealth, not any wonder- ful or elaborate system of common schools, that made the people of Connecticut what they were ; for the hopes of early years, for a thorough com- mon-school system, have only been realized in recent times. Until tbe new era in popular edu- cation came in, the ordinary Connecticut citizen had what would now be considered a very meagre education ; but he had something much better in the thoroughly learned lesson of looking out for himself. Further, the constant application of this lesson, under the necessities of the people, had de- veloped the class of what are often called " house- INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 329 hold industries " very considerably before the close of the last century. Farmers and their sons did not lose the evenings or rainy days: these were spent in making nails and other iron products, or anything which would sell. All this, continued through generations, took the place of the techni- cal education which is now finding its way into our school systems. The consequence has been, during the last seventy years, the development of the modern Connecticut mechanic out of the Con- necticut agriculturist of the last century, and the transformation of the commonwealth into a great industrial community. The devastation of the Revolution had rather checked than stopped the internal development of the commonwealth. New towns were erected even during the heat of the war, and while so man}'^ of the old towns were under plunder and fire; and the attainment of peace was like the throwing down of a dam — the new towns numbering two in 1784, five in 1785, thirteen in 1786, and ten be- tween that year and the close of the century. It was estimated by the convention of 1787 that the State then had a population of 202,000, exceeded only by Virginia (600,000), Massachusetts (352,000), Pennsylvania (341,000), Maryland, (254,000), and New York (238,000). In the as- signment of representatives in congress before the first census, ten were given to Virginia, eight each to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, six to New 330 CONNECTICUT. York and Maryland, and Connecticut, North Caro- lina, and South Carolina were put on a level with five each. When the first census was taken it was found that the population of the State was 237,946, making its rank eighth among the States. The second census, in 1800, gave it the same relative rank with a population of 251,002. Almost all the interests of this population were agricultural. The commonwealth was not that scene of busy activity which it is to-day, with streams of raw material pouring into it from every side, springs of manufactured product bubbling up in every acre, and outflowing in freight bound to every part of the world. In 1790, the activity was altogether local. The whole commonwealth was dotted with towns ; but these were the little centres of small agricultural circles, with very little surplus for exportation beyond that which was necessary for the support of their own people. The green in the heart of the town had its church, and leading to it was a street, with wooden houses, usually comfortable, but often unpainted, and sel- dom representing any great amount of luxury. Each local circle was able to raise most of what was needed for its people ; exchanges among the people made up special deficiencies ; and the peri- patetic tailor, shoemaker, or other workmen com- pleted whatever was lacking in the simple life of a simple people. Pay was still usually in kind, BO that each little circle was able to keep its own INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 331 affairs in motion without much reference to its neighbors. When any unusual surplus was to be exported, it was put into some shape, such as cattle, which could be most easily transported. Mules for the Southern or West Indian market were a common form ; and a drove of mules on its journey was very likely to be a Connecticut pro- duct. The story is told of John Randolph, that, seeing a drove of mules passing through Washing- ton, he pointed it out to Tracy, one of the Con- necticut senators, and said, in his genial way, " Tracy, there go a lot of your constituents.'* " Ye-es," said Tracy, " going down to Virginia to teach school." If the occupations of the people were agricul- tural, their institutions went far to insure them against any of that tendency toward stagnation which had long been associated with the common notion of purely agricultural peoples. The Con- necticut citizen of the early years of this century was a busy man, in some respects, for the common- wealth or the town was continually calling on him to take part in political life. Let us try to follow out the political relations of the citizen before the adoption of the constitution of 1818. Most of his public concerns were with the town. He had gained a legal residence there by being born in it, by being received by a vote of some town meeting, by the approval of the selectmen, the town's ex- ecutive committee, or by being chosen to some 832 CONNECTICUT. office by the town. Unless having thus acquired residence, he was in the town only on sufferance. If there had been any reason to apprehend that he would become a charge on the town, it would have been the duty of the selectmen to send him to his own town if he had one in the State, to send him out of the State if he belonged to another State, or to hold his entertainer responsible for him. Sup- posing him to have acquired residence, he had be- come a voter, on arriving at the age of twenty-one, by reason of having a freehold estate of an annual value of f 7, or a personal estate on the tax list of $134, by being approved by the selectmen as a person of good moral character, and by taking the freeman's oath. Twice a year, as a voter, he attended the town elections for representatives in the general assembly, at which also the new voters formally took the freeman's oath. At the September meeting, he, with all the other freemen of the State, voted for twenty names, as candidates for the council or upper house of the assembly, at the election to follow in April. The total number of votes cast for all persons was transmitted by the town officers to the assembly ; that body counted them and published the twenty names which stood highest on the whole vote of the State ; and at the election in April, when the freemen came to vote for representatives again, he voted for twelve of the published list to be of the council for the following year. In May, the general as- INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 333 sembly counted the April vote from all the towns, and announced the names of the fortunate twelve who stood highest and were elected. After cast- ing his votes for the council, the freeman voted for governor, lieutenant-governor, secretary, and treas- urer ; and the votes were sent in like manner to Hartford, to be counted in May under direction of the assembly. Members of congress were chosen in the same way as councilors. The free- men voted for eighteen names in April ; the assem- bly counted the votes in May, and declared the eighteen names which stood highest ; the freemen voted for seven of these eighteen in September ; and the assembly declared the seven elect in the following month. Such were the limitations which the popular vote had imposed upon itself under the charter. The occasion of counting the votes was still known by its primitive name of the general elec- tion, though it had long ceased to be anything more than a canvass of votes already cast, and now returned to the general assembly as a canvass- ing body. Until about 1836 it was an occasion of solemn import and unusual magnificence. The governor, if he was not a Hartford man, was met on the outskirts of the capital, the day before that of the great ceremonial, by a company of cavalry, and escorted to his lodgings. When he was noti- fied, on the next morning, that the representa- tives had organized and chosen their speaker, he 334 CONNECTICUT. and they, "witli the council, the sheriffs of the ■whole commonwealth with white staves, and the clergy, marched in procession to the first church, escorted by the governor's foot-guards and horse- guards. At the church, the election sermon was delivered by the preacher appointed for that ser- vice. It was no brief or trivial performance. The election sermon of President Stiles, in 1783, made up 120 pages of about 300 words each, though he certainly added matter before publication. At the end of the church services the procession returned to the state house ; the votes were counted by a committee of the assembly ; the governor, lieu- tenant-governor, secretary, treasurer, and coun- cil for the year were announced, and the general election was over. An election ball occupied the evening. The theory of the commonwealth still was, until 1818, that our supposititious voter was present and voting for commonwealth officers ; but it had long since ceased to be the case. He made one of the spectators occasionally ; but, as a rule, he heard of the festivities from others. The town was the political body which came nearest him. Its annual meeting fell in Decem- ber, when town officers were chosen ; and a formi- dable list it was and still is. There were select- men not more than seven in number, a town clerk, a town treasurer, constables, surveyors of highways, fence-viewers, listers, collectors, leather- sealers, grand jurors, tithing-men, hay -wards, INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 335 chimney-viewers, gaugers, packers, and sealers of weights and measures, besides any other officers whom the peculiar circumstances of the town re- quired. Many of these offices have since fallen from their once high estate, and combinations of voters are sometimes formed with the improper purpose of choosing unseemly persons to fill them ; but in their time they were both ancient and honorable. At all events, the multitude of offices and the annual term of office together made the opportunities of public service exceed- ingly numerous, and the prohibition against refus- ing office under penalty of fine in default of good excuse, brought all citizens into the supply of available material for public service. One conse- quence was, that there were few freemen of Con- necticut who passed through life without at some time filling an office on the summons of their fel- lows. The town meeting, properly warned and limited in its action to the subjects specified in the warning, was a political school in which the free- man received his training ; the multitude of minor offices provided higher courses for almost all the freemen ; and from the two together the people received an uncommonly good political education and a sense of personal interest in public affairs. After all, the main features of the system were the town meeting, the constables, and the select- men. The democratic element was supplied by the town meeting; the element of dictatorship, 336 CONNECTICUT. which seems to lurk somewhere in democracy, •was in the selectmen ; and the constables repre- sented the commonwealth. The powers of the town meeting were rather more clearly defined than those of the selectmen, probably for the rea- son that the latter could be held to a stricter per- sonal responsibility. The town meeting repre- sented the popular force ; when it adjourned, the selectmen were almost the autocrats of the town until the next town meeting. It is worthy of note that such powers have so seldom been abused or betrayed, and that men, often active business men, could have been found for more than two centuries, as they still are found, to manage with- out fee or reward the complicated, diflBcult, and sometimes dangerous affairs of a Connecticut town. The registration of births, marriages, and deaths was with the town clerk ; licenses to marry came from him ; and deeds and leases of lands within the township were registered with him. The pro- bate judge was a town officer ; and the mass of business of this nature, a county affair outside of the influence of the New England system, was here purely a town matter. Indeed, it may quite safely be said that about all the relations which the citizen holds to the county in other States than those of New England, and very many of the relations which he holds to the State itself, he held in Connecticut to the town only. His little INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 337 tewn republic hemmed him and his interests in on every side, and it was but seldom that he became conscious that there was a larger and a still larger republic which also claimed his allegiance and in- terest. It must not be supposed that the description of the Connecticut freeman's political position in 1810 is vitally incorrect for his successor of 1887. It has been altered mainly by the increase in the number of cities, — New Haven, Hartford, Bridge- port, Norwich, Water bury, Middletown^ Meriden, New London, and South Norwalk, — with their introduction of stronger municipal powers, and by the erection of " boroughs," or semi-cities, in the more thickly settled portions of the townships. All these steps are detractions from the original powers of the towns, and are a tendency to diminish the citizen's dependence on the township. They have not yet been very serious, though attempts to extend the drift in this direction are often re- newed. The essential thing to be remembered is, that changes in the commonwealth's constitution have affected the status of the towns very little. The original constitution was changed into the charter, and this into the constitution of 1818 ; but these changes were mainly of the common- wealth, and the relative position or the absolute powers of the towns were hardly changed by any of them. To a remarkable degree the relations of the Connecticut citizen to his town are the 22 338 CONNECTICUT. same as those of his forefather when the fir^t towns were planted. More than in any other New England State, the original vigor of the Con- necticut town has enabled it to keep pace with the growing power of the commonwealth. Hartford and New Haven were cities at the be- ginning of the century, having been incorporated in 1784, but both were very far from our notions of a city. They were little centres of less than 4,000 population, and the communication between them for passengers, mails, and traffic was sup- plied by two stages a week, leaving on Wednes- days and Saturdays. Each had a few weekly newspapers, some shops with a very miscellane- ous stock in trade, and hardly any other evi- dence of city life. Incomes were derived, even in the cities, directly or mediately, from agriculture for the most part, and they were not large : it was rumored, with some natural hesitation, that Pier- pont Edwards, the commonwealth's leading law- yer, enjoyed a revenue of $2,000 per annum from his practice, but this could not be taken as a stand- ard. There were few who were very rich, and few who were very poor ; and the life of the whole commonwealth was a little fuller than, but almost as equable and placid as when there were but three towns in it. Banks and insurance companies came into existence only during the twenty years 1790-1810. New Haven had an advantage over Hartford in INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 339 its foreign commerce, which had begun to revive before the Revolutionary war, and had received a further impetus from the peace. Its " Long Wharf," 3,500 feet in length, whose greedy maw had swallowed all that private enterprise, lotteries, and commonwealth aid could offer it, was not fin- ished until after 1802 ; but it was in active use long before it could be called finished, and it was the headquarters of foreign trade. Its merchants had their own local spirit, and their "wharf law'' for the punishment of local offenses ; and their ships went all over the world, hardly any of them returning without a contribution of material for the wharf. Thence sailed Isaac Hull, as the captain of a New Haven West Indiaman, long before he thought of meeting the Guerriere. Thither came the Neptune in 1799, with the richest cargo yet imported, its profits being a quarter of a million, and the duties on the cargo being nearly $70,000. And here came out again the old feeling of the " town-born " against the " interlopers," who had come into the town to share in its prosperity. It is said that one of the town-born New Haven cap- tains, being forced to a jetson during a storm at sea, cautioned his men to throw over only the goods of " interlopers." But the influence of the college, with that of foreign commerce and result- ing wealth, did much to raise New Haven above the general level of the commonwealth ; and city life in the modern sense had its closest approxi- 340 CONNECTICUT. mation here. The town poor were no longer sold at auction. Geese and cattle were banished from the Green, and that part of the city began to take on some of the beauty which has since made it so notable a spot. The city went a step beyond its contemporaries in beginning a cemetery on modern lines, abandoning the nakedly ugly New England burying-ground. There was even an earnest but vain effort to obtain a permanent supply of water in 1804. While Hartford was in most respects more pro- vincial than its rival, having only a small trade in West India rum and molasses, its atmosphere was for some reasons much more literary. Perhaps some of this tendency came from its more frequent communication with the outside world, through its natural position as a stopping-place on the road from New York to Boston. Since 1772, a stage passed each way once a week. Here were the writers so long known collectively as " the Hart- ford wits," Lemuel Hopkins, Humphreys, Alsop, Trumbull, the author of " McFingal," and Theo- dore Dwight, a younger brother of Dr. D wight; here they were succeeded by Percival, Brainard, and Mrs. Sigourney, followed by the more recent writers who have maintained Hartford's position in the world of secular literature ; and here were always strong ministers, able successors of the leaders of the first migration. Noah Webster was as yet known rather as a grammarian than as a INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 341 lexicographer. Connecticut society, however, was strongly tinged with a curious provincialism in the times about 1800. Things were done and said without special criticism which would nowa- days be thought unpardonable. The pastor of the First Church was Nathan Strong, the writer of the hymn so familiar in our hymn-books, " Swell the anthem, raise the song." In 1790 he and one of the leading members of his flock entered into part- nership for the purpose of managing a distillery. The enterprise was a failure ; and, as imprison- ment for debt was still the law, the junior partner prudently sought refuge outside of the common- wealth's jurisdiction. The ministerial partner, however, stood his ground, remaining within doors on week-days, and appearing on Sundays, when the writ did not run, to minister to his indulgent parishioners. When the financial difficulty had been settled, the pastor's troubles were over. He continued his ministry until his death in 1816, and was made a doctor of divinity by the College of New Jersey in 1801. And the poems of the Hartford wits, largely devoted to political strug- gles, have in them a great deal more of the blud- geon than of the rapier. One must speculate on the mental constitutions of the audience which could cut out a high niche for the author of such poetry as this, which was to be sung to a famil- iar hymn-tune, as the first of a dozen similar stanzas, describing a Democratic meeting : — 342 CONNECTICUT. Ye tribes of Faction, join — Your daughters and your wives; Moll Gary 's come to dine, And dance with Deacon Ives. Ye ragged throng Of Democrats, As thick as rats, Come join the song. Sporadic efforts had been made in the agricul- tural districts of the State to introduce some pro- ducts which should be more profitable than the cereals which were the staple. The silk-culture had been introduced about 1732, and in 1747 Governor Law wore the first coat and stockings made of New England silk. In 1758 the work was taken up by President Stiles of Yale, and by Dr. Aspinwall of Mansfield. The former wrote up the industry, and wore gowns of Connecticut silk at Commencement ; the latter put the indus- try at Mansfield and its neighborhood on a foun- dation which has not since been lost. One of its outgrowths has been the silk-works developed by the mechanical and artistic genius of the brothers Cheney, at Manchester, near Hartford, beginning in a modest attempt to make the lower grades of silk, and rising to higher grades through the inven- tion of improved machinery. Attempts had been made since about 1736 to introduce woolen manufactures as a development of sheep-raising, and these were revived after the Revolution. With help from the general assembly, INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 343 a manufactory of woolens was established at Hartford after the peace. Its product was mainly of the pepper-and-salt variety, but it was good and popular ; and a suit of the factory's broadcloth was worn by President Washington at the open- ing of Congress in 1790. In 1802 a long step was taken in advance. David Humphreys, of Derby, formerly Washington's aide, now American min- ister to Spain, sent home a flock of one hundred merino sheep. The improved wool soon built up a manufactory at Humphreys ville, near Derby ; and a suit of broadcloth from it was worn by President Madison at his inauguration in 1809. From this beginning, the industry has grown and flourished in the State ; and it had not gone far before its influence was felt in politics. The Connecticut delegates in the Convention of 1787 had claimed that theirs was even then a manufacturing State. This was rather a desire than a fact. Since the time of Wintbrop, whose attainments in natural science had led him all over the commonwealth in the effort to establish an iron - manufacture, this branch of industry had been carried on with more or less success. One of the first ventures at New Haven had been the establishment of the " iron workes ; " and the erection of furnaces was encouraged by the as- sembly and by towns, through remission of taxes and otherwise, all through the eighteenth century. In 1716 the State encouraged the erection of a 344 CONNECTICUT. slitting-raill by Fitch & Co. by giving it a legal monopoly of the business for fifteen years. But, after all, the normal condition of iron produc- tion was that of a household industry. Each fur- nace was meant to furnish enough iron for a neighborhood ; and the people of the neighbor- hood, using the intervals from agricultural employ- ment in winter or at night, converted the iron into articles for domestic use, with a surplus of such things as nails for exportation. There was not yet enough stimulus in the industry to affect the purely agricultural character of the community seriously, but it was a preparation for the future. The development of the iron district of tlie northwestern part of Connecticut, about 1730, had been carried to a considerable extent before the Revolution, and it seemed likely to make the commonwealth a mining and manufacturing com- munity. The deposits in Salisbury and its vicin- ity were abundant, and the supply of wood, then the universal fuel, was plentiful. Encouraged by the Revolution, the production became of great importance. The cannon for the army and nav}^ the heavy chains which barred the rivers, the ma- terials for gun-barrels and other military equip- ments for the Revolutionary armies, came from the works at Salisbury, which were never reached by the enemy. The workmen considered the Salisbury iron superior to anything else which could be obtained, at home or from abroad, and INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 345 its reputation seems to have been deserved. It is still highly valued, and 38,000 tons of it were pro- duced in 1880. Valuable as was the supply, it was not destined to work a revolution in the eco- nomic life of the people. When the time came for the real race, it was found that other States had a superior advantage in the bounty of nature, which had combined their iron-beds with adjacent beds of coal ; and Connecticut was compelled to yield to circumstances and turn to other industries. Before the final industrial revolution came on, the commonwealth was convulsed by a political revolution, caused partially by the first movements of manufactures, and in its turn a moving cause of subsequent developments. Connecticut had been Federalist from the first, and the Connecticut Federalist had become almost a peculiar type. Many influences aided the development. The al- most exclusively agricultural employment of the people rendered them very susceptible to the per- sonal influence of leading men, and community of religious belief strengthened this influence. The leading men were often connected directly or indirectly with commercial interests, which were patronized by the Federal party ; or they were leaders in the Congregational Established Church, the natural enemy of Jeffersonian doctrine and prejudices. The new Democratic party therefore found in Connecticut a phalanx impenetrable to all its efforts to move it. Jefferson's attempt to 346 CONNECTICUT. establish a governmental influence in the State in 1801, by removing Elizur Goodrich, the Federal- ist collector of the port of New Haven, and ap- pointing in his place Samuel Bishop, the vener- able father of a rising young Democratic politi- cian, merely made the Connecticut Federalists furious without converting them ; and their feel- ing was increased by the embargo, which shut up eighty vessels in the harbor of New Haven alone, and nearly ruined the commerce of the port. Even after the national downfall of the Federal party in 1800, when other States yielded and chose Democratic electors, Connecticut and Delaware were the only States which chose Federal electors at every presidential election, so long as there were Federalists to vote for. The Episcopal Church had begun to raise its head again after the Revolution, though it was still feeble. Every such symptom of revival, of course, seemed to the Congregationalist Whig simply a revival of Toryism. When the Episco- palians and other dissatisfied elements in New Haven won a substantial victory at the first city election in 1784, Dr. Stiles's diary takes it as a victory of the Tories, and adds, as a natural result the next month, " this day town-meeting voted to re-admit the Tories." The connection with Tory- ism became dimmed in time ; but the grievances of the dissatisfied element, the Episcopalians, the ** New Lights," the Sandemanians, and other secta- INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 347 ries, remained unabated. In 1791, the act which seemed to Congregationalists the summit of reli- gious freedom was passed : it allowed any dissent- ing society to tax for the support of its own min- ister, and remitted the town tax to such as should lodge a certificate of their dissenting membership with the clerk of an Established Church. This was far from satisfactory to the dissenters. They were discontented that all persons not members of any church were still subject to taxation for the ex- clusive benefit of the Established Church ; they as- serted that the privilege of certificate was thwarted by the authorities on little or no legal pretext ; and they complained that the treasury of the com- monwealth was still put by the assembly at the service of Yale College, to the exclusion of any other denominational interest. Finding that the dissenters were not content with what had no doubt seemed large concessions, and welded together more strongly by the national supremacy of their opponents and the ruinous embargo policy, the dominant party of Connecti- cut redoubled its resistance to change. The Con- necticut Democrats considered the charter, re- adopted in 1776 by the assembly, as the corner- stone of their opponents' power. It had, they said, left the powers of government so undefined that the upper house, or council, consisting of but twelve members, had gained an extreme influ- ence ; that seven of the council, a majority, were 348 CONNECTICUT. lawyers, able to " appoint all the judges, plead before those judges, and constitute themselves a supreme court of errors to decide in the last resort on the laws of their own making ; " and that these same men had complete control of the election machinery of the State. They demanded a con- stitution under which the legislative, judicial, and executive powers should be separated. In August, 1804, a convention of Democrats, or Republicans, was held at New Haven, and endorsed the pro- gramme for the autumn elections. The Federal majority rose higher than ever, and the assembly at its first meeting took steps to punish those mal- contents whom it could reach. It deprived of their commissions five justices of the peace who had been delegates to the New Haven Convention, and censured one of its own members who had spoken too warmly in their behalf. The offending member, when called upon to rise and receive his reprimand from the speaker, interposed the in- genious point of order that there was no rule to prevent his receiving it seated ; and the evident embarrassment of the speaker and assembly in dealing with the point took away much of the dig- nity of the punishment. The rapid passage of the embargo difficulties into open war with Great Britain brought Con- necticut Federalism into the broader field of New England Federalism. The first conflict with the general government came on the employment of INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 349 the militia of the State. The Constitution gives congress, and an act of congress gave the Presi- dent, the power to call out the militia of the States in three distinctly defined emergencies, — to execute the laws of the Union, to suppress in- surrections, or to repel invasions. As the regular army was drawn off to invade Canada, the Presi- dent called on the States for militia to do garrison duty in its place. The Connecticut governor, Griswold, asked in reply for a specification of the reason for the call, for the law that was to be exe- cuted, the insurrection that was to be suppressed, or the invasion that was to be repelled ; and it is not easy to see how his question was to be an- swered or evaded. At all events, no effective an- swer was made. Connecticut provided a special force of 2,600 men for her own defense, but en- tered her protest, through the assembly, that " the war was unnecessary." The incidents of the war had little to do with Connecticut, with the excep- tion of the blockade of New London by British vessels, and the constant danger of attack there or elsewhere, against which the State was compelled to defend herself, as the general government seemed unable or unwilling to do so. In April, 1814, a British force landed at Saybrook and de- stroyed some stores ; and in August the Stonington militia beat off a squadron which attempted to land there, killing and wounding seventy-five men, with the loss of but a few wounded of their own nuiU' 350 CONNECTICUT. ber. All the credit due to the State's persistent defense of her own borders was taken away, how- ever, by a charge which Decatur made without even offering evidence for it. Having been foiled several times in attempting to put to sea, he declared that warning of his attempts had been given from the shore by blue-lights ; and tbe name " Blue-light Federalist " was at once used by the administration party as a good title for the dominant party of Connecticut. It was shown, on the other hand, that blue-lights were entirely un- necessary, since Decatur had never taken proper care to keep British emissaries out of his district ; but he seems to have gone on the assumption that a failure by Decatur necessarily implied treachery on the part of somebody else. It is unnecessary to go very far into the origin and history of the Hartford Convention, for Con- necticut had no more special connection with that body than to furnish a meeting-place for it. The grievances which led to it, the neglect of the de- fense of the coast by the general government, and the preponderance of Southern interest in the gov- ernment, were common to Connecticut with the other New England States ; but there may have been a reason for the selection of the place. Nearly twenty years before, in 1796, there ap- peared in the " Connecticut Courant," at Hartford, a series of articles signed " Pelham." Written with consummate ability, and apparently from a INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 351 profound prescience of the difficulties which the Union was to encounter, the articles attempted to show that the Southern slave-system made a per- manent Union impossible, and that the Northern States should prepare for separate national exist- ence. The tone of the Hartford Convention's rec- ommendations for constitutional changes have so much of the spirit of these articles that one is dis- posed to think that, if " Pelham " was not a dele- gate, he was at least a close adviser, and that the desire for his advice was one reason for the selec- tion of the place. Connecticut's delegates to the convention were Chauncey Goodrich, James Hillhouse, John Tread- well, Zephaniah Swift, Calvin Goddard, Nathaniel Smith, and Roger Minot Sherman, the ablest men of the dominant party. The convention met with closed doors in the building in which the council of the commonwealth had been accustomed to meet, and Democratic leaders at Hartford and Washington looked for the outcome with appre- hension. The Episcopal rector (afterward bishop), Chase, declined to offer prayer at its morning session, explaining that he knew of no form of prayer for rebellion. A fussy Federal officer con- tributed much to the excitement at first ; but the substitution of Colonel Jesup preserved the peace, except that a squad of soldiers would now and then march around the building during the sessions, their fifes playing the " Rogue's March." With 352 CONNECTICUT. the exception of such little touches of nature as this, the proceedings of the convention are rather a part of national than of local history. The endorsement of the convention's recommen- dations by the general assembly apparently left the Federalist control of the State complete. In reality, it was at death's door. The Methodist Church had been established in the State in 1789, and had extended with rapidity. It shared in the grievances of the dissenting sects, and reinforced their demands for abatement. Finally, the Demo- cratic party of the State came to the decision to make common cause with the dissenters of all sects, and to fight the political battle on that ground. In January, 1816, a convention at New Haven nominated Oliver Wolcott for governor, and Jared Ingersoll for lieutenant-governor. Wolcott had been a Federalist, Adams's secretary of the treasury, and had been accused by the Democratic newspapers of resorting to arson to cover up frauds in his office. He had since been engaged in busi- ness in New York city. The adoption of his name indicates another element in the alliance. The manufactures of the State, particularly in wool, demanded protection by tariff, and had only a Democratic congress to look to for it. Wolcott 's nomination was to give them confidence. Inger- soll was the Episcopal end of the ticket. Thus prepared, the " toleration party," as it called it- self, went into the election. The dominant party, INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 353 alarmed by the prospect, hurried to make conces- sions, but it was too late. Ingersoll was elected, and Wolcott barely defeated. In 1817 both were elected, with a two-thirds majority of the assem- bly. The first step was to put all sects on an equality as to taxation ; the next, to repeal the " Stand-up Law," passed by the Federalists in 1801, by which votes were to be cast in town- meeting by rising, not by secret ballot ; and the next, in June, 1818, to call a State convention to frame a constitution. The convention met Au- gust 26, at Hartford, with a Democratic majority of only ten out of two hundred members, just enough to compel mature deliberation and wise de- cision. It adopted the present constitution Septem- ber 15, which was ratified by a slender majority October 5. The Democrats were rather more dis- satisfied with it than the Federalists, and many of them voted against it. The constitution provided for a government to consist of a governor, lieutenant-governor, treas- urer, secretary, and comptroller, as State ofiicers, and a general assembly composed of a senate and a bouse of representatives. The State officers were to be chosen annually by ballot, the general assem- bly to choose when no candidate should receive a majority vote. The representatives were to be chosen by the towns, the proportion of each town to be " as at present practiced and allowed." The erection of a new town was not to reduce the rep- 23 354 CONNECTICUT. resentation of the town or towns from whicli it was formed, without the consent of the old towns, and new towns were to have one representative only. The senate was to be chosen by districts, the districts at first numbering twelve, and, since 1828, not less than eighteen or more than twenty- four. The meetings of the general assembly were to be annual, and held alternately at Hartford and New Haven. Since 1873, Hartford has been the sole capital ; and, since 1884, the State officers and representatives hold office for two years, and sessions of the general assembly are biennial. The courts were to be a supreme court of errors, a superior court, and inferior courts to be consti- tuted by the assembly. The supreme and superior court justices were to hold office during good be- havior ; their term of office was limited to eight years in 1856. Voters were to be white males of twenty-one years or over, and, as the conditions were simplified in 1815 and 1855, were to have re- sided in the State for one year and in the town for six months, were to have sustained a good moral character, and to be able to read. The selectmen of each town were to enforce the suffrage and election laws of the State. Religious profession and worship were to be free to all, and no sect was to be preferred by law. No person was to be compelled to join, associate with, support, or remain a member of, any religious INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 355 body ; and all religious bodies were to be entirely equal before the law. Thus ended the connection of church and state in Connecticut. One consequence of the establishment of the constitution was the founding of two new colleges. An Episcopal academy had been incorporated at Cheshire in 1801, but it had been impossible to obtain for it a college charter from the general assembly. In 1823 the assembly chartered it as Washington College, locating it at Hartford. Its first commencement was held in 1827, with ten graduates. Its connection with its church has be- come closer during the intervening years, and its work, in conjunction with the related Theological Seminary until 1851, has been of the greatest ser- vice in the training of clergymen. In 1845 its name was changed to Trinity College. Its prop- erty is now valued at over a million dollars, and its buildinofs are amonsf the finest in Hartford. Its presidents have been : Bishop Brownell, 1823-31 •. Dr. Wheaton, 1831-37 ; Dr. Silas Totten, 1837- 48; Dr. John Williams, 1848-53; Dr. D. R. Goodwin, 1853-60; Dr. Samuel Eliot, 1860-64; Dr. J. B. Kerfoot, 1864-66; Dr. Abner Jackson, 1867-74 ; Dr. T. R. Pynchon, 1874-83 ; and Dr. George W. Smith, 1883. The Methodist Episco- pal Church in the State also desired an institution for higher education, and it obtained a charter for Wesleyan University without difficulty in 1829, placing it at Middletown. Its presidents have 356 CONNECTICUT. been: Dr. Wilbur Fisk, 1831-39; Dr. Stephen Olin, 1839-41 ; Dr. Nathan Bangs, 1841-42 ; Dr. Stephen Olin, 1842-51 ; Dr. A. W. Smith, 1851- 67 ; Dr. Joseph Cummings, 1857-75 ; Dr. Cyrus D. Foss, 1875-80 ; and Dr. John W. Beach, 1880. Its work and resources have increased until its productive funds are now about 1700,000, and the annual income from them about $40,000. The constitution has remained fairly satisfactory during the subsequent growth of the State, except that the representation of the towns has frequently given control of the general assembly to a minority of the popular vote ; and efforts have been made, though as yet without success, to equalize repre- sentation. Whatever may be the present defects of the constitution, it certainly was a great advance on the charter. It seems to have lifted from the shoulders of the people a load which, however slight, had been sufficient to hamper them in their course up to that time. The original organization of society and government had been exceedingly democratic in 1637 and 1662 ; and the constitu- tion of 1818 had only brought it into line with the development of democracy, which had passed be- yond the charter. Labor had never been disre- garded or degraded, but mechanical labor had never been considered as quite on a level with agricultural. The diai-y of John Cotton Smith, the last Federalist governor, is sprinkled with notes of his labor among his men in the harvest INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 857 field and in the other departments of farm work ; and he was but a representative of his class. On the other hand, there are such cases as that of Roger Sherman, who came into New Milford a shoemaker, and lived to be a senator of the United States ; but they were as uncommon in Connecti- cut before 1818 as that of Smith was common. The mechanic was ■primd facie vulgar, and his ability was shown by getting out of his class into law or into agriculture, not by increasing his wealth in it. There were mechanics, and good ones, in Connecticut before 1818 ; but the State only began to be a distinctly mechanical common- wealth when the constitution of 1818 had lifted all men into equality, and the mechanic was for the first time on an equality with the Congrega- tional farm-owner. Even under colonial conditions the mechanical genius of Connecticut had begun to develop the manufacture of the easier forms of hardware ; and with this development came the first appearance of the peddler with his wagon. About 1770 the manufacture of tinware was begun in Berlin, eleven miles south of Hartford. This was the be- ginning of the industry with which the name of Connecticut was to be so closely associated, — the production of " Yankee notions." The peddlers carried the manufactures of this and neighborincj towns over the country in wagons, exchanging them for local products and reaping a double profit 358 CONNECTICUT. on the exchange. Transactions of a darker dye than any legitimate profit were also laid to the account of these peddlers: their malignant in- genuity was debited with the introduction of wooden nutmegs, bass-wood hams, oak-leaf cigars, and similar frauds. Undoubtedly there was much fraudulent work : the loose conditions of such a trade, when ignorance on one side was always tempting any latent dishonesty on the other, would make some fraud inevitable. But the essence of the accusation was in the rivalry of local trade, in the jealousy of unsuccessful competitors, provoked by the sudden success of Connecticut workmen in their new field. They had found a sphere in which the niggardliness of nature could not check them. The lack of coal as fuel might weigh heavily against the value of their iron-mines, but the ingenuity of the workmen was a possession which could not be taken from the commonwealth. From the little beginning at Berlin has grown up a great system of towns, in the district along the Naugatuck and Connecticut rivers, devoted to the manufacture of hardware, of brass goods, of any- thing and everything in which the accuracy, skill, and ingenuity of the workman can make up for the distance of the place of manufacture from the source of the raw material and from the places of sale. Here are Ansonia, Waterbury, New Britain, Meriden, and a bewildering maze of other towns, all of which have been developed by water-power INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 359 and human ingenuity ; older places like Hartford, New Haven, and Norwich have felt the reflex in- fluence and joined in the race ; and quite new places, like Bridgeport, have sprung to life and activity under the impulse derived from the first tin pail made at Berlin. Before that time, every enterprising man kept his eyes keenly on the be- nevolence of Nature, and looked to the use of some- thing produced in the commonwealth which he could improve for sale ; since that time, such men, no longer heeding local resources, have scoured the world for materials, have brought them to Connecticut and passed them through the crucible of Connecticut ingenuity, and have found in the results a mine richer than the Spaniard's longings could compass. The clock manufacture in Connecticut, with its adjuncts or derivatives, is an excellent example of the manner in which the mechanics of the com- monwealth have made their ingenuity of public service. Wooden clocks, of the old high pattern, were made at Waterbury as long ago as 1700. About 1793 Eli Terry went thence to Plymouth and began a manufacture of his own by water- power, his first patent of improvements being taken out in 1797. About 1814 he introduced the new and far more convenient pattern of smaller mantel clocks. Chauncey Jerome began the manufacture of brass clocks about 1821, and with this the modern field of Connecticut ingenuity was opened. 360 CONNECTICUT. The parts of the clocks were soon made inter- changeable, so that one workman could give his entire time to the production of each part, while increased production made the whole clock far cheaper ; and the application of machinery to the production of the parts soon made prices still cheaper. In 1840 the value of the clocks pro- duced in the State, almost entirely for home con- sumption, was over a million dollars, and the manufacturers were ready to reach out after foreign trade. So low had they driven cost and prices that their first exports paid more than 2000% profit. The story goes that the first cargo of Con- necticut clocks for the English market was invoiced so low, in spite of this abnormal profit, that the custom-house ofiicers, suspecting undervaluation, enforced their right to take the cargo at its invoice value. This suited the exporters so well that they immediately shipped another cargo, which met the same fate. A third cargo staggered the custom house, and it went out of the clock business. Since that time the world has been supplied with machine-made Connecticut clocks and watches. The little streams which fall into Long Island Sound are easily dammed, have abundance of wa- ter, and have been utilized from the first as a source of power. When Dr. Howe, of New York, invented his machine for making pins at one oper- ation, his most urgent need was for competent mechanics. These could be found only among INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 361 the Connecticut men who had been working on brass clocks, and the manufacture of pins was es- tablished at Derby and Birmingham in 1835 and 1838. The making of pins brought with it the establishment of brass-mills for the production of the necessary wire ; and the surplus of this pro- duction added the manufacture of about every- thing into which brass plate and wire could be stamped or twisted. Thus a constantly widening field has been offered for the peculiar talents of the Connecticut workman. " He is usually a Yankee of Yankees by birth, and of a tempera- ment thoughtful to dreaminess. His natural bent is strongly towards mechanical pursuits, and he finds his way very early in life into the work- shop. Impatient of the fetters which trade soci- eties forge for less independent minds, he delights to make his own bargain with his employer, and, whatever be the work on which he is engaged, bends the whole force of an acute but narrow in- telligence to scheming means for accomplishing it easily. Unlike the English mechanic, whom a different education and different circumstances have taught to believe his own interest ill served by facilitating the operations of the workshop, the Connecticut man is profoundly convinced to the contrary. He cherishes a fixed idea of creating a monopoly in some branch of manufacture by es- tablishing an overwhelming superiority over the methods of production already existing in that 362 CONNECTICUT. branch. To ' get up ' a machine, or a series of machines, for this purpose, is his one aim and am- bition. If he succeeds, supported by patents and the ready aid which capital gives to promising novelties in the States, he may revolutionize an industry, forcing opponents who produce in the old way altogether out of the market, while bene- fiting the consumer and making his own fortune at the same time. The workshops of Massachu- setts, Rhode Island, and especially of Connecticut, are full of such men. Usually tall, thin, reflec- tive, and taciturn, but clever, and, above all things, free, — the equals, although mechanics, of the capitalist upon whose ready alliance they can count, — they are an element of incalculable value to American industry. Their method of attack- ing manufacturing problems is one which, intelli- gently handled, must command markets by si- multaneously improving qualities and cheapening prices. We ourselves certainly aim, as they do, at the specialization of manufacture, but one scarcely treads upon the threshold of clock-land before feeling how much more universally the sys- tem is being applied in the States than here [in England]. Tools and processes which we are inclined to consider as exceptionally clever are the commonplaces of American shops ; and the de- termination to do nothing by hand which can be done by a machine is a marked characteristic of the workmen there, while it scarcely exists among operatives here." INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 363 This description, by a competent English ob- server (Mr. Daniel Pigeon), has been extracted and inserted in spite of the unjust characteriza- tion of the workman's intelligence as " narrow," for the sake of the clearer view which is always gained by an observation from the outside. The characteristics which he notes are not at all con- fined to the clock and brass industries : wherever human ingenuity, in the peculiar form it has taken in Connecticut, can enable a manufactory to com- pete successfully with its more favorably situated rivals, the attempt has been made to localize it in the commonwealth. When Eli Whitney, of New Haven, had been robbed of the profits of his wonderfully simple invention of the cotton-gin, he turned his attention to the manufacture of arms. The United States government wanted a supply of firearms, and Whitney, without any facilities for making them, took the contract for the work, rely- ing justly on Connecticut ingenuity to find a way. Everything had to be created ; but the means on which he relied and with which he succeeded were the persistent substitution of machinery for hand- work, the encouragement of invention, and the use of equivalent parts, so that each part could be made by the thousand and yet any part would fit the others. The completion of the contract es- tablished a successful arms-factory at Wliitney- ville, near New Haven. Here, in 1848, Samuel Colt began the manufacture of his revolver, which 364 CONNECTICUT. he had invented while a boy of fifteen, during a voyage to India, and had patented in 1836. In 1850 he removed to Hartford, and the Sharp's Rifle Company followed him the next year. The Winchester Arms Company of New Haven has since taken another variety of work. There have been times when contending armies have both been armed from the little State of Connecticut ; and yet the State itself has furnished hardly a particle of the raw material, its entire contribu- tion being the ingenuity of its workmen and the mechanical genius of its inventors. It would be unjust to leave it to be inferred that this mechanical ingenuity has been narrow in its scope or narrowing in its results. Putting aside such cases as those of Whitney and Good- year, in which invention has been applied to the broadest and most useful fields, the later records of the commonwealth have been crowded with the names of men who have owed their rise to genius of this type, and have done no discredit to any employment to which the commonwealth has seen fit to call them. To specify would necessarily be to do injustice to those whose names would have to be omitted. One must hold to the general statement that many of the best public servants of the commonwealth, since its great industrial revolution began, have owed their rise to their success in some branch of mechanical industiy. Connecticut manufacturers have regularly risen INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 365 from the ranks, and when they have been trans- ferred from private to public business, they have held their own well in the inevitable comparison with their professional rivals. The character of the Connecticut workman has led to a peculiar kindness of relations between himself and his employer. It would be impossi- ble to go into particulars of the thoughtfulness of Connecticut employers for their employees, of the well -understood equality of relations between them, and of the consideration of employees for the necessities of employers, without seeming to advertise those few establishments that must be selected for illustration. Any one who will take the trouble to examine for himself into the rela- tions between the real Connecticut workman and his employers need not go far into the State be- fore being satisfied. The institutions which Hooker founded still retain their influence over the descendants of the first settlers. And yet one cannot but feel some fear for the future of the Connecticut mechanic, and, with him, of Connecticut industries. The tendency of the organization of industry is so strongly toward forms of combination of labor which cannot but be a drawback upon complete individual initiative, that it must be reflected in Connecticut. Indeed, it has already begun to affect the relations between employer and employed. The report of the Con- necticut Labor Bureau for 1885 shows, in its 366 CONNECTICUT. accounts of the grievances alleged by employees, and of the remedies which they suggest, a spirit which has not been common in the State hereto- fore. Whether it is justified or not, is not the question : the main fact is that it exists, and that there is danger that it may result in forms of labor which would be fatal to individualized production. Other commonwealths, more favored by nature, may continue to produce with success under sys- tems which substitute combined for individualized labor. But Connecticut has no such advantage ; her long lead in the industrial race has come purely from the high individual ability of her workmen, and any tendency which operates against this element of prosperity cannot but aifect the welfare of the commonwealth. The reputation of the Connecticut workman has been so long established that one is apt to think of the commonwealth of the last century as only a smaller edition of the Connecticut of the present. It has seemed advisable, therefore, to lay stress upon the fact that the Connecticut of the present is the creation of this century ; that Connecticut was almost as much an agricultural commonwealth in 1810 as she is now a mechani- cal and manufacturing commonwealth. How far the forward step which democracy in the State took in 1818 was a cause or only a symptom of the revolution which followed so rapidly, is more than any one can say ; but it is difficult to resist INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 367 the conviction that the relation between them was an intimate one. Apart from the peculiarly State features of the industrial development, at least one feature of it has had a national and international influence, as Mr. E. E. Hale hjis pointed out. The Connecticut Joint Stock Act of 1837, framed by Mr. Theodore Hinsdale, a manufacturer of the commonwealth, introduced the corporation in the form under which we now generally know it. Its principle was copied by almost every State of the Union, and by the English Limited Liability Act of 1855 ; and the effects of its simple principle upon the in- dustrial development of the whole modern world are quite beyond calculation. All that can be done here is to notice the wide influence of a single Connecticut manufacturer's idea, and to call at- tention to this as another instance of the close connection of democracy with modern industrial development. The census of 1880 showed that the population of Connecticut was 622,700, of which 492,708 was native and 129,992 foreign. From the eighth State in order of population in 1790, it had fallen to twenty-eighth in 1880. Of this population, 112,915 were at work in the 4,488 factories of the State, the capital of these being $120,480,275, the annual wages $43,501,518 ; value of mate- rials $102,183,341, and that of the finished pro- duct $185,697,211. The manufacture of firearms, 368 CONNECTICUT. clocks, India-rubber goods, wagons and carriages, hardware, britannia and table ware, cutlery, cot- ton and woolen goods, machinery, and sewing- machines were the leading industries ; but patent industries, in which Connecticut leads all the States, are the most numerous sources of her pros- perity. The assessed valuation of the State was $228,791,267 for real estate, and 1^98,386,118 for personal property, these of course representing a much larger real value. With 1.24% of the population of the United States, its people held 3.24% of the national registered bond-debt. There were in 1885 eighty-four savings-banks, with 256,097 depositors, and deposits amounting to $92,481,525 ; ten stock fire-insurance companies, with assets of $24,040,193 ; seventeen mutual fire-insurance companies, with assets of $1,195,297 ; and nine life-insurance companies, with gross re- ceipts of $110,839,326 and liabilities of $99,321,- 018. There were twenty-two railroads, with a length of 974 miles, and a total value of about $90,000,000. Their general management has been excellent: in 1884 they carried 16,957,574 pas' sengers, of whom but one was fatally injured. Agriculture still occupied about 45,000 persons, with a capital of about $125,000,000 invested in 30,598 farms, containing 1,642,188 acres of im- proved and 811,353 acres of unimproved land. The average size of the farms had decreased from 106 acres in 1850, 99 acres in 1860, and 93 acres in 1870, to 80 acres in 1880. INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 369 The commonwealth government still remains a comparatively simple one. The annual revenues and expenditures are about a million and a half. About one third of this is drawn from the towns by taxation, another third from taxes on railroad companies, and the bulk of the remainder from taxes on mutual fire-insurance companies and sav- ings-banks. The total debt, December 1, 1885, was $4,271,000 ; and the permanent school fund, $2,028,124. The principal items of expenditure, outside of interest on the debt, were about $200,000 each for judicial expenses, common schools, and humane institutions, and about $100,000 each for legislative expenses and the militia. Before closing this brief summary of the ma- terial progress of the commonwealth during the century, a still briefer space may fairly be given to its political history during the same period. At the beginning of the century, as has been said al- ready, Connecticut was a steadily Federalist State, and it continued so until the election of 1818, or as long as the Federal party existed. In presiden- tial elections it has been the steadiest in its gen- eral opposition to the national Democratic party. It has cast its electoral vote for Federal, Whig, or Kepublican candidates at every election except five : 1820, 1836, 1852, 1876, and 1884. But the popu- lar majorities have always been very slight ; and the feeling of the minority party that it had " a fighting chance " in the State has been kept up by 24 370 CONNECTICUT. its share of success in the frequently recurring State elections. The pluralities have usually been exceedingly small. In the election of 1884 the Democratic vote was 67,182 and the Republican 65,898, so that the Democratic plurality, which de- cided the State's electoral vote, was but 1,284, and there was a scattering vote besides of 4,179, or over thrice the deciding plurality. The completeness of town supremacy over local concerns gave rise to two incidents in the political history of the State, which those who treat of it would willingly pass over in silence, if that were possible. At the very outset of the anti- slavery struggle in 1831 the free negroes of the United States determined to establish a college for their young men, with a mechanical depart- ment. New Haven was fixed upon as the location, partly by reason of its academic atmosphere, and partly by reason of the State's advantages for mechanical education. The announcement raised a storm of opposition in New Haven. The city officers and voters, in public meeting, denounced the project, and directed every means to be taken to defeat it. Such action was at once fatal to the proposed college, and it came to nothing. Early in 1833, Prudence Crandall, a young Quaker girl of Windham county, wrote to Garrison that she proposed to turn her girls' school at Canterbury into a school for colored children. The change was carried out during the year, and raised a more INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 371 angry local storm than that which had been met in New Haven. A town meeting declared the school a nuisance ; the pupils were insulted on the streets ; the vagrant act was invoked against them without success ; and at last the leaders of the opposition went to the general assembly, and obtained the passage of an act forbidding the in- troduction into the State of negroes from another State, for purposes of instruction, without the written consent of the selectmen of the town. Under the act Miss Crandall was arrested, and by the advice of her friends went to jail for a night. Trial after trial failed to convict her ; and " boy- cotting," as it is now called, was brought into play in its most aggravated forms. Even her church took part, and excluded her from attendance with her pupils. Finally, all other means having failed, her house was broken open at midnight by a mob, the inmates were turned out of doors, and the house and its contents were ruined. Miss Crandall then gave up her enterprise. One would not care to be retained for the de- fense in the consideration of the Crandall episode ; he can only wonder that Connecticut men could have been guilty of the persecutions which were inflicted upon a girl whose pictured countenance is almost a sufficient plea for her. But there are some points which should be brought to the reader's attention as essential to a just judgment. The commonwealth of Connecticut was a most unfor- 372 CONNECTICUT. tunate place for such an experiment, simply be- cause of its peculiar local constitution. On the one hand, it was a great responsibility upon a little Windham county town to assume the burden of an odium which far larger places would not have ventured to take up at the time. Towns in other States might shirk responsibility by pleading that such an establishment was the work of a superior power ; in a Connecticut town it must be taken as the act and deed of the town itself. On the other hand, the universal feeling in the State, that a town should have the amplest liberty of control in its local affairs, made it easy for the town's con- trolling influence to get from the general assembly the act recognizing its selectmen's right to decide on this question, — an act whose form was so closely in accord with the general tenor of the Connecti- cut system that legislators must have felt it dif- ficult to find objections to it, even if they disliked its new principle. Popular passion had thus a strong impelling force and a temptingly clear field before it, and the opportunity thus afforded may do something to explain the whole affair. At least, the second consideration should do something to exonerate the people of the commonwealth at large. With the exception of these unpleasant features, the political history of the commonwealth has been uneventful, and the only friction yet notice- able is in some points in which the old forms of INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 373 local government have seemed to become too nar- row for the commonwealth's growth. Most of the dissatisfaction has come from the constitution of the general assembly. The representation of the political units of the State in it has always been somewhat peculiar, owing to the survival of the original elements. The lower house has never been considered a popular body : it is the histori- cal representative of the towns, with all their original feeling of town equality. A majority of the lower house need not represent anything ap- proaching a popular majority. The senate was intended to represent the popular majority, but the twenty-four districts from which its members are selected have offered too tempting a prize for gerrymandering to be resisted. In other States, it is the apportionment of the lower house which is usually subjected to this process ; in Connecticut, it is the senate. The party which finds itself in a majority on the popular vote, and yet in a mi- nority in the lower house, is apt to charge injustice there also. And yet the historical student, how- ever much he may regret unequal apportionment in the senate, cannot but regret any attempt to disturb the ancient apportionment in the lower house. It is one of the few remnants of the origi- nal constitution of the commonwealth, and speaks too plainly the history of Connecticut to be will' ingly abandoned. CHAPTER XIX. CONNECTICUT IN THE WAR FOR THE UNION. Now that the heat and passion of the war for the Union have so far died away, it must be ad- mitted that the hasty rush into hostilities was largely due to the prevalent belief in the seceding States that the North and West would not fight. The belief rested on different grounds as to the two sections. The West would not fight because it was in her interest to secure peaceable use of the Mississippi, and thus mutual interest was to guard the South from an enemy for whom it had consider- able respect. The manufacturing regions of the North would not fight because they dared not ; and if they should attempt to fight, the South would ask no better or safer amusement than a conflict with them. History should have taught all men more wisdom : the Flemish artisan had long ago shown the world how his craft could fight upon occasion, and the Northern mechanics only repeated and emphasized the lesson. The aversion to war as an abstract principle was strongest among such as the typical Connecticut workman. He could see no use in it ; it was not in the line IN THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 375 of his training or ambitions ; it interfered seriously with all that he longed to do in the world. All this really made him a more dangerous enemy, for when he was forced into warlike occupation he went to work at it with a peculiar determina- tion to finish the matter and get rid of it as soon as possible. But the average Southerner's opinion was undoubtedly voiced by Governor Hammond of South Carolina, when he said that the " manual laborers and operatives of the North " were " es- sentially slaves," " the mudsills of society," the difference being that " our slaves are hired for life and are well compensated ; yours are hired by the day and not cared for." Above others, he "would probably have been amused by the notion of an actual regiment of Connecticut mechanics and tin-peddlers as a possible element in the deci- sion of the great question. It is a fair instance of the commonwealth's in- difference to military glory that her militia system was so completely out of gear in 1861 that she was unable to provide even the single regiment of militia assigned to her in the first call of President Lincoln. Up to the last moment her people were intensely busy with the machinery and mechani- cal industries which had given them so large a place in the material development of the country. A remarkable feature of the war was the group of " war governors " who directed the energies of their States during the struggle, and stand out 376 CONNECTICUT. above the mass of those who have occupied the office. To this group Connecticut made a notable contribution in the person of her war governor, William A. Buckingham, of Norwich, one of the class of manufacturers and business men who have so often served the commonwealth. January 17, 1861, he issued his proclamation to the militia of the State, warning them that their services might be needed at any moment, and urging them to be " ready to render such service as any exigency might demand." The ranks of the militia were not filled as they should have been ; but the pru- dent governor, on his personal responsibility, or- dered the quai'termaster to buy equipments for 6,000 men. They did good service just when they were most needed. In the spring of 1861, Governor Buckingham •was reelected by a vote of 43,012 to 41,003 for James C. Loomis. April 16, he called for a regi- ment of volunteers, as there was not even a regi- ment of organized militia to fill President Lincoln's call on the commonwealth. The step was un- authorized by law, but the governor relied on the general assembly to validate it at the coming ses- sion. In this he represented the people exactly, for they had caught fire at the capture of Sumter. More than five times the State's quota volunteered, ' — fifty-four companies instead of ten. But the curious feature of the case, as illustrating the survival underneath of the primitive constitution JN TEE WAR FOR THE UNION. 377 of the commonwealth, is the way in which the work was done. The commonwealth was met by an emergency utterly unprovided for by law ; the legislature was not in session, and the governor was the only available representative of common- wealth power. All this apparent chaos did not disturb the people in the least. They fell back at once upon the resources of their town system, as they would have done in 1637. Town meetings all over the State met and exercised their re- served powers to tide over the crisis. Money was voted to support the families of volunteers, and to insure a prompt response to the governor's call. By tens and fifteens and twenty-fives, the little towns poured in their contributions of men ; the cities and large towns sent larger numbers, and added larger contributions of money ; and soon the governor was justified in going to Washing- ton and inducing the administration to accept three regiments from Connecticut instead of one. When the legislature met in May, it ratified tlie governor's acts, and appropriated $2,000,000 for military expenses. Extra pay, to the amount of $30 a year, was voted to each enlisted man during the war, besides support for families of volunteers, six dollars per month for the wife and two dollars per month for each child under fourteen. The support was to continue until the expiration of the term of enlistment, even though the soldier should die before that tima Beyond such general 878 CONNECTICUT. acts as these, it may be said with considerable accuracy that the commonwealth organization did little, and had little to do, for the conduct of the war : the war was managed, as far as Connecticut was concerned, by the towns, just as in the Ameri- can Revolution. Many of them are still stagger- ing under the load of debt which bears witness to their unselfish devotion to the cause. All through the war, the votes of the two great parties remained about as close as in 1861. The minority contained a " peace party," and its pro- ceedings, raising of peace flags, etc., were a con- stant exasperation to the people. The legislature met it in a fashion quite characteristic of Connec- ticut. It voted that any such flag was a " nui- sance," to be abated by any constable or justice of the peace of a town, or by the sheriff of the county. Even here, however, unofficial represen- tatives of the towns were usually first to abate the nuisance, as the town committees of safety had done nearly a century before. The first Connecticut regiment did not reach Washington until May 13. To compensate for the delay, it came perfectly prepared, even to 50,000 rounds of ammunition, and rations and forage for twenty days. The second and third regiments followed within a day or two, all in the same con- dition of complete preparation. The three took part in the battle of Bull Run. They led the ad- vance, opened the battle, were not demoralized. IN THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 379 and covered the retreat, — a pretty fair record for " mudsills " in their first battle. To illustrate the business habits which the Connecticut men carried into war-making, it is worth while to note that, ■when they marched back into their quarters near Washington, they not only brought their own camp equipage in perfect condition, but the camp equipage of three other regiments, and two pieces of artillery, which they had found abandoned and had thoughtfully taken possession of on the way. The three regiments were three-months' men, but their members reenlisted almost to a man ; and the high character of these first Connecticut rep- resentatives in the field may be estimated from the fact that more than five hundred of them be- came commissioned officers during the war. Call after call was made for troops, and the old commonwealth kept her quota more than full. She had in the service at various times twenty- eight regiments of infantry, two regiments and three batteries of artillery, and one regiment and a squadron of cavalry, numbering 54,882 volun- teers of all terms of service, or, if the terms are all reduced to a three - years' average, 48,181 three-years' men, 6,698 more than her quota. For a State with but about 80,000 voters, and about 50,000 able-bodied men on her militia rolls in 1861, the percentage of volunteers is very high ; indeed, not more than one or two States excelled it. There were 97 officers and 1,094 men killed 880 CONNECTICUT. in action, 48 officers and 663 men who died from wounds, 63 officers and 3,246 men who died from disease, and 21 officers and 389 men who were re- ported missing. The men who filled the Connecticut rolls were to an unusual degree typical of the best elements of the commonwealth's history. Many of the names show that their possessors were of foreign blood or birth, but the mass of them are those which have been familiar to the State since its co- lonial foundation. It was peculiarly appropriate that almost the first victim should have been Theo- dore Winthrop of New Haven, for he drew his blood from Connecticut's first governor, John Winthrop. To one who has followed the history of the State with any close attention, the rolls of her regiments are productive of a curious sensa- tion. He finds the same names which he has seen again and again in the town histories ; he can al- most tell from the recurring names on the rolls the town from which each company was enlisted ; and it sometimes seems as if the dead soldiers of the Pequot or King Philip's war had sprung to life again to answer the cry of a new country. And yet the alien names, whose owners made up so large a part of the State's military history, are as fair a reason for satisfaction, for they are a stand- ing proof that Connecticut's catholic spirit of hos- pitality has been met by a loyal adoption of the institutions and spirit of the old commonwealth. IN THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 381 Any attempt to enumerate the contributions of Connecticut to the military and naval service of the United States must be embarrassing. It would seem unfair to omit the names, like those of Grant and Sherman, of men who drew their blood from Connecticut, and their powers for good from the institutions of her founders ; and yet such a list would stretch out far beyond the space which could possibly be given to it. But even though the attention is confined to the common- wealth's more direct contributions, the list is long enough to be embarrassing. To the navy, Con- necticut contributed its secretary, Gideon Welles, rear admirals Andrew H. Foote of New Haven, and F. H. Gregory of Norwalk, and commodores John Rogers and C. R. P. Rogers of New London, and R. B. Hitchcock. In the army, Winthrop has been mentioned already. Among the Connecti- cut major-generals were Alfred H, Terry of New Haven, Darius N. Couch of Norwalk, John Sedg- wick of Cornwall Hollow, J. K. F. Mansfield of Middletown, Jos. A. Mower of New London, J. R. Hawley of Hartford, H. W. Birge of Norwich, and R. O. Tyler of Hartford; and among the brigadier-generals, Nathaniel Lyon of Eastford, G. A. Stedman of Hartford, O. S. Ferry of Nor- walk, Daniel Tyler and Edward Harland of Nor- wich, and A. von Steinwehr of Wallingford. So large a contribution of distinguished officers is doubly remarkable as coming from so small a 382 CONNECTICUT. State, and from a State which did not enter the conflict out of any diseased passion for military glory, but simply out of the national necessity of the case. If we should attempt to pass below the higher grades of officers, the list of Connecticut men who fought their way into command of regi- ments or companies, in the service of their own or other States, would be almost endless. Common- wealth and towns have marked their gratitude to their representatives in the war. They have shown that a commonwealth's aversion to war is entirely compatible with the most unyielding stub- bornness when it is forced upon her, and that the eminence of her sons in the arts of peace can never again be taken as a safe indication that they are easy victims for attack. It was with no small pride that the people of Connecticut watched the close of the war, as one of her children held Lee's army in an iron grasp on the James, while another was moving up irresistibly from the far South, sweeping up the remaining forces of the Confederacy into a great net, from which there was no escape. And the military historian of the commonwealth may well be permitted to close this chapter for her : — "The first great martyrs of the war — Ells- worth, Winthrop, Ward, and Lyon — were of Con- necticut stock. A Connecticut general, with Con- necticut regiments, opened the battle of Bull Run and closed it; and a Connecticut regiment was IN THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 383 marshaled in front of the farm-house at Appomat- tox when Lee surrendered to a soldier of Connec- ticut blood. A Connecticut flag first displaced the palmetto upon the soil of South Carolina ; a Con- necticut flag was first planted in Mississippi ; a Connecticut flag was first unfurled before New Orleans. Upon the reclaimed walls of Pulaski, Donelson, Macon, Jackson, St. Philip, Morgan, Wagner, Sumter, Fisher, our State left its inefface- able mark. The sons of Connecticut followed the illustrious grandson of Connecticut as he swung his army with amazing momentum from the fast- nesses of Tennessee to the Confederacy's vital centre. At Antietam, Gettysburg, and in all the fierce campaigns of Virginia, our soldiers won crimson glories ; and at Port Hudson they were the very first and readiest. . . . On the banks jof every river of the South, and in the battle-smoke of every contested ridge and mountain-peak, the sons of Connecticut have stood and patiently struggled. In every ransomed State we have a holy acre on which the storm has left its emerald waves, — three thousand indistinguishable hillocks on lonely lake and stream, in field and tangled thicket." If the writer of the foregoing paragraph had repeated the stately dirge of the general court of two hundred years ago, it would have been but a just connection between the spirit of the fathers and of their children ; " The bitter cold, the tarled 384 CONNECTICUT. swamp, the tedious march, the strong fort, the numerous and stubborn enemy they contended •with, for their God, king, and country, be their trophies over death. . . . Our mourners, over all the colony, witness for our men that they were not unfaithful in that day." CHAPTER XX. RECENT DEVELOPMENT. In" the twenty years that close the nineteenth century the most striking features in the develop- ment of Connecticut have shown themselves in the economic rather than in the political organization. Earlier chapters have described the rise of town and commonwealth governments ; they tell the story of the difficulties through which the people struggled that they might establish a satisfactory system for the conduct of their public affairs. No better proof can be given of the success of their efforts than the uneventful character of the po- litical history of the State through most of the nineteenth century. Inside the framework of government that time had tested, citizens could devote themselves contentedly to their private affairs ; they could take advantage, with freedom and security, of the wonderful opportunities of economic progress that the century has offered ; and they have effected a revolution in the economic organization of the State. It will be the purpose of this chapter to describe the economic changes of the past twenty years, the period in which these changes have been most rapid, and to notice what 386 CONNECTICUT. development there has been in the political organi- zation. By 1880 Connecticut had already become a dis- tinctly industrial State. Nearly one half of the workers of the commonwealth were engaged in manufacturing and mechanical trades, and only one in five was occupied with agriculture, the branch of production which had once been all- embracing. The number of farmers has not varied greatly in the last twenty years, and in a sense, as will be shown later, it is wrong to speak of the " decline " of agriculture in the State. Relatively, however, to other branches of production, agricul- ture has certainly lost ground. Each of the two census decades has seen the addition, in round numbers, of thirty thousand new wage-earners to manufactures and of twenty thousand to trade and transportation, so that agriculture is now entirely overshadowed by the modern industries and counts to-day scarcely more than one in ten of the workers of the State. The growth of manufacturing is to be measured not alone by the increase in the number of per- sons engaged in it. That number includes at all periods many petty artisans, who in a sense are manufacturers, as they work up raw material into finished forms. These artisans perform services highly valued in any community, but they lack the peculiar efiiciency of modern labor, organized on the capitalist system, and in their social and RECENT DEVELOPAfENT. 387 political relations they belong rather with the farm- ers than in the most characteristic parts of mod- ern society. The growth in Connecticut manufac- tures has come not from the increase in this class, but, in the modern style, from the increase in fac- tory laborers, working with machines and power furnished by their employers. While the number of persons engaged in manufactures has risen in twenty years from 112,000 to 176,000, the capital invested has grown from $120,000,000 to $314,000,000 ; and the disproportion between the ratios of growth implies that manufactures have changed not only quantitatively but qualitatively as well, and that Connecticut has kept pace with other industrial States in accepting the capitalist form of organization. The social and political problems arising from this new form of organization are sufficiently well known to all students of modern conditions, and such students scarcely need to be reminded of the great reason for the change, its economic eflSciency. The reason appears clearly in reviewing the in- dustries of Connecticut at the present time. The seventeen leading manufactures in the State, com- prising over three fifths of the total number of persons engaged in manufacture and nearly three fifths in value of the total product, are all organized on the factory system, and include only 993 out of a total of 9128 manufacturing establishments. I give the list, ranking the industries according to 388 CONNECTICUT. the number of persons employed in each, and itali- cizing the names of those in which Connecticut takes first place among all the States, in respect to the value of the product: textiles (especially cotton, silk, woolen, and worsted), brass manufac- tures^ foundry and machine shop products, hard- ware^ corsets^ fur hats, plated and hrittania ware, ammunition, cutlery, clocks, rubber goods, car- riages, sewing machines, iron and steel, paper and wood pulp, needles and pins, electrical apparatus and supplies. In the product of manufactures, measured per head of population, Connecticut has now reached the second place among the States, having passed Massachusetts and standing next to Rhode Island. Still more striking, in view of the relatively small size of the State, is the fact that it exceeds every one of the other States in nine (or eleven if the brass manufacture be divided into its parts) out of ninety-nine industries specified in the census of 1900. The commonwealth has shown its ability not only to keep its place at home, but to extend its business at the expense of foreign rivals, and has begun to export a considerable share of its products abroad. In some manufactures, like those of clocks and fire-arms, the foreign trade has always been considerable, but the ability to export has shown itself in many other industries in the closing years of the century, and large factories have sent one half or more of their output of machines and tools to foreign countries. RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 389 What reasons explain this superiority of Con- necticut in manufacturing enterprise ? The ques- tion is answered as follows in a recent volume of the United States Census : " The preeminence of the State in manufacturing is due in part to its excellent communication by rail and water with all parts of the country ; to its geographical location, by which it can handle a large export trade ; to its water-power ; to its plentiful supplies of labor and capital, the former gathered easily in the great centres of the East, and the latter coming to it not alone from its profitable manufactures but also from its large insurance and banking interests ; and to its joint-stock laws." Nothing is said of the physical resources of the State. Its mines have fallen into obscurity and its agriculture produces only for household con- sumption. Connecticut sends to Pennsylvania for its iron, to Montana for its copper, to the South for its cotton, to China for its raw silk, and all over the world for its wool. It imports even its power from abroad, in the form of coal ; the water power of the State is small when compared with that of other States, and plays an inconsiderable part in manufacturing. Other factors cited in the quotation are of undoubted importance. Connec- ticut has its full share of capital, and satisfactory rules under which this may be invested, especially now that'a general corporation law has been passed ; and the State is well situated for the marketing of its products. 390 CONNECTICUT. There remains the factor of labor. The author has said in an earlier chapter (page 366), that the leadership of Connecticut in manufactures "has come purely from the high individual ability of her workmen." The State, then, won its place by the quality as much as by the quantity of its in- dustrial laborers. Are we to understand that it keeps its place by the same means, — has it now not only an adequate supply of labor but a supply of exceptionally good labor as well ? Some indication of the individual ability of a people in manufactures is furnished by the number of inventions they bring forth. The inventions of Connecticut have been celebrated for generations, and if we follow the number produced in recent times we find that the ingenuity of the people is still prolific. From 1850 to 1900 Connecticut has always held the first place among the States for the number of patents issued in comparison with the total population ; in recent census years when the statistics have been compiled, the people of the commonwealth have taken out ordinarily about one patent to every thousand inhabitants. In the last decade, however, there has been a perceptible falling off in the rate, and consideration will show this to be natural and probably permanent. The very object of many inventions is a machine that will accomplish automatically what before has been entrusted to human skill ; unceasing'demand for such machines comes from manufacturers who RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 391 want to substitute cheap and unskilled labor for that which is intelligent and costly. So long as the demand for such machines continues it is likely to be supplied in large part by Connecticut inge- nuity and enterprise; the tradition of experiment and invention has been established in the State, and will be maintained by a select body of mechan- ics, who are largely of native origin, descendants of the original whittling Yankees. The demand ha,s been satisfied, however, in many industries, and in them a cheaper grade of laborers has been established, lower in intelligence than the workers of fifty years ago. Of these laborers many are foreigners. In each of the past two decades the foreign-born population of Connecticut has increased by over 50,000, and amounts now altogether to 238,000. Many of the foreign-born have entered domestic service, many have gone into some petty trade or become common laborers, but many others, just how many it is impossible to say, have found employment in manufactures. In some districts French Canadians have become the predominant element, and few factories of any size lack English, Irish, Germans, and Swedes on their pay-rolls. European experts are not im- pressed now, as once they were, with the superior quality of individual mill operatives in this coun- try ; they find much the same people whom they left on the other side of the water, and they have begun to doubt whether the eflficiency of our mills 392 CONNECTICUT. is due to any improvement in labor brought on by the conditions of life here. Another cause must be sought to explain the efficiency of American manufactures in general, of Connecticut manufactures in particular. It is found in the perfection of organization in this coun- try and in the State. No patents are granted for inventions in factory organization, which enable the duties of manufacture to be distributed so that every worker in every department is called upon for all that he is qualified to do, no less and no more. Inventions of this kind, however, effect as real an economy as those concerned with the im- provement of technical processes, and play a deci- sive part when the competition of manufacture lies between great social groups such as form our modern factories. There is significance in the fact that one of Connecticut's leading manufactures, the pin industry, is just that which Adam Smith selected long ago to demonstrate the advantages of division, or organization, of labor. Connecticut has kept its place in manufacturing not by its phy- sical resources, not even by a superior supply of capital and labor, so much as by the shrewdness and energy of its industrial leaders, who have sur- passed their rivals in the efficient combination of the forces that are employed in making and mar- keting goods. We have carried down from an earlier time the idea of the importance of the individual laborer in RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 393 manufactures, and we are slow to recognize with due appreciation the services of the factory masters. Connecticut owes a considerable number of its large manufacturing establishments to the few men, sometimes members of a single family, who have practically created each, and maintained and strengthened it through changing times. The State may well be proud of its manufacturing aris- tocracy ; only by the rule of the best could its in- dustries have been brought to their present flour- ishing condition. Further proof, if one were needed, of the part played by leading men in developing the industries of the State, is furnished by the history of another form of business enterprise, — that concerned with life and fire insurance. In the insurance business many of the factors that complicate the question of success in manufacturing are eliminated , labor, among other factors, is a negligible quantity. The Connecticut insurance companies have had to meet the competition of companies enjoying the finan- cial advantages of a situation in the money-centre of the country, and have suffered from the hostile legislation of certain States, but they still carry on a considerable part of the insurance business of the country, and stand second to none in the esteem of the insurance world. They owe their success to the honesty and economy of their corpo- rate management. It will not be necessary, for the purposes of this 394 CONNECTICUT. chapter, to describe at length the changes that have taken place in other occupations allied in some respects to manufactures. In trade and transpor- tation, in professional and in domestic and per- sonal services, there has been an increase not only in the absolute numbers but also in the proportion of the population engaged. The transportation system has been strengthened by the addition of the elective street railroads, and, partly as a result of this change, there has been a development in the mercantile organization similar to that which has taken place in manufacturing, building up the large stores at the expense of their competi- tors. The agriculture of the State cannot be dis- missed quite so summarily. Even on sentimental grounds interest would attach to a branch of pro- duction which was for centuries the mainstay of the commonwealth. There are practical reasons as well, however, inviting attention to the sub- ject. Any industry acquires an importance out of proportion to the number of persons engaged in it when it shows symptoms of depression such as have appeared in Connecticut agriculture ; it is the one sheep astray from the fold, deserving more care than the ninety and nine who are safe. Even the economic results of the decline of any industry represent a danger to the community, but the danger is intensified when the results ap- pear in the political organization as well. So in. RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 395 Connecticut, whose political constitution grew up on the basis of agriculture and whose political wel- fare depends now on the wholesome condition of the rural towns, every fact is of importance which indicates the course and the probable future of the agricultural crisis through which the State is pass- ing. The Connecticut Bureau of Labor Statistics investigated the condition of 693 farms in the State in 1888, and received from the farmers who conducted them reports showing that more than half of the number, 378, were worked at a loss. The farmers included their family expenses, it is true, with the costs of operation ; setting these ex- penses aside, the number of farms that ran behind from a purely business standpoint would be re- duced to 42. The fact remains, however, if we can regard these figures as typical of conditions in the State at large, that more than half of the Con- necticut farmers at this period found it impossible to make both ends meet by the methods that they were then pursuing and on the standard of living to which they were accustomed. The United States statistics, taken two years later, were also discouraging ; they showed that the number of farms, the acreage of farm land, the value of farm property, and the value of farm products had all decreased in the State in the ten years following 1880. We can admire the spirit, but we cannot fail to see an unhappy 396 CONNECTICUT. significance, in the motto displayed over Con- necticut's agricultural exhibit at the Columbian Exposition of 1893 : " Connecticut's best crop her sons and daughters." The reasons for this depression were not peculiar to Connecticut, and are not far to seek. The im- mense advance in manufactures and trade had at- tracted to the cities some of the best elements of the rural population. The improvements in transporta- tion freed the growing population of the cities from dependence on the country immediately surround- ing for food supplies, and exposed the Connecticut farmers to the competition of producers favored with far greater advantages of soil or climate. It may be doubted whether even at this time the farmers of the State, taken all together, were ab- solutely worse off than they had been in the past. There had been a sharp rise, it is true, in the price of farm labor, but most of the objects of consump- tion on the farm, especially manufactured articles, cost much less than formerly. Even those farmers, however, who managed to maintain their former money income, and who consequently were able to enjoy more comforts of life than before, measured their standard against that prevailing in the cities, and regarded themselves as declining in prosperity because they were being passed by others. Adjustment to these conditions has, however, taken place in the ten years that closed the cen- tury. The number of farms, the acreage of farm RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 397 land, and tbe value of farm property all increased slightly in that period, while in the value of farm products there has been the striking growth from $17,000,000 in 1890 to $28,000,000 in 1900. The Connecticut farmers, therefore, have solved their problem ; they have done it almost unaided, and in the best way, too, not by limiting their expenditures but by increasing their income. They have reached this result by devoting them- selves to products especially suited to their en- vironment, and by studying economy in raising and marketing the product. The direction of the change is indicated in a sentence which I quote from an address delivered before the State agricultural convention in 1898 : " Grass is the only crop outside of special lines which can be grown on our Eastern farms at a real profit." Less than one fifth of the farms of the State now report their main income as coming from miscellaneous sources, while over one quarter are devoted to the raising of live stock, and nearly one third to dairy production. There has been a de- crease in the cultivation of every cereal except In- dian corn, and a large part of the improved land has been turned back to pasture. Connecticut is now preeminently a dairy State. By the improve- ment in the breed of stock, by the organization of creameries, of which there are now over fifty in the State, and by the application of scientific principles in dairy production, the farmers are in 398 CONNECTICUT. a position to take full advantage of the profitable market which the large city groups offer to them. Space forbids a consideration of the special branches of production which have developed from the miscellaneous farming of the past. The cul- ture of fruit for market is largely a growth of re- cent years. Through the influence of a few leaders, fruit of unsurpassed quality, and in rapidly increas- ing quantity, is now grown in the State ; much " abandoned " farm land has been planted with peaches, and now yields good returns. The tobacco culture is a characteristic Connecticut industry, especially in its most recent development. The tobacco farmers have long been accustomed practi- cally to manufacture their soil, by adding to it just the chemical constituents which they wanted in the crop ; now they manufacture climate too, by the erection of cloth shades covering sometimes acres ; and experiments have proved that they can raise in this way a leaf equal in all respects to the average imported Sumatra, though the profits of the venture as a business undertaking are still in doubt. The economic development of the past twenty years has tended to a constant increase of the urban population, which since 1880 has included more than half of the inhabitants of the State. All but 12 of the 168 towns, it is true, report some manu- facture carried on in them, but the proportion of manufacturing done in cities has increased, and RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 399 over nine tenths of the manufactured product come from the 61 principal towns. The old form of town government, which continues to work fairly well in places that have not changed greatly from their original size and character, has proved clumsy and inefficient in larger groups ; certain of its parts remain everywhere throughout the State, but it has constantly lost ground so far as regards the substance of power. The list of cities, given in a previous chapter, has doubled in the last two decades, and the increase in the number of boroughs has been almost as rapid. In the cities the labor element has gained a power which is still denied to it in State affairs, and in several cases in recent years a " labor mayor " has been elected. If we measure the importance of political or- ganizations by the money standard, the municipal groups of Connecticut are more deserving of atten- tion than the State government ; in a recent year the combined expenditures of towns, boroughs, and cities was over $10,000,000, more than threefold the expenditures of the State treasury. The study of municipal politics would be unprofitable, how- ever, without going into details, for which there is no space here, and the remainder of this chapter must be reserved for the consideration, necessarily very brief, of State affairs. The chief interest centres in the strains devel- oped in the State constitution by the industrial and urban growth of the commonwealth. The consti- 400 CONNECTICUT. tution, it will be remembered, entrusted very ex- tensive powers to a legislature in which the towns, as such, enjoyed peculiar influence. The constitu- tion did not provide for a recognition in the field of politics of such extensive economic and social changes as have occurred, and recent years have been marked by attempts to secure its revision. In two important points, the mode of electing a governor and the composition of the State Senate, revision has been effected. The two great politi- cal parties of the State have shown nearly equal strength at the polls, and the slight diversion of votes effected by a third party, the Prohibitionists, has on four occasions since 1880 prevented any candidate from receiving the absolute majority re- quired by the constitution ; the Democratic candi- date might receive a popular plurality of several thousand, but the right of election would go to the General Assembly, and there his rival would be chosen. In 1890 the popular vote was very close, but on the face of the returns the Democratic candidate, Luzon B. Morris, had a majority over all of 26. There was a question, however, about some ballots which local election officials had re- jected, but which would, if counted, increase the total vote so as to leave no candidate with a ma- jority. The lower house of the legislature, which was as usual Republican, asserted the right of the General Assembly to examine and correct the vote as it came to them from the canvassing board of RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 401 the State ; the Senate, then Democratic, denied this right, and over this question there was a dead- lock which lasted throughout the session, and stopped legislative business entirely. The Demo- cratic candidate for comptroller was conceded a majority and took office, but the other candidates were left hanging in the air, and for lack of " duly qualified " successors the Republican incumbents continued in office from the previous administra- tion. The bitterness arising from this conflict did not blind people to the injustice, or at least the in- expediency, of the sj^stem which made it possible. To this grievance another was added. The con- stitutional provisions touching the State Senate made it impossible to pay regard to population in its apportionment, and had led to gross inequalities in the upper house, where alone representation by population was possible. In 1900 one district had tenfold the population of another. Popular sen- timent against these features of the constitution grew so strong that the dominant party was forced to action, and, in 1892, took the first steps neces- sary for their revision ; encouraged by Republican gains they retraced their steps in 1894, but the "lost amendments" were only deferred, and were finally passed and accepted by the people in 1901. The chief State officials are now elected by a plu- rality vote of the people, and the Senate is to be reapportioned in districts more nearly equal in population. 402 CONNECTICUT. There remain to be considered questions still unsettled, of which the most important is the com- position of the House of Representatives. The constitution of 1818 fixed representation on the existing basis, with provisions entirely inadequate to meet the changes in the distribution of popu- lation which have since taken place. Towns of a few hundred inhabitants have as many representa- tives as cities approaching or exceeding a hundred thousand ; even among the small towns there is no consistency in the apportionment of representa- tives. New Haven, with a population of 108,027, has still but two representatives ; Union, with 428, has two; Hamden, with 4,626, has but one. It seems hardly worth while to quote the statistical comparisons further ; the most vigorous imagina- tion is not likely to exceed the facts in picturing the present condition. In the last General Assembly the farmers num- bered 89 out of a total of 255, and exceeded the members of any other vocation. The custom of reelection has grown more and more rare in the course of time, and rotation has taken its place ; scarcely one representative in twenty is elected to the succeeding Assembly. The great majority of representatives come from the country districts, without previous experience in legislation, and un- trained to the scientific treatment of the complex legal and fiscal questions which form a large part of State legislation. Ignorance rather than cor- RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 403 ruption is the serious charge to be brought against the rural representatives. Indirect bribery, paying a man " for his time " when he voted, was formerly common in the towns ; it has been checked to some extent by the passage of a secret ballot law, and, with more efficiency probably, by the action of the better elements in the towns. Election expenses are still unduly large, it is said, and legislative corruption is constantly hinted at, but it would be hard to prove that rural voters and legislators are worse than their fellows in the cities. Critics of the existing system of representation hold it responsible for the lack of laws to regulate the lobby and to punish corrupt practices ; they charge against it also selfishness and extravagance in the conduct of the State's finances. The tax on towns was suspended in 1891, and has not since been resumed ; and the public revenues come now almost entirely from taxes on corporations. Some of the abundant revenue has been applied to the reduction of the debt, but other parts have been expended on objects of doubtful utility, espe- cially in the multiplication of offices, and the sum total of expenditures has grown rapidly. None will question the need of better roads in Con- necticut, or the propriety of the State sharing the burden of their construction ; it seems significant, however, that in 1895, when the State first con- tributed to this object, it paid but one third of the expense, in 1897 it paid half, and in 1899 it was 404 CONNECTICUT. charged with two thirds or three fourths, while the total appropriation for the assistance of the towns increased at each session. Proposals for a change in the basis of represen- tation had been made before 1850, and repeated from time to time, but the discontent culminated at the end of the century. The advocates of re- form despaired of reaching their end by securing an amendment of the constitution in the regular form, which prescribes a majority vote in the lower house of one legislature, a two thirds vote of both houses in the next, and finally a ratification by the people. They demanded that the revision should be effected by a convention, and though to the lawyers this seemed " disorderly," as the organic law specified other means, the General Assembly consented at last to take the will of the people on the subject, and by over 20,000 majority the convention was voted. While the popular vote was so strongly in favor of the convention, the returns show that over three fourths of the towns voted against it, and as the body was composed of one delegate from each town it was certain to be very critical, if not actually hostile, toward any scheme of revision. Over sixty different plans to change the system of represen- tation were brought forward, and it is noteworthy that of these all but one, which never received serious consideration, accepted the town idea, and left the control of the House of Representatives RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 405 with the towns of less than 5000 inhabitants. After discussion lasting over four months a plan was finally accepted which assured to each town one representative, gave one additional to towns havincf over 2000 inhabitants, and added one more for each 50,000 above 50,000. This plan would have taken 30 members from small towns, and added 29 to the larger places, diminishing the num- bers of the House by 1. It contemplated also an increase in the Senate. Beside this mild reform in representation the convention proposed further changes in the constitution, among others prohibit- ing the appointment of members of the legislature to other public office during the term for which they were elected, and giving the governor power to veto parts of aj propriation bills. The plan of representation proposed by the con- vention was naturally opposed at the polls by the people of the smaller towns, and it failed to satisfy the inhabitants of the larger towns and the cities. Interest flagged when the outcome of the conven- tion was known, and the popular vote on tlie pro- posed revisions was " remarkable alike for the significance of its emphatic disapproval and the insignificance of its total volume. Practically 5 per cent, of the registered voters favored the new constitution, 10 per cent, disapproved it, and 85 per cent, did not vote either way." The student of Connecticut politics from whom these words are quoted finds, however, in the past history of 406 CONNECTICUT. the State, reason to believe that the question will not be allowed to remain long unsettled, and looks to the legislature to make some reasonable change which will decide it. Thus much is certain, that in the immediate future no change will be made which will destroy the peculiar feature of the Connecticut constitution, its principle of town representation. APPENDIX. THE CONSTITUTION OF 1639. (Abbreviations only are modernized.) Forasmuch as it hath pleased the AUmighty God by the wise disposition of his diuyne providence so to Or- der and dispose of things that we the Inhabitants and Residents of Windsor, Harteford and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and vppon the River of Conectecotte and the Lands thereunto adioyneing ; And well knowing where a people are gathered togather the word of God requires that to mayntayne the peace and vnion of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Gouerment established according to God, to or- der and dispose of the affayres of the people at all sea- sons as occation shall require ; doe therefore assotiate and conioyne our selues to be as one Publike State or Commonwelth ; and doe, for our selues and our Suc- cessors and such as shall be adioyned to vs att any tyme hereafter, enter into Combination and Confederation togather, to mayntayne and presearue the liberty and purity of the gospell of our Lord Jesus which we now professe, as also the disciplyne of the Churches, which ac- cording to the truth of the said gospell is now practised 408 CONNECTICUT. amongst vs ; As also in our Ciuell Affaires to be guided and gouerned according to such Lawes, Rules, Orders and decrees as shall be made, ordered & decreed, as fol- loweth : — 1. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed, that there shall be yerely two generall Assemblies or Courts, the first on the second thursday in Aprill, the other the sec- ond thursday in September, following ; the first shall be called the Courte of Election, wherein shall be yerely Chosen from tyme to tyme soe many Magestrats and other publike Officers as shall be found requisitte ; Whereof one to be chosen Gouernour for the yeare en- sueing and vntill another be chosen, and noe other Mag- estrate to be chosen for more than one yeare ; provided alwayes there be sixe chosen besids the Gouernour ; which being chosen and sworn according to an Oath re- corded for that purpose shall haue power to administer justice according to the Lawes here established, and for want thereof according to the rule of the word of God ; which choise shall be made by all that are admitted free- men and haue taken the Oath of Fidellity, and doe co- habitte within this Jurisdiction, (hauing beene admitted Inhabitants by the major part of the Towne wherein they line) ^ or the mayor parte of such as shall be theu present. 2. It is Ordered, sen tensed and decreed, that the Election of the aforesaid Magestrats shall be on this manner : euery person present and quallified for choyse shall bring in (to the persons deputed to receaue them) one single paper with the name of him' written in yt whom he desires to haue Gouernour, and he that hath * Inserted at a later period. APPENDIX. 409 the greatest number of papers shall be Gouernour for that yeare. And the rest of the Magestrats or publike Officers to be chosen in this manner : The Secretary for the tyme being shall first read the names of all that are to be put to choise and then shall seuerally nominate them distinctly, and euery one that would haue the per* son nominated to be chosen shall bring in one single paper written vppon, and he that would not haue him chosen shall bring in a blanke ; and euery one that hath more written papers than blanks shall be a Magestrat for that yeare ; which papers shall be receaued and told by one or more that shall be then chosen by the court and sworne to be faythfull therein ; but in case there should not be sixe chosen as aforesaid, besids the Gou- ernor, out of those which are nominated, then he or they which haue the most written papers shall be a Mage- strate or Magestrats for the ensueing yeare, to make vp she foresaid number. 3. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed, that the Sec- retary shall not nominate any person, nor shall any per- son be chosen newly into the Magestracy which was not propownded in some Generall Courte before, to be nom- inated the next Election ; and to that end yt shall be lawfull for ech of the Townes aforesaid by their depu- tyes to nominate any two whom they conceaue fitte to be putte to Election ; and the Courte may ad so many more as they iudge requisitt. 4. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed that noe person be chosen Gouernor aboue once in two yeares, and that the Gouernor be alwayes a member of some ap- proved congregation, and formerly of the Magestracy within this Jurisdiction ; and all the Magestrats Free* 410 CONNECTICUT. men of this Commonwelth : and that no Magestrate or other publike officer shall execute any parte of his or their Office before they are seuerally sworne, which shall be done in the face of the Courte if they be pres- ent, and in case of absence by some deputed for that purpose. 5. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed, that to the aforesaid Courte of Election the seuerall Townes shall send their deputyes, and when the Elections are ended they may proceed in any publike searuice as at other Courts. Also the other Generall Courte in September shall be for makeing of lawes, and any other publike oc- cation which conserus the good of the Commonwelth. 6. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed, that the Gou- ernor shall, either by himselfe or by the secretary, send out summons to the Constables of euery Towne for the cauleing of these two standing Courts, one month at lest before their seuerall tymes : And also if the Gouernor and the gretest parte of the Magestrats see cause vppon any spetiall occation to call a generall Courte, they may giue order to the secretary soe to doe within fowerteene dayes warneing : and if vrgent necessity so require, vp- pon a shorter notice, giueiug sufficient grownds for yt to the deputyes when they meete, or els be questioned for the same ; And if the Gouernor and Mayor parte of Magestrats shall ether neglect or refuse to call the two Generall standing Courts or ether of them, as also at other tymes when the occations of the Commonwelth re- quire, the Freemen thereof, or the Mayor parte of them, shall petition to them soe to doe : if then yt be ether denyed or neglected the said Freemen or the Mayor parte of them shall haue power to giue order to the APPENDIX. 411 Constables of the seuerall Townes to doe the same, and 80 may meete togather, and chuse to themselues a Mod- erator, and may proceed to do any Acte of power, which any other Generall Courte may. 7. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed that after there are warrants giuen out for any of the said Gen- erall Courts, the Constable or Constables of ech Towne shall forthwith give notice distinctly to the inhabitants of the same, in some Publike Assembly or by goeing or sending from howse to bowse, that at a place and tyme by him or them lymited and sett, they meet and assem- ble themselues togather to elect and chuse certen dep- utyes to be att the Generall Courte then following to agitate the afayres of the commonwelth ; which said Deputyes shall be chosen by all that are admitted In- habitants in the seuerall Townes and haue taken the oath of fidellity ; prouided that non be chosen a Deputy for any Generall Courte which is not a Freeman of this Commonwelth. The foresaid deputyes shall be chosen in manner following: euery person that is present and quallified as before expressed, shall bring the names of such, written in seuerall papers, as they desire to haue chosen for that Imployment, and these 3 or 4, more or lesse, being the number agreed on to be chosen for that tyme, that haue greatest number of papers written for them shall be deputyes for that Courte ; whose names shall be en- dorsed on the backe side of the warrant and returned into the Courte, with the Constable or Constables hand vnto the same. 8. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed, that Wynd- 6or, Haxtford and Wethersfield shall haue power, ech 412 CONNECTICUT. Towne, to send fower of their freemen as their deputyes to euery General! Courte ; and whatsoeuer other Townes shall be hereafter added to this Jurisdiction, they shall send so many deputyes as the Courte shall judge meete, a resonable proportion to the number of freemen that are in the said Townes being to be attended therein ; which deputyes shall haue the power of the whole Towne to giue their voats and alowance to all such lawes and orders as may be for the publike good, and unto which the said Townes are to be bownd. 9. It is Ordered and decreed, that the deputyes thus chosen shall haue power and liberty to appoynt a tyme and a place of meeting togather before any Generall Courte to aduise and consult of all such things as may concerns the good of the publike, as also to examine their owne Elections, whether according to the order, and if they or the gretest parte of them find any such election to be illegall they may seclud such for present from their meeting, and returne the same and their re- sons to the Courte ; and if yt proue true, the Courte may fyne the party or partyes so intruding and the Towne, if they see cause, and giue out a warrant to goe to a newe election in a legall way, ether in parte or in whole. Also the said deputyes shall haue power to fyne any that shall be disorderly at their meetings, or for not comming in due tyme or place according to ap- poyntmeut ; and they may returne the said fyues into the Courte if yt be refused to be paid, and the Tres- urer to take notice of yt, and to estreete or levy the same as he does other fynes. 10. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed, that euery Generall Courte, except such as through neglect of the APPENDIX. 413 Gouernor and the greatest parte of Magestrats the Free- men themselves doe call, shall consist of the Gouernor, or some one chosen to moderate the Court, and 4 other Magestrats at lest, with the mayor parte of the deputyes of the seuerall Townes legally chosen ; and in case the Freemen or mayor parte of them, through neglect or re- fusall of the Gouernor and mayor parte of the mage- strats, shall call a Courte, yt shall consist of the mayor parte of Freemen that are present or their deputyes, with a Moderator chosen by them : In which said Gen- erall Courts shall consist the supreme power of the Commonwelth, and they only shall haue power to make lawes or repeale them, to graunt leuyes, to admitt of Freemen, dispose of lands vndisposed of, to seuerall Townes or persons, and also shall haue power to call ether Courte or Magestrate or any other person what- soeuer into question for any misdemeanour, and may for just causes displace or deale otherwise according to the nature of the offence ; and also may deale in any other matter that concerns the good of this commonwelth, ex- cepte election of Magestrats, which shall be done by the whole boddy of Freemen. In which Courte the Gouernour or Moderator shall haue power to order the Courte to giue liberty of spech, and silence vnceasonable and disorderly speakeings, to put all things to voate, and in case the voate be equall to haue the casting voice. But non of these Courts shall be adiorned or dissolued without the consent of the maior parte of the Court. 11. It is ordered, sentenced and decreed, that when any Generall Courte vppon the occations of the Com- monwelth haue agi-eed vppon any summe or summes of 414 CONNECTICUT. mony to be leuyed vppon the seuerall Townes within this Jurisdiction, that a Committee be chosen to sett out and appoynt what shall be the proportion of euery Towne to pay of the said leuy, provided the Committees be made vp of an equall number out of each Towne. 14th January, 1638, the 11 Orders abouesaid are voted. [Until 1752, the legal year in England began March 25 (Lady Day), not January 1. All the days between January 1 and March 25 of the year which we now call 1639 were therefore then a part of the year 1638; so that the date of the Constitution is given by its own terms as 1638, instead of 1639. The whole document may be found in Connecticut Public Becords, I. 20-25.3 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 1. The general histories of the United States : Bancroft, Hii.« DRETH, Brtant and Gay, Schouleb, McMaster, Pitkin, Holmes, et als. 2. Palfrey's History of New England ; Savage's Winthrop's History of New England ; Bradford's New England Chronol- ogy ; Hubbard's General History of New England ; Oliver's Puritan Commonwealth, chapter ii. (Episcopalian view) ; Back- tjs's History of New England (Baptist view) ; Church's History of King Philip's War; Drake's French and Indian War in New England ; Mass. Hist. Soc. Publications, particularly Garden- er's Relation of the Pequot Wars, and Vincent's True Rela- tion; Mather's Magnalia Christi ; Bacon's Genesis of the New England Churches ; Felt's Ecclesiastical History of New Eng- land. 3. Doyle's American Colonies ; Lodge's English Colonies in America ; Force's Colonial Tracts. 4. Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts ; Arnold's His- tory of Rhode Island ; Bartlett's Records of Rhode Island ; Hall's History of Vermont ; Brodhead's History of New York ; O'Callaghan's History of New Netherlands ; 2 O'Cal- laghan's Documentary History of New York (Leisler Adminis- tration) ; Hazard's Pennsylvania Archives ; Sheafer's Histori- cal Map of Pennsylvania ; Regents' Report on the Boundaries of the State of New York ; Bowen's Boundary Disputes of Con- necticut ; Prime's History of Long Island ; Thompson's His- tory of Long Island ; Wood's First Settlement of Long Island Towns. 5. The general histories of Connecticut : Trumbull, Dwight, Hollisteb, aod Carpentbb and Arthur ; Atwa.tbb'8 History 416 CONNECTICUT. of New Haven ; Levermore's Republic of New Haven ; Lam- bert's History of New Haveu Colony ; Colonial Records of Con- necti(!ut, edited by J. H. Tkumuull and C. J. Hoadly ; Colo- nial Records of New Haven, edited by Hoadly ; Barber's Connecticut Historical Collections. 6. Connecticut Historical Society Proceedings, particularly Hooker's Letter to Winthrop, Bulkeley's People's Right to Election, Hoadly's Public Seal of Connecticut, The Hartford Church Controversy, and Correspondence of Silas Deane ; New Haven Historical Society Papers, particularly Bacon's Civil Government in New Haven, Trowbridge's History of the Long Wharf, Bronson's Connecticut Currency, Whitaker's Early History of Southold, Goodrich's Invasion of New Haven, Dex- ter's Memoranda on the Regicides, Trowbridge's Ancient Houses in New Haven, Beardsley's Mohegan Land Contro- versy, E. C. Baldwin's Branford Annals, S. E. Baldwin's New York Boundary Line, Bronson's Early Government of Connecticut, and Dexter's Early Relations between New Neth- erland and New England ; Connecticut Valley Historical Society Papers, particularly the Review of Peters's History ; Percival's Geology of Connecticut. See also the Introduction to Palfrey ; De Forest's Indians of Connecticut ; 2 Hazard's State Papers (New England Commissioners) ; Brodhead's Government of Sir Edmund Andros. 7. J. H. Trumbull's Notes on the Constitutions of Connecti- cut, and True Blue Laws; Peters's General History of Connec- ticut ; Hinman's Code of 1650, and Antiquities of Connecticut; Fowler's Local Law in Connecticut ; Bacon's Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut ; Beardsley's History of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut ; Johnston's Genesis of a New England State (Connecticut). 8. Miner's History of Wyoming ; H. M. Hoyt's Brief of the Wyoming Title, with the very complete bibliography at page 101, the volume being the fairest and best account of the contro- versy that I have found. 9. Phelps's History of the Newgate of Connecticut; Elliot's Debates ; President Dwight's Travels in New England and New York; Wood's Administration of John Adams; Good- bich's Recollections of a Life-Time ; Dwight's History of the APPENDIX. 417 Hartford Convention ; Adams's New England Federalism (Gould's letter) ; J. H. Trumbull's Defence of Stonington; Bushnell's Historical Estimate of Connecticut (in his Work and Play); Bishop's History of American Manufactures; An Historical and Industrial Review of Connecticut (1884); E. E. Hale's Brown Univ. Address; Everest's Poets of Connecticut; French's Art and Artists in Connecticut; Croffut and Mor- ris's History of Connecticut during the Recent War. 10. Stuart's Hartford in the Olden Time ; Trumbull's His- tory of Hartford County (the first volume has been used most largely); Walker's 250th Anniversary of the First Church of Hartford; Stiles's History of Ancient Windsor, and Supple- ment ; Hall's History of Norwalk ; Caulkins's History of New London, and History of Norwich ; Huntington's History of Stamford ; Mead's History of Greenwich ; Gardiner's Notes on East Hampton (N. Y. Hist. Soc. Pub., 1869) ; Holland's His- tory of Western Massachusetts ; Morris's Early History of Springfield, Mass. ; Cothren's History of Ancieut Woodbury ; Chapin's History of Glastenbury ; Larned's History of Wind- ham County ; Kilbourne's Biographical History of Litchfield County ; Woodruff's History of Litchfield ; Bronson's His- tory of Waterbury ; Roy's History of Norfolk ; Davis's History of Wallingford and Meriden ; Taintor's Records of Colchester ; Phelps's History of Simsbury, Granby, and Canton ; Boyd's Annals of Winchester ; Andrews's History of New Britain ; Fowler's History of Durham ; Todd's History of Redding ; Sharpe's History of Seymour; Orcutt's History of Wolcott, and History of Torrington ; Dexter's New Haven in 1784, and Town Names in Connecticut. 11. Kingsley's Historical Discourse, New Haven, 1838; Bacon's Historical Discourses, New Haven, 1838; Woolsey's Historical Discourse, Yale College, 1850; Litchfield County Centennial Addresses, 1851 ; Field's Centennial Address, Mid- dletown, 1853; Gilman's Historical Address, Norwich, 1859; W. L. Kingsley's Yale College : A Sketch of its History. 12. Allen's Biographical Dictionary ; Sparks's Library of American Biography ; Winthrop's Life and Letters of Win- throp (senior) ; Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., ser. 5, vol. 8 (Winthrop Papers) ; New York Hist. Soc. Coll., ser. 2, vol. ii. ; Moore's 418 CONNECTICUT, Memoir of Eaton ; Stiles's History of the Regicides ; Waeren's Three Judges ; Stuart's Life of Jonathan Trumbull ; Beards- let's Life of William Samuel Johnson ; Humphreys's Life of Putnam ; Cutler's Life of Putnam ; Wolcott Memorial ; Holmes's Life of President Stiles ; Sprague's Life of President Dwight ; Westcott's Life of John Fitch ; Goodwin's Genejfc- logical Notes ; Flanders' or Van Santvoord's Lives of the Chief Justices (for Ellsworth) ; Lossing's or Sanderson's Lives of the Signers (for Sherman, Huntington, Williams, and Wol- cott) ; Ward's Life of Percival; Pierce's Life of Goodyear; Howe's Eminent Mechanics ; Hoppin's Life of A. H. Foote ; Stowe's Men of Our Time (for W. A. Buckingham). Note. As the foregoing list was prepared hy Prof. Johnston to indicate the authorities on which he based his text there is, clearly, no warrant for its revision. Attention may, however, be drawn to the following articles which have appeared since the first edition of this volume, and which present views differing from those of Prof. Johnston in important points: C. M.An- drews's River Towns of Connecticut, Baltimore, 1889, and Ori- gin of Connecticut Towns in Annals of Amer. Acad. Pol. Sci., Oct.^ 1890 ; H. L. Osgood's Connecticut as a Corporate Colony, in Pol. Sci. Quarterly, June, 1899 ; Roger Welles's Constitutional His- tory of Connecticut, in Conn. Magazine, Feb. - March, 1899. The most important additions to the material for the history of Con- necticut are to be found in the publications of the State and of State, county, and local societies, and in local histories, of which a number have been published in recent years. The principal authorities for the supplementary chapter are : U. S. Census ; Public Documents of Connecticut, especially Re- ports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and of the Board of Agriculture; Gold's Handbook of Connecticut Agriculture; arti- cles on the gubernatorial controversy by Harrison, Baldwin, and Blake, in New Englander, April, 1891 ; Deming's Town Rule in Connecticut, in Pol. Sci. Quarterly, Sept., 1889; M. B. Cart's Connecticut Constitution, 1900, and Struggle for Con- stitutional Reform, in Yale Law Journal, Jan., 1901 ; C. H. Clark's Connecticut Convention, in Yale Review, Aug., 1902. Statistics in this chapter are cited generally in round numbers. THE GOVERNORS OF CONNECTICUT. These were chosen annually until 1876, and thereafter for two years. Until John Winthrop's second election, immediate reelec- tion was forbidden. 1639-40, 1640-41, 1641-42, 1642-43, 1643-44, 1644-45, 1645-46, 1646-47, 1647-48, 1648-49, 1649-50, 1650-51, 1651 -.52, 1652-53, 16.53-.54, 1654-55, 1655-56, 1656-57, 1657-58, 1658-59, 1659-76, 1676-83, John Haynes. Edward Hopkins. John Haynes. George Wyllys. John Haynes. Edward Hopkins. John Haynes. Edward Hopkins. John Haynes. Edward Hopkins. John Haynes. Edward Hopkins. John Haynes. Edward Hopkins. John Haynes. Edward Hopkins. Thomas Welles. John Webster. John Winthrop. Thomas Welles. John Winthrop. William Leete. 1683-87, Robert Treat, 1687-89, (Andros.) 1689-98, Robert Treat. 1698-1707, Fitz John Winthrop. 1707-24, Gurdon Saltonstall. 1724-41, Joseph Talcott. 1741-50, Jonathan Law. 1750-54, Roger Wolcott. 1754-66, Thomas Fitch. 1766-69, William Pitkin. 1769-84, Jonathan Trumbull. 1784-86, Matthew Griswold. 1786-96, Samuel Huntington. 1796-98, Oliver Wolcott. 1798-1809, Jonathan Trumbull 1809-11, John Treadwell. 1811-13, Roger Griswold. 1813-17, John Cotton Smith. 1817-27, Oliver Wolcott. 1827-31, Gideon Tomlinson. 1831-33, John S. Peters. 1833-34, H. W. Edwards. 420 CONNECTICUT. 1834-35, Samuel A. Foote. 1835-38, H. W. Edwards. 1838-42, W. W. Ellsworth. 1842-44, C. F. Cleveland. 1844-46, Roger S. Baldwin. 1846-49, Clark Bissell. 1849-50, Joseph Trumbull. 1850-54, Thomas H. Seymour. 1854-55, Henry Button. 1855-57, W. T. Minor. 1857-58, A. H. Holley. 1858-66, W. A. Buckingham. 1866-67, Joseph R. Hawley. 1867-69, James E. English. 1869-70, Marshall Jewell. 1870-71, James E. English. 1871-73, MarshallJewell. 1873-76, Charles R. IngersolJ. 1876-79, R. D. Hubbard. 1879-81, Charles B. Andrews. 1881-83, H. B. Bigelow. 1883-85, Thomas M. Waller. 1885-87, Henry B. Harrison. 1887-89, Phineas T. Lounsbury. 1889-93, Morgan G. Bulkeley. 1893-95, Luzon B. Morris. 1895-97. O. Vincent Coffin. 1897-99, Lorrin A. Cooke. 1899-1901, George E. Louns- bury. 1901-03, George P. McLean. 1903-05, Abiram Chamberlain. INDEX. Abercrombie, Gen. Jamea, 261. Adams, Prof. H. B., 135. Agawam, 50. Agriculture, 3, 330, 338, 342, 357, 368, 38t> 394-398. Albany, N. Y.', 251, 259, 276. Allen, Ethan, 272, 283. Allyn, John, 81, IGO, 202, 2G6. Alsop, Richard, 340. Andrew, Samuel, 340. Andrews, William, 92. Andros, Sir Edmund, 125 ; at Say- brook, 194, 195 ; in New York, 197 ; in Connecticut, 199 ; at Hartford, 200; supports Rhode Island, 213; downfall, 203. Annapolis Convention, 318. Ansonia, 358. Argal, Captain, 146. Arnold, Benedict, 40, 292, 303; at New London, 312, 314. AspinwaU, Dr. William, 342. Assistants, in Massachusetts, 65 foil., 386 ; in Connecticut, 172, 190, 269. Atherton Company, 211, 214. Bacon, Dr. Leonard, 98. Ballot, the, 77. Bangs, Dr. Nathan, 356. Banks, 338, 368. Baptism, 225. Baptists, the, 236. Barbadoes, 207. " Battle of the Kegs," 297. Beach, Rev. John, 302. Beach, Dr. Jolm W., 356. Belcher, Gov. Jonathan, 300. Bellows' Falls, 299. Berkeley, Bisliop, 242. Berlin, 357, 358. Birge, Gen. H. W., 381. Birmingham, 361. Blake, Admiral, 165. Block Island, 31. Blok, Adrian, 7. " Blue Laws," 105. Blue-lights, 350. Boroughs, 337. Boston, 84, 116, 203, 266, 288, 292. Boteler, Lady Alice, 112, 117. Boundaries : disputes, 114 ; with the Dutch, 148; under the charter, 168, 173, 273 ; with New York, 193, 205, 207 ; with Massachusetts, 207, 209, 271 ; with Rhode Island, 209 foU. Brainard, J. G. C, 340. Brandt, 278. Branford, admission to New Haven, 106 ; settlement, 138 ; meeting at, 239. Brass, 361 foil. Bridgeport, 337. 359. Brorafield, Major, 313. Brooke, Lord, 8, 1 10, 168. Brotherton tribe, the, 54, 55. Brownell, Bishop, 355. Buckingham, Gov. Wm. A., 376. Buildings, 124. Bull, Captain Thomas, 194, 195, 251. Bull Run, 378-9, 382. Bunker Hill, 292. Bushnell, David, 296. Butler, John, 278. Cabots, the, 7, 11, 145. Capital city, 174, 270, 354. Cambridge, Mass., 60. Cambridge platform, the, 226. Canonchet, 28, 53. Canterbury, 370. Carlisle Grant, the, 8. Carthagena expedition, the, 256. Cassasinamon, 51. Cemeteries, 340. Charter, tlie, 170 foil., 199, 201, 20^ 204, M7, 356. Charter Oak, the, 25, 123, 200, 204. Chase, Bishop, 351. Chauncey, Nathanael, 240. Cheevers, Ezekiel, 92. Cheneys, the, 342. Cheshire, 355. 422 INDEX. Chipmans, the, 2T2. Chittenden, Gov. ThomaB, 272. Choate, Riifus, 209. Church and commonwealth, 77, 221, 22-t, 228, 232, 233, 347, 354-355. Church and town, 6, 59, 220, 224, 229, 236, 268. Church of England, the, 235, 236, 242 ; in the Revolution, 302 ; after the Revolution, 346 ; in 1818, 352. Cincinnati, the Society of the, 317. Cities, 337, 338. Clap, Pres. Thomas, 243. Clocks, 359 foil. Coal, 345, 358. Colt, Samuel, 363. Commerce, 339. Common lauds, 95, 97. Confederation, articles of, 315. Congregational Church, the, 60, 222, 230, 345 ; see Establishment, the. Congress, 320 foil. Congressmen, election of, 333. Connecticut, position and boundaries, 1 ; area, 2; products, 3 ; harbors, 4; granted to Plymouth Company, 7; title, 8, 11 ; commonwealth of, 12 ; settlement, 20 ; constitution, 63 ; seal, 73 ; motto, 74 ; territorial claims, 102 ; social conditions, 128 ; colonial policy, 129, 280; regicides in, 165 ; charter, lC6foll., 285; the Andros episode, 199 ; in 1680, 265; population, 270 ; final territory, 281 ; in the Revolution, 204, 310 ; becomes a State, 3(>4 ; influence in forming the constitution, 320 foil., 386 ; in- dustrial development, 328 foil.; politics, 345, 369 foil. ; in the war of 1812, 349 foil. ; in the war for the Union, 374 foil.; recent economic development, 385-398 ; preemi- nence in manufacturing, 386-393 ; physical resources, 389 ; labor con- ditions, 390; inventions, 390, 301 ; foreign-born population, 391 ; fac- tory organization, 392 ; insurance companies, 393 ; agricultural de- pression, 394-3'.iG ; change in agri- cultural conditions, 396-398 ; in- crease in urban population, 308 : town government, 399; municipal expenditure, 399 ; deadlock in the legislature, 400, 401 ; inequalities in representation, 401-406 ; evils in present system of representa- tion, 403 ; Constitutional Conven- tion, 404 ; new system of apportion- ment, 404, 405 ; plan disapproved, 405. Connecticut River, the, 2, 7, 8, 17, 23, 272, 358 ; imposts, 115, 143, 153. Constables, 78, 79, 135, 174, 180, 181, 210, 268, 335. Constitution of the United States, the, 319 foil. Constitution of 1C39, adopted, 63 ; origin, 73; provisions, 74 and Ai>- pendix ; democratic nature, 79. Constitution of 1818, 337, 353, 357. Convention of 1787, the, 319 foil. Copper, 3, 3U0. Cornbury, Edward Hyde, Lord, 253. Corporation Act, tlie, 367. Cotton, John, 17, 65, 69. Cotton-gin, tlie, 363. Couch, Gen. D. N., 381. Council, the, 269, 332. Counties, ISO, 190. Country pay, 249. Courts, 57, 190, 354 ; in New Haven, 93, 104. Covenant, owning the, 227. Crandall, Prudence, 370. Cromwell, Oliver, 154, 155, 164. " Cuba," the, 299. Cummiugs, Dr. Joseph, 356. Cutler, Rev. Timothy, 242. Dagoett, Rev. Naphtali, 244. Danbury, 303. Darley, Henry, 110. Dartmouth College, 55. Davenport, Rev. John, 82, 92, 221 ; his " fundamental orders," 90 ; re- moval to Boston, 160 ; deahngs with tlie regicides, 164 ; on the union with Connecticut, 175 foil. ; pro- posal of a college, 239. Day, Pres. Jeremiah, 245. Deane, Silas, 291. Debt, 369. Decatur, Commodore Stephen, 350. Delaware Company, formed, 146; iaM- ure, 147. Democracy in Massachusetts, 64, 132 ; in Connecticut, G3, 70, 77, 79, 141, 205, 2.0, 226, 261, 318, 356, 366. Democratic party, 345-348, 352, 353, 369. Deputies, 76, 80, 172, 268. Derby, 267, 343, 361 . Dissenters, 231, 234, 238, 346, 347,352. Dixon, Jeremiah, 92. Dongan, Gov. Thomas, 199, 205. Dorchester, 17, 24. Dudley, Joseph, 199, 218, 253. Dummer, Fort, 271. Dutch, the, in Connecticut, 7, 14, 16, 21, 23, 30,51 ; fort at Hartford, 122, INDEX. 423 148, 154 ; intercourse with New Eng- land, 144 ; treaty of Hartford, 148 ; conquered, 188, 193, 260, Dutch West ludia Company, the, 145, 147. Dwight, Theodore, 340. Dwight, Pres. Timothy, 232. Dwight, Pres. Timothy, 246. East Hampton, L. I., 135, 138. Eaton, Rev. Samuel, 88. Eaton, Theophilus, 84, 92, 138 ; house, 8"J ; "magistrate," 93; governor, 103 ; death, 158 ; family, 159. Ecclesiastical affairs, 220 foil. Edwards, Pierpont, 338. Edwards, Rev. Jonathan, 232. Election laws, 77, 332, 354. Election sermon, 334. Eliot, John, HI, 54. Eliot, Dr. Samuel, 355. Ellsworth, Col. E. E., 381. EUsworth, Oliver, 319, .325, 327. Endicott, John, 32. Episcopal Church (see Church of Eng- land). Establishment, the, 231, 234, 237, 345, 347. Fairfield, 20, 44, 135, 308. Farmington, 135. Feake, Robert, 150. Federal party, 345-346, 350, 352. Feldspar, 4. Fenwick, George, 8, 110 ; comes to Saybrook, 112 ; commissioner, 113 ; sells Saybrook, 115; death, 117. Ferry, Gen. O. S., 381. Financial affairs, 248 foil. Fire-arms, 3C3-3()4. " Fire Lands," 282, 309. Fish, 5. Fisher's Island, 140, 207. Fitch, Rev. James, 54, 113, 218. Fitch, John, 12C. Fitch, Gov. Thomas, 287. Five Nations, the, 27. Fletcher, Gov. Benjamin, 195, 204. Foote, Admiral A. H., 381. " Forty Fort," 277. Foss, Dr. Cyrus, 356. Franklin, Benjamin, 259, 286, 325. Free burgesses, 91, 103. Free planters, 80, 91, 92, 103, 177. French in Connecticut, the, 312. French wars, 250 foil. Fugill, Thomas, 92. Gallop, John, 31. Gardiner, Lyon, 33, 112. Garret, Hermon, 51. Garrison, W. L., 370. General Assembly, 269, 290, 354, 373, 401-102, 404. General Court, 34, 57, 58, 75, 78 ; (see General Assembly). General election, 333. George, battle of Lake, 259. Gilbert, Matthew, 92. Goddard, Calvin, 351. Goffe, William, 163 foil. Gold, 4. Gold, Nathan, 80. Goodrich, Chauncey, 351. Goodrich, Elizur, 346. Goodwin, Dr. D. R., 355. Goodwin, William, 123, 228. Goodyear, Charles, 364. Goodyear, Steplien, 102, 103. Gookin, Daniel, 54. Gorges grant, 8. Governor, election of, 76, 77 ; reelec- tion, 77; in New Haven, 93, 104. Granby coppers, 3, 300. Grant, Gen. U. S., 381. Greenfield Hill, 44. Green's Farms, 308. Greenwich, 150. Gregory, Commodore P. H., 381. Griswold, Fort, 312,313. Griswold, Gov. Roger, 349. Groton, 37, 52. Guilford, 43; origin, 83; people, 84; purchase, 87; settlement, 88; or- ganization, 93. HArDAM, 267. Hadley, Mass, 164, 228. Hale, Rev. E. E., 367. Hale, Captain Nathan, 295. Halfway Covenant, the, 227. H.imilton grant, the, 8, 9, 215, 216. Hammond, Gov. James H., 375. Hampshire grants, the, 272. Hardware, 357. Harland, Gen. Edward, 381. Hartford, 6, 7, 11, 15, 22, 34, 65 ; de- mocracy in, 73; town clerks, 81; early topography, 120; treaty of, 148; made the capital, 174 ; church, 223, 224 ; city, 3,37, 338, 340, 341 ; manufactures, 358 foil. Hartford wits, the, 340, 341 . Hartford Convention, the, 350-352. Harvard College, 2,39. Hasselrine, Sir Arthur, 110. Havana, 2G3. Hawley, Gen. J. R., 381. Ha3-nes, John, 18, 21, 80, 123 ; death, 158. 424 INDEX. Haynes, Rev. Joseph, 228. Hazard, Sumuel, 276. Hempstead, L. I., 139. Hillliouse, James, 282, 351. Hillhouse, William, 82. Hinsdale, Theodore, 3G7. Hitchcock, Commodore R. B., 381. Holland, 145, 164, 193. Holmes, William, 15. Hooker, Rev. Thomas, 18, 299; letter to Winthrop, 58, 70; democracy, 69, 73 ; sermon of 1638, 72; house, 123 ; death, 158; influence, 221, 321, 322, 365. Hopkins, Edward, 80, 114, 123; death, 158. Hopkins grammar schools, 158. Hopkins, Lemuel, 340. Hopkinson, Francis, 297. Horse brand, 269. Horse Neck, 30G. Howe, George, Lord, 261. Howe, John J., 360. Hudson, Henry, 145. Hull, Captain Isaac, 339. Humphreys, David, 340, 343. Humphreysville, 343. Huntington, Gov. Samuel, 326. Huntington, Long Island, 107, 135, 138. Hutchinson, Gov. Thomas, 66. Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne, 51, 84. Indian tribes, 26. Industrial development, 328 foil. Ingersoll, Jared, 286. IngersoU, Jared, 352. Insurance, 338, 368, 393. Interlopers, 339. Iowa, 11. Iron, 3, 343-345, 358. Jackson, Dr. Abner, 355. Jefferson, Thomas, 80, 345, 346. Jerome, Chauncey, 359. Jesup, Col. T. S. 351. Johnson, Sir William, 259. Johnson, WilUara S., 319, 327. Judges' Cave, the, 164. Jury, trial by, 189. Kerfoot, Dr. J. B., 355. Kieft, Gov. William, 146. Killingworth, 240. King Philip's war, 196. King's Province, 211. Kingston, Pa., 277. Kingston, R. I., 212, 213. Knight, Mrs., 249. Knox, Oen. Henry, 318. Labob Bureau, Connecticut, 365. Laud, 75, 95; in New Hampshire, 94; individual ownership of, 96. Laud, 83, 108. Law, Gov. Jonathan, 81, 342. Lawrence, Henry, 110. Lead, 3. Ledyard, 52. Ledyard, Col. WiUiam, 312, 313. Lee, Gen. Charles. 294. Leete, Gov. William, 102, 162, 183, 189. Leffingwell, Thomas, 113. Legal tender, 254, 257, 258. Legislature, 57(see General Assembly). Leisler, 251. Lexington, 291. Liberty, Sons of, 97. Limestone, 4. Limited Liability, 367. London Company, 7. Long Island, 2, 137, 148, 168; becomes a part of New York, 188, 194; in the Revolution, 311. Long Wharf, the, 339. Loomis, James C, 376. Loudoun, the Earl of, 261. Louisburg, 258, 262. Ludlow, Roger, 18, 19, 56, 80, 154. Luzerne county, 284. Lyman, General Phineas, 260, 262. Lyme, 207. Lynn, Mass., 137. Lyon, General Nathaniel, 381. McFiNGAL, 288. Mackintosh, Sir James, 106. Madison, James, 325. Magistrates, 70, 7G, 77 ; mode of eleo tion, 78; in New Haven, 93. Malbon, Richard, 92. Manchester, 342. Mansfield, 342. Mansfield, Gen. J. K. F., 381. Manufactures, 343, 345, 352, 357 foil. 386-303. Marble, 4. Mason, John, 34, 113, 172, 216. Massachusetts Bay, 14, 17, 18, 61; democracy in, 64, 65; charter, 65, 67, 131, 198; laws, 69; relations with Connecticut, 129; relations to the New England Union, 142-152; boimdary disputes, 207, 271; in the Revolution, 288. Maverick, Rev. John, 18, 19. Mayflower, the, 63. Mechanics, 357 foU., 361 foil., 374 foil., 386 foil. Meigs, Col. Return J., 304. Meriden, 337, 358. INDEX. 425 Methodist Church, 237, 352. Miantonomoh, 28, 36, 47, 48, 50. Middletown, 2, 135, 136, 337, 355. Milborn, 252. Milford, 83, 240; origin, 83; people, 84 ; purcliase, 87; Battlement, 88; orgrinization, 93j burgesses, 103. Militia, 375. Mohawks, 27. Mohegan, 29. Mohegans, 53, 216. Moinaugin, 87. Money, 248. Monk, Gen., 163. Mononotto, 43, 46. Montowese, 87. Montreal, 253. Montville, 54. Morris, Luzon B., 400. Mower, Gen. Jos. A., 381. Mules, 331. Nails, 3. Narragansett Bay, 14, 173, 210. Narragansett Indians, 28, 32, 46, 51, 53, 212. Naugatuck River, 358. Navigation Act, 155. Neptune, the, 339. New Amsterdam, 14 ; becomes New York city, 188. Newark, N. J., 107, 138. New Britain, 358. New Connecticut, 273. New England, 1. New England Union, 102, 114, 116, 143 ; difficulties with the Dutch, 147, 152 ; nullification by Massachusetts, 157 ; failure, 132, 157. Newgate, 301. New Hampshire, 271. New Haven, 2, 5, 10, 26, 61 ; origin, 83 ; people, 84 ; settlement, 80 ; pur- chase, 87 ; early topography, 88 ; covenant, 89 ; constitution, 90 ; leg- islation, 98; name, 101 ; confedera- tion, 102; organization, 103; enters New England Union, 104 ; the Dela- ware venture, 140 ; phantom ship, 155; proposal to migrate, 150; the regicides, 103 ; proclaims Charles II., 107 ; included in Connecticut charter, 173 ; resists, 175 ; weak- ness, 175 foil. ; yields, 188, 189 ; Yale at, 2U ; British at, 244, 308; capital , 270 ; city, 337 -.340 ; em- bargo, 340 ; convention, 348 ; manu- factures, 358 ; proposed negro col- lege, 370 ; representation in legisla- ture, 402. " New lights," 233, 236. New London, 5, 40, 135, 140, 337, 349 ; Arnold's raid, 312. Newman, Robert, 92. New Milford, 357. New tenor, 250. Newtovni (Cambridge), 17. New York, 193, 197, 205, 207, 282; boundary, 272 ; in the Revolution, 293, 303, 300 ; in the confederation, 316, 318. New York city, 127, 188. Northampton, Mass., 232. Norwalk, 135, 136, 223, 309. Norwich, 48, 113, 135, 141, 217, 337, 358. " Notions," 357. Nullification, the first, 157. OccoM, Samson, 55. Ohio, 127. Oldham, John, 17, 31. Old tenor, 250. Olin, Dr. Stephen, 356. Owning the covenant, 227. Palmeb, Nathan, 307. Paper currency, 250 foil. Parsons, J. C, 127. Patents, 302, 308. Patrick, Capt., 30, 42, 45, 150. Pawcatuck River, the, 210, 213. Peace party, the, 378. Peage, 248. Peddlers, 3,57. Peekskill, N. Y., 306. •' Pelham," 350. Penn, William, 274. Pennamites and Yankeeo, 283. Pennsylvania, 127, 273, 274, 284 (see Wyoming). Pequot country, the, 3, 59, 139, 209. Pequot Hill, 37. Pequot war, the, 34 foil. Pequots, the, 10, 28, 32, 42, 46, 52, 209. Percival, J. G., 340. Peters, Gov. John S., 310. Peters, Rev. Samuel, 105 ; his " His- tory," 298 ; his " natural " history, 299 ; returns to Connecticut, 310 ; death. 310. Peters, Rev. Thomas, 113. Phiiadelphia, 274. Philip's war, King, 196. Phillips, Rev. George, 18, 19. Phillips, Wendell, 19. Pierson, Rev. Abraham, 54, 107, 138. Pierson, Rev. Abraham, 240. Pillars, the seven, 90, 92. 426 INDEX. Pins, 361. Pitkin, Gov. William, 287. Pitt, William, 2G1. Plainfield, 267, 269. Plymouth colony, the, 14, 16 ; demo- cracy, 63. Plymouth Company, the, 6, 7, 8, 137, 215. Pomfret, 261, 307. Ponderson, John, 92. Population, 270, 329, 330, 367, 391, 398. Porter, Pres. Noah, 245. Port Royal, 253. Presbyterianism, 230, 232. Prices, regulation of, 100. Prison-ships, 298. Probate courts, 75, 336. Proclamation money, 258. Proprietors, 97. Prudden, Rev. Peter, 88. Puritans, the, 387. Putnam, Gen. Israel, 261, 263, 292, 306, 307. Pynchon, Dr. I. R., 355. Pynchon, WiUiam, 18. QuAKEES, the, 175, 236. Quebec, 253, 262. Quinnipiack, 85. Quo warranto, 199. Raileoads, 368. Randolph, Edward, 198, 211. Randolph, John, 331. Rasieres, De, 14. Rates, 137. Reading, 302, 306. Regicides, the, 163 foil. Republican party, the, 369. Reserve, the Western, 127, 282, 315. Revolver, the, 363. Rhode Island, 209 foil., 317. Richmond grant, the, 8. Ridgefield, :>04. Rivington, James, 293. Roads, 125. Rogers, Commodore C. R. P., 381. Rogers, Commodore John, 381. Rossiter, Bray, 178. Rossiter, John, 178. Roxbury, 18. Ruj'ter, Admiral de, 155. Sachem's Head, 44. Saffery, 207. Salem, Mass., 261. Salisbury, 344. Saltonstall, Gov. Gurdon, 80. ^tonstall. Sir Richard, 110. Sandemanians, the, 346. Sassacus, 29, 30, 32, 46. Saugatuck, 303. Say and Sele grant, the, 8, 9, 23, 109, 168. Saybrook, 2, '23, 33, 135, 240, 349; name, 112 ; sold to Connecticut, 115 ; Commencement at, 242. Saybrook platform, the, 231 foil,, 237. Schenectady, N. T., 251. Schools, 101, 267, 282, 328, 369. Seabury, Bishop, 238. Sears, Isaac, 293. Sedgwick, Gen. John, 381. Selden, John, 79. Selectmen, 76, 238, 332, 335, 354. Senate, 77, 354 ; of the United States, 326. Sequin, 33. Sharp's rifle, 364. Sheep, 342, 343. Sherman, Roger, 319, 324, 327, 357. Sherman, Roger Minot, 351. Sherman, Gen. W. T., 381. Sigoumey, Mrs. L. H., 340. Silk, 342. Silver, 4. Simsbury, 3, 267, 300. Six Nations, the, 27. Slaves, 267. SUtting-mill, 344. Smith, Dr. A. W., 3,56. Smith, Dr. G. W., 355. Smith, Gov. John Cotton, 356. Smith, Nathaniel, 351. Society, church and, 60. Somers, John, 204. " Sons of Liberty," 97, 286. Southampton, L. I., 135, 138, 223. Southerton, 210. South Norwalk, 337. Southold, L. I., purchased, 88 ; ad- mission to New Haven, 106, 138; feeling in, 179. " Sow business," the, 68. Specie, 250. Silencer, Gen. Joseph, 292. Springfield, founded, 20, 25, 56; be- comes a Massachusetts town, 58, 143, 208. Stamford, purchased, 87 ; feeling in, 179. Stamp Act, the, 285 foU. " Stand-up Law," the, 353. State prison, the, 300. State sovereignty, 304, 305, 315, 316, 323. Stedman, Gen. G. A., 381. Steinwehr, Gen. A. von, 381. INDEX. 42T StUes, Pres. Ezra, 245, SJi, 342, 346. Stirling grant, the, 137. Stone, Capt., 30. Stone, Rev. Samuel, 18, 19, 35, 123, 228. Stonington, 37, 210, 293, 297, 349. Story, Judge, 06. Stoughton, William, 42. Stratford, laS, 235, 237. Strong, Kev. Nathan, 341. Stuyvesant, Gov. Peter, 147, 151, 185. Suftrage, 60, 75, 173, 174, 224, 226, 332, 353, 364 ; in New Haven, 91, 220 i in Massachusetts, 66. Susquehanna Company, the, 275, 283. Swamp fight, the, 196, 212. Swift, Zephaniah, 351. Talcott, John, 57. Talcott, Joseph, 80. Tatobam, 29. Taxation, 78 ; in kind, 100, 249, 369 ; lists, 136, 137, 267, 368; church, 224, 229, 231, 237, 354 ; and paper currency, 254 foil. Tennant, Rev. Gilbert, 232. Terry, Eli, 359. Terry, Gen. A. H., 381. Thames River, the, .5, 35. Ticonderoga, 262, 291. Tinware, .357. Tobacco culture, 398. Toleration party, the, 352, 353. Tories, 97, 298, 300, 302, 309, 310, 346. Totten, Dr. Silas, 355. " Town-born," 339. Township, the, 220, 268. Town-system, the, 6, 12, 58, 61, 75, 79, 1.34, 135, 192, 268, 290, 305 ; in Mas- sachusetts, 66, 67 ; in New Haven, 84, 102, 177 ; in Vermont, 272 ; in Pennsylvania, 278. Tracy, Uriah, 331. Treadwell, John, 351. Treat, Gov. Robert, 196, 199-201. Treby, 204. Trmity College, 355. Trumbull, Benjamin, 288. Trumbull, Fort, 312. Trumbull, H. C, 288. Trumbull, J. H., 71, 288. Trumbull, John, 287. Trumbull, John, 288, 340. Trumbull, Gov. Jonathan, 286, 294. Trumbull, Gov. Jonathan, 81, 287. Trumbull, Lyman, 288. Tryon, Gov. William, 303, 307, 309. Turner, Nathaniel, 92, 94. Tyler, Gen. Daniel, 381. Tyler, Gen. R. O., 381. Uncas, 29, 35, 46, 53, 217. Underbill, Captain John, 38. Union, the American, 02, 263. Union, the New England, 102, 114, 116, 143 ; diflBculties with the Dutch, 147, 152; nullification by Massachu- setts, 157 ; faUure, 132, 157. United colonies, the, 49. Utica, N. Y., 274. Van Corlbae, John, 15. Vane, Gov. Harry, 32, 33. Van Tromp, Admiral, 155. Van Twiller, Gov. Walter, 16. Vermont, 127, 136, 271, 273, 291. Vernon, Admiral, 256. Virginia, 280, 315, 320, 323. Wadswoeth, Captain Joseph, 195, 201. Walker, Admiral Hovenden, 253. Wallingford, 267. Wampum, 248. Ward, 204. Warham, Rev. John, 18, 19. Wars, 250 foil. Warwick grant, 8, 9, 109, 115, 118. Warwick Neck, 214. Washington College, 355. Washington, George, 294, 295, 311, 317, 343. Waterbury, 267, 337, 358, 369. Water power, 300, Watertown, 17. Webb, Gen., 261. Webster, Gov. John, 228. Welles, Gideon, 381. Wells, Thomas, 80. Wentworth, Gov. Benning, 272. Wentworth, Strafiford, Earl of, 108, 115. Wesleyan University, 355. Westchester, 180. Western Reserve, the, 127, 282, 315. West Haven, 308. Westmoreland, 277, 279. West Point, N. Y., 306. Wethersfield, 11, 21, 22, 33,66,312, dissensions in, 93, 134, 164, 223 ; Commencement at, 242 ; State pri- son, 301 . Whalley, Edward, 163 foil. " Whapperknocker," the,- 299. Wharf, the Long, 339. Wheaton. Dr., 355. Wheelock, Ebenezer, 55. Whitefleld, Rev. Henry, 88. Whitefield, Rev. Henry, 232, 234. Whiting, John, 81. Whiting, Joseph, 81. Whiting, Rev Joseph, 228. 428 INDEX. Whiting, Nathan, 260. Whitney, Eli, 363. Whitneyville, 363. Wicliford, R. I., 185, 210. Wigglesworth, Rev. Michael, 228. William and Mary, 208, 251. Williams, Rev. Elisha, 242. Williams, Dr. John, 355. Williams, Roger, 32. Wilson, James, 326. Winchester Arms Co., 364. (Vindham, 299. Windsor, 11, 15, 22, 25, 56. Winslow, Gov. Edward, 14. Winthrop, Fitz John, 160, 202, 204, 252. Winthrop, Jr., John, 8, 23, 77,80, 110, 343 ; at Pequot, 140 ; governor, 160 ; sent to England, 166 ; obtains a charter, 177 foil., 210. Winthrop, Sr., John, 14, 58,110; let- ter to Hooker, 66. Winthrop, Theodore, 380. Winthrop, Wait, 202. Wolcott, Henry, 158. Wolcott, Jr., Henry, 71. Wolcott, Oliver, 294. Wolcott, Oliver, 362. Wolfe, Gen. James, 261. Wood, John, 245. Woodbury, 267. Woodward, 207. Wool, 342, 343. Woolsey, Pres. T. D., 245. Wooster, Gen. David, 292, 303, 304. Wyllys Family, the, 123, 161, 201. Wyllys, George, 81. Wyllys, Hezekiah, 81. Wyllys, Samuel, 81. Wyoming, migration to, 127 ; settle- ment, 275 foil.; massacre, 278; failure, 279. Tale College, 101, 238 foil ; Univer- sity, 247. Tale, David, 158. Tale, Elihu, 241. " Tankee Notions," 357. AMERICAN STATESMEN Biographies of Men famous in the Political History of the United States. Edited by John T. Morse, Jr. Each volume, with por- trait, i6mo, gilt top, $1.2^. The set, 31 volumes, $38.75 ; half morocco, $85.25. Separately they are interesting and entertaining biographies of oitr most emi- nent public men ; as a series they are especially rejnarkable as constituting a. history of American politics and policies more complete and more useful for in- struction and reference than any that I am aware of. — Hon John W. GriggS, Ex-United States Attorney-General. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. By John T. Morse, Jr. SAMUEL ADAMS. By Jambs K. Hosmer. PATRICK HENRY. By Moses Coit Tyler. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 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