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The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut

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




[q] On January 30, 1750, Jonathan Mayhew preached a forceful sermon
upon the danger of being "unmercifully priest-ridden."

[r] Rev. East Apthorpe, S. P. G. missionary at Cambridge, Mass., had
replied to a newspaper criticism upon the policy of the Society for
Propagating the Gospel in New England, in his _Considerations on the
Institutions and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts_. Jonathan Mayhew published in answer his
_Observations on the Character and Conduct of the Society_,
censuring the Society not only for intruding itself into New England,
but for being the champion of the proposed episcopate, which he
denounced. This was in 1763. For two years the controversy
raged. There were four replies to Mayhew. Two were unimportant, a
third presumably from Rev. Henry Caner, and the fourth, _Answer to
the Observations_, an anonymous English production, really by
Archbishop Seeker. Mayhew wrote a _Defense_, and Apthorpe summed
up the whole controversy in his _Review_.--A. L. Cross,
_Anglican Episcopate_, p. 145 _et seq._; footnote 1, p. 147.

[s] John Adams's _Works_, x, 288.

[t] Dr. Charles Chauney attacked the S. P. G. as endeavoring to
increase their power, not to proselytize among the Indians, but to
episcopize the colonists. Dr. Chandler, of Elizabethtown, N. J.,
replied in _An Appeal to the Public_. Chauney retorted with
_The Appeal Answered_, and Chandler with _The Appeal
Defended_. The newspapers of 1768-69 took up the controversy.

[u] In 1767, Dr. Johnson in a letter to Governor Trumbull assured him
that "It is not intended, at present, to send any Bishops into the
American Colonies,... and should it be done at all, you may be assured
that it will be done in such manner as in no degree to prejudice, nor
if possible even give the least offense to any denomination of
Protestants."--E. E. Beardsley, _Hist, of the Epis. Church in
Conn._, i, 265.

[v] There were nine clergymen from Connecticut, and twenty-five from
New York and vicinity.

[w] The Association had sent petitions in behalf of the Baptists to
the legislatures of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Both were
refused. For its Circular Letter of 1776, see Hovey's _Life of
Backus_, p. 289; also p. 155.

[x] This year the Royal Society awarded him the Copley medal for his
discovery that lightning was a discharge of electricity.

In 1761 the medal of the Royal Society was also awarded to the
Rev. Jared Eliot of Killingworth, Conn., for making iron and steel
from black ferruginous sand.

[y] John Trumbull, b. 1750, d. in Michigan, 1831; Joel Barlow,
b. 1754, d. in Poland, 1812; Gen. David Humphreys, b. 1752, d. in New
Haven, 1818. These Yale men, together with Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, were
the leadjng spirits in the club known as "The Hartford Wits."
Dr. Dwight was a fellow collegian with them. Trumbull and Dwight did
much to interest the students in literature. The latter was also tutor
in rhetoric and professor of belles-lettres and oratory.

[z] Conn. Col. Rec. xii, Appendix. This was drawn up by the Governor
and three members of the General Assembly, May, 1761.

[aa] With grim humor, he turned to one of his escort, saying that he
at last realized the description in Revelation of "Death riding a
white horse and hell following behind."

[ab] The latter half of the title was omitted about 1775.

[ac] Foster replied: "One man is not to be called a 'heretick,' purely
because he differs from another, as to the articles of faith. For
either we should all be 'hereticks' or there would be no 'heresy'
among us.... Heresy does not consist in opinion or sentiments: it is
not an error of head but of will."--Foster, _A Defense of Religious
Liberty_, p. 47.

[ad] This revision of the laws was in charge of Roger Sherman and
Richard Law.

[ae] Quakers and Baptists frequently crossed the state line to attend
services in Rhode Island.

[af] There was only an occasional Romanist; Unitarians first took
their sectarian name in 1815; Universalists were few in number until
the second quarter of the new century.

[ag] This sect received its name from Robert Sandeman, the son-in-law
of its founder, the Rev. John Glass of Scotland. Sandeman published
their doctrines about 1757. In 1764, he left Scotland and came to
America, where he began making converts near Boston, in other parts of
New England, and in Nova Scotia. He died at Danbury, Connecticut,
1771. The members of the sect are called Glassites in Scotland, where
the Rev. John Glass labored. He died there in 1773. See W. Walker, in
_American Hist. Assoc. Annual Report_, 1901, vol. i.



CHAPTER XII

CONNECTICUT AT THE CLOSE OF THE REVOLUTION


The piping times of peace.

During the fifteen years following the ratification of the
Constitution of the United States by Connecticut, January 9, 1788, no
conspicuous events mark her history. These years were for the most
part years of quiet growth and of expansion in all directions, and,
because of this steady advancement, she was soon known as "the land of
steady habits" and of general prosperity.

Even in the dark days of the Revolution, Connecticut's energetic
people had continued to populate her waste places, and had carved out
new towns from old townships,--for the last of the original plats had
been marked off in 1763. In 1779-80, the state laid out five towns;
from 1784 to 1787, twenty-one,--twelve of them in one year, 1786. [a]
Tolland County was divided off in 1786 as Windham had been in 1726,
Litchfield in 1751, and Middlesex in 1765. These, with, the four
original counties of Fairfield, New Haven, Hartford, and New London,
made the present eight counties of the state. The cities of Hartford,
New Haven, New London, Middletown, and Norwich were incorporated in
1784. They were scarcely more than villages of to-day, for New Haven
approximated 3,000 inhabitants, and Hartford, as late as 1810, only
4,000. The Litchfield of the post-Revolutionary days, ranking, as a
trade-centre, fourth in the state, was as familiar with Indians in her
streets as the Milwaukee of the late fifties, and "out west" was no
farther in miles than the Connecticut Reserve of 3,800,000 acres in
Ohio which, in 1786, the state had reserved, when ceding her western
lands to the new nation. Thither emigration was turning, since its
check on the Susquehanna and Delaware by the award, in 1782, to
Pennsylvania of the contested jurisdiction over those lands, and of
the little town of Westmoreland, which the Yankees had built
there. [b] After the decision new settlements were discouraged by the
bitter feuds between the Connecticut and Pennsylvanian claimants to
the land.

The Revolution had left Connecticut exhausted in men and in means. Her
largest seaboard towns had suffered severely. With her commerce and
coasting trade almost destroyed, she found herself, during the period
preceding the adoption of the national Constitution and the
establishment of the revenue system, a prey to New York's need on the
one hand and to Massachusetts' sense of impoverishment on the other;
and thus, for every article imported through either state, Connecticut
paid an impost tax. It was estimated that she thus provided one third
of the cost of government for each of her neighbors. Consequently she
attempted to reinstate and to enlarge her early though limited
commerce, and was soon sending cargoes, preëminently of the field and
pasture, [c] to exchange for West India commodities, while with her
larger vessels she developed an East Indian trade. As another means to
wealth, the state, in 1791, passed laws for the encouragement of the
small factories [d] that the necessity of the war had created; but it
was not until after the act of 1833, creating the joint-stock
companies, that Connecticut turned from a purely agricultural
community to the great manufacturing state we know to-day. She shared
in the national prosperity, which, as early as 1792, proved the wisdom
of Hamilton's financial policy, and about 1795 her citizens wisely
bent themselves to the improvement of internal communication. This was
the era of the development of the turnpike and of the multiplicity of
stage-lines. Kegular stages plied between the larger cities. Yet up to
1789 there was not a post-office or a mail route in Litchfield county,
and the "Monitor" was started as a weekly paper to circulate the
news. In 1790 Litchfield had a fortnightly carrier to New York and a
weekly one to Hartford, while communication with the second capital
[e] of the state was frequent. From 1800, there was a daily stage to
Hartford, New Haven, Norwalk, Poughkeepsie, and Albany. [167] Wagons
and carriages began to multiply and to replace saddle-bags and
pillions, yet as late as 1815 Litchfield town had only "one phaeton,
one coachee, and forty-six two-wheeled pleasure-wagons." [168]

Towns continued to commend and encourage good public schools. Every
town or parish of seventy families had to keep school eleven months of
the year, and those of less population for at least six
months. Private schools and academies sprang up. [f] Harvard and Yale,
as the best equipped of the New England colleges, competed for its
young men, and drew others from the central and southern sections of
the nation. Neither had either Divinity or Law School. [g] Young men
after completing their college course usually went to some famous
minister for graduate training. Rev. Joseph Bellamy, John Smalley, and
Jonathan Edwards, Junior, were the foremost teachers in Connecticut,
though the first-named had ceased his active work in 1787. [h] The New
Divinity was very slowly spreading. Even as late as 1792, President
Stiles of Yale declared that none of the churches had accepted it. [i]
This versatile minister interested himself in languages, literatures,
natural science, and in all religions, as well as in the phases of New
England theology. He esteemed piety and sound doctrine, whether in
Old or New Divinity men, and welcomed to his communion all of good
conscience who belonged to any Christian Protestant sect. He was
liberal-minded and tolerant beyond the average of his colleagues. His
tolerance, however, was more for the old Calvinistic principles in the
New Divinity, and not for its advanced features, for which he had
little regard. President Stiles held very firmly to the belief that
his ministerial privileges and authority remained with him after he
became president of the college, although he was no longer pastor by
the election of a particular church.

The first law school in America was established in Litchfield in 1784
by Judge Tappan Reeve, later chief justice of Connecticut. He
associated with him in 1798 Judge James Gould. "Judge Keeve loved law
as a science and studied it philosophically." He wished "to reduce it
to a system, for he considered it as a practical application of moral
and religious principles to business life." His students were drilled
in the study of the Constitution of the United States and on the
current legislation in Congress. Under Judge Gould, the common law was
expounded methodically and lucidly, as it could be only by one who
knew its principles and their underlying reasons from _a_ to
_z_. [169] In 1789, Ephraim Kirby of Litchfield published the
first law reports ever issued in the United States. [j] Law students
from many states were attracted to the town. The roll of the school,
kept regularly only after 1798, included over one thousand lawyers,
among them one vice-president of the United States, several foreign
ministers, five cabinet ministers, [k] two justices of the United
States Supreme Court, ten governors of states, sixteen United States
senators, fifty members of Congress, forty judges of the higher state
courts, and eight chief justices of the state. [170]

Among Connecticut towns, the two capitals of the state were also
literary centres, while Norwich, New Haven, and New London were fast
becoming commercial ports. Middletown soon had considerable coasting
trade. Wethersfield had vessels of her own. Even Saybrook and Milford
sent a few vessels to the West and East Indies. Farmington was a big
trading centre, shipping produce abroad and importing in vessels of
her own that sailed from Wethersfield or New Haven. Some few towns
developed a special industry, like Berlin and New Britain, that made
the Connecticut tin-peddler a familiar figure even in the Middle and
Southern states. There were also several towns with large shipyards,
where some of the largest ships were built. But back of all such
centres of activity, the whole state was solidly agricultural.
Connecticut's commerce was an import commerce exchanging natural
products for foreign ones, such as sugar, coffee, and molasses from
the West Indies; tea and luxuries from the East; and obtaining, either
directly or indirectly, from Europe, all the fine manufactured
products, whether stuffs for personal use or tools for labor.

In measuring the prosperity and intelligence of the Connecticut people
neither the parish library nor the newspaper must be overlooked. "I
am acquainted," wrote Noah Webster in 1790, "with parishes where
almost every householder, has read the works of Addison, Sherlock,
Atterbury, Watts, Young, and other familiar writings: and will
conversely handsomely on the subjects of which they treat." [171] "By
means of the general circulation of the public papers," wrote the same
author, "the people are informed of all political affairs; and their
representatives are often prepared to debate upon propositions made in
the legislature." [172]

Through the agricultural communities of Connecticut, as well as in the
towns, the weekly newspapers of the state began to circulate freely as
soon as carriers or mail routes were established. Even by 1785 there
was in Connecticut a newspaper circulation of over 8000 weekly copies,
which was equal to that published in the whole territory south of
Philadelphia. [173] These papers lacked locals and leaders, leaving
the former to current gossip, and for the latter substituting, to some
extent, letters and correspondence. The newspapers gave foreign news
three months old, the proceedings of Congress in from ten to twelve
days after their occurrence, and news from the Connecticut elections
three weeks late. Subjects relating to religion and politics were
heard _pro_ and _con_ in articles, or rather letters, signed
with grandiloquent pseudonyms and frequently marked "Papers, please
copy" in order to secure for them a larger public. Fantastic bits of
natural science, or what purported to be such, and stilted admonitions
to virtue, as well as poems, eulogies, and obituaries, were admitted
to the columns of these colonial papers. In 1786, the "Connecticut
Courant" apologized for its meagre reports of legislative proceedings,
especially of those of the Upper House, Council, or Senate, and
promised to give full details. This reporting was a new thing, and it
was fully five years more before the practice became general among the
half dozen papers published in Connecticut. [l] Space was also given
in the papers to the reproduction of selections, even whole chapters,
from current and popular writers. Among such letters was a series on
"the Establishment of the Worship of the Deity essential to National
Happiness." In one of the letters, the author suggests:--

To secure the advantages ... allow me to propose _a general and
equitable tax collected from all the rateable members of a state,
for the support of the public teachers of religion, of all
denominations, within the state...._ Let a moderate poll tax be
added to a tax of a specified sum on the pound, and levied on all
the subjects of a state and collected with the public tax, and
paid out to the public teachers of religion of the several
denominations in proportion to the number of polls or families,
belonging to each respectively; or according to their
estimates. [For]

1. It would be equitable.

2. It would be for the good order of the civil state.

3. All ought to contribute to such a religious education of the
people as would conduce to civil order.

4. It would promote the peace in towns and societies.

5. It would do away with the legal expenses consequent upon
difficulties in collecting rates.

6. It would "extinguish the ardor of the founders of new delusions
and their weak and mercenary abettors."

7. It would prevent separation except upon the firmest principles;
"the powerful motive of saving a penny or two in the pound, would
cease to operate, because their tax would continue still the same,
go where they will." [174]

It was also suggested that the Assembly should fix ministers' salaries
at so much per hundred families, and that congregations should be
permitted to add to the annual grant by voluntary contributions. These
are but examples of the reaching out of the public mind for some
equitable method of enforcing the support of public worship,--a
principle to which the majority still adhered.

The Laws of the State of Connecticut, under which after the Revolution
parishes were organized, contained no reference to the Episcopal
church as such. All societies and congregations were placed on the
same footing precisely, _i.e._, they "had power to provide for
the support of public worship by the rent or sale of pews or slips in
the meeting-house, by the establishment of funds, or in any other way
they might deem expedient." With this amount of freedom Episcopalians
were content, since by the consecration, in 1784, of Samuel Seabury,
Bishop of Connecticut, their ecclesiastical equipment was complete.[m]
Further, many of them had been Tories, and, satisfied with the
clemency shown them at the close of the war by the authorities, they
gladly affiliated with them in all Federal measures of national
importance, and also, for over thirty years, in all local issues.

From 1783 to 1787 there was throughout the United States a general
disintegration of political parties. [175] Federalists and nascent
Anti-Federalists were alike seeking some basis for a safe national
existence. The Constitution once established, political parties
differentiated themselves as the party in power and the "out-party"
developed their respective interpretations of the Constitution and of
measures permitted under it. The Anti-Federalist party in Connecticut
is sometimes said to have been born in 1783 out of opposition both to
the Commutation Act of the Continental Congress, voting five years'
full pay instead of half-pay for life to the Revolutionary officers,
and to the formation of the Cincinnati. Both of these measures touched
the main spring of party difference. America had caste as well as
Europe. Though of a different type, it existed in every town and
county. There were the people of position, attained by family
standing, professional prominence, superior intelligence (rarely by
wealth alone), and then, as now, by natural leadership. There were the
common people of ordinary abilities and meagre possessions, who looked
up to this first class. Between the two there was an invisible
barrier. The customs of the day emphasized it. Yet the institutions
of the land and its democracy demanded that this barrier, not
impassable to men of parts and character who could push up from the
masses, should never become insurmountable, as it often did under a
monarchy; that it should be steadily leveled by intrusting the
governing power more and more to the whole people, rather than to a
few leaders; and by educating the masses up to their responsibilities.
But many of the leading Federalists preferred to concentrate power in
the hands of the few, hesitating to trust the judgment of the great
body of citizens with the new and novel government. And to the people
at large any measure that bore a remote resemblance to monarchical
institutions or monarchical aspirations--however far remote from
either--was subject to suspicion and antagonism. The Cincinnati might
be the beginning of a nobility, and half-pay or five years' full pay
to the officers ignored the common soldiery who had done most of the
fighting, and who had suffered even more severely in their
fortunes.[n] When the measures of the first Congress pressed hardest
upon the impoverished landed proprietors of the South and upon the
small farmers in other sections, of the country, they welded the
landed aristocracy of the South and the democracy of the North into
the Anti-Federal party. Add to their sense of impoverishment, their
common hatred of England, and these classes would hold their prejudice
longer than the merchants, the lawyers, and the clergy, whose
business, studies, and labors would tend to soften the antagonism
created by the war. New England, however, was largely Federal, and
Connecticut was one of the strongholds of that party, priding herself
upon returning Federal electors as long as there was the shadow of the
Federal name to vote for. Moreover, the "Presbyterian Consociated
Congregational Church" and the Federalists were so closely allied that
the party of the government and the party of the Establishment were
familiarly and collectively known as the "Standing Order." During the
early years of statehood, by far the larger number of the dissenters
were also good Federalists. But they drew away from the party at a
later date, when the Democratic-Republicans began, in their
Connecticut state politics, to call for a broader suffrage and full
religious liberty, while the Federal Standing Order still continued to
claim, as within its patronage, legal favors, political office, and
the honors of judicial, military, and civil life.

After the Revolution, the rapidly increasing Baptists continued their
warfare waged against certificates and in behalf of religious liberty.
Methodists soon sympathized, for Methodist itinerants, entering
Connecticut in 1789, gained a footing, in spite of much opposition and
real oppression through fines and imprisonments, [o] and quickly made
many converts. Their preachers urged upon penurious and backward
members the importance of voluntary support of the gospel in almost
the same words as those of the Baptist leader: "It is as real
_robbery_ to neglect the _ordinances_ of God, as it is to
force people to support preachers who will not trust his influence for
a temporal living." [176] Baptists, Methodists, and many other
dissenters were far from satisfied with their status, and the
government from time to time was forced to take notice of the
dissatisfaction. Temporary legislation was enacted to allay the
unrest, but, as there was a settled determination to protect the
Establishment and to keep the political leadership among its friends,
the various measures were not successful. For instance, the
legislature in 1785-86 had arranged for the sale of the Western Lands
and for the money expected from their sale to be divided among the
various Christian bodies, and it had also enacted--

that there shall be reserved to the public five hundred acres of
land in each township for the support of the gospel ministry and
five hundred acres more for the support of schools in such towns
forever; and two hundred and forty acres of good ground in each
town to be granted in fee simple to the first gospel minister who
shall settle in such town. [177]

Nothing is here said of the Presbyterians, or of any other sect, yet
that denomination was sure to receive the greater benefit under the
working of the law. They were a wealthy body, and in the next year,
they began, under the General Association of Connecticut, to renew
their earlier efforts for an organized planting of missions. Attempts
to establish missionary posts were begun as early as 1774, but they
had been interrupted by the war, and were not revived until 1780, when
two missionaries were sent to Vermont. After a little, the missionary
spirit languished through lack of support; but interest had been
roused again by the promised lands and money from the sales in the
Western Reserve, and by the contributions that, flowing in from 1788
to 1791, warranted the dispatch of missionaries into the western field
in 1792, and regularly thereafter. [178]

Turning to the religious and more strictly theological side of the
development of toleration, there was within the Establishment itself a
gradual modification of opinion concerning membership. It was
witnessed to by the contents of a book entitled "Christian Forbearance
to Weak Consciences a Duty of the Gospel," by John Lewis of Stepney
parish, Wethersfield. It was sent out in 1789 for the purpose of
"Attempting to prove that Persons, absenting themselves from the
Lord's Table, through honest scruples of Conscience, is not such a
breach of Covenant but that they partake other Privileges." One may
recall that twenty years previous, 1769-71, Dr. Bellamy was thundering
not only against the Half-Way Covenant, but also against the
Stoddardean view of the Lord's Supper as a "means" of grace,--as a
sacrament the partaking of which would help unworthy or unconverted
men to conversion and to the leading of moral and holy lives. One
might, for a moment, anticipate that the Wethersfield pastor was
harking back to the old idea. But this was not his point of view. "I
reprobate," he writes,"the idea of a Half-Way Covenant, or sealing of
such a covenant." [179] Lewis contended that all seekers after
holiness were to enter the church through the "very same covenant,"
but that to all of them were to be extended the same and all church
privileges, and that they were to accept them "as far as in their
conscience they can see their way clear, hoping for further light." If
they could accept baptism and church oversight, and could not, because
of honest scruples of conscience (lest they were not worthy), approach
the Lord's Table, they were not for that reason to be considered
reprobates. As to such charity opening a way for persons of immoral
lives to creep into the churches or to put off willfully the partaking
of communion, the author's experience of many years had proved the
contrary, though he could not deny that the possibility of hypocrisy
and backsliding might exist under any form of membership.

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