SECOND PREFACE.
Mr. James Hammond Trumbull, the author of the work entitled “The Blue Laws of Connecticut and New Haven, and the False Blue Laws invented by the Rev. Samuel Peters,” which has just made its appearance, attempts to throw discredit on the work of Dr. Peters, and represents it as a fiction, and a calumny upon the early settlers of Connecticut.
Mr. Trumbull seems to have spared no trouble in his researches to show that no such laws as the “Blue Laws” represented by Dr. Peters were in existence, and to impress this more forcibly upon the public he gives the laws of 1639, 1650, and 1656; when, had he looked more carefully at the doctor’s “History of Connecticut,” he would have found he alluded to them in these words: “The laws made by the independent Dominion, and nominated the Blue Laws by the neighboring colonies, were never suffered to be printed;” nevertheless, Mr. Trumbull shows that there were laws
at that time equally repugnant, though clothed in more subtile phraseology, but pointing to the same result, and that these laws were rigidly enforced.
Dr. Peters’s “History of Connecticut” was published in London, in 1781, and possibly there are not twenty persons living who have ever read it. As its truthfulness was unpalatable to the Connecticut colony, the issue that came to this country, I believe, was publicly burnt, and the court prohibited the republishing of the work in the State; consequently it has become a very rare work, so much so that in March, 1877, a copy, at a sale of old works, brought the fabulous price of one hundred and fifteen dollars, demonstrating the fact that but few remained in existence.
The appearance, therefore, of Mr. Trumbull’s work gives the public but one side of the case; under these circumstances I have been induced to republish the work from the original copy belonging to Dr. Peters, using notes and quotations from writers and authors of high repute, and from documents and manuscripts written before the Revolutionary War, which have come into my possession since Mr. Trumbull’s work has appeared, and which, I believe, will show the unbiased public that Mr. Trumbull has not been guided solely by unselfishness in attempting to wipe out the ridicule entailed on Connecticut by the early Blue Laws; but he still retains a little of the fanaticism, bigotry, and
spleen, so justly attributed to his ancestor, who was the cause of driving Dr. Peters from his native country; and he would now attempt to cast discredit upon a work that was well received in the State by the intelligent portion of the community, and indorsed as a true history.
In writing of the “Blue Laws,” Prof. De Vere, of the University of Virginia, in his volume on “Americanisms,” published in 1872, says, “They are confirmed without a doubt.” The late Rev. A. B. Chapin, in his article published in the Churchman of Hartford, Connecticut, August 19, 1876, entitled “Was the History of Connecticut a Fabrication?” says, “If Dr. Peters had had my advantages he might have been a worse historian for Connecticut than he has been already.” I might continue such quotations from persons of equally high standing, but my object is to let the work stand upon its merits, giving it to the public as it left the author’s hands, merely adding such portions as I find in the unpublished manuscripts in my possession, relating chiefly to the doctor himself, and the cause of his having to leave the country; also to the action taken by the colony of Connecticut for the relief of the destroyers of the teas in Boston.
It has not been for the purpose of obtaining a character for the work, which it did not before possess, that I again bring it before the public; but that they may
have both sides of the case for their view, joined with that of defending my ancestor, the author, a good and venerable old clergyman, who was driven from his country, and his large estates sequestrated, for obeying “the laws of his God, the laws of his country, and the dictates of his conscience, by the fanatics of Connecticut,” and from the unjust and unwarrantable attacks of Mr. Trumbull.
S. J. McCormick.