[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. 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. 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.