The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut

by M. Louise Greene

All this was preparatory; and the first purely political note of warning and call to battle for a new constitution was sounded by Abraham Bishop at Hartford, May 11, 1804, in his "Oration in Honor of the Election of President Jefferson and the peaceful acquisition of Louisiana." He sums up the situation thus:—

Connecticut has no Constitution. On the day independence was declared, the old charter of Charles II became null and void. It was derived from royal authority, and went down with royal authority. Then, the people ought to have met in convention and framed a Constitution. But the General Assembly interposed, usurped the rights of the people, and enacted that the government provided for in the charter should he the civil constitution of the State. Thus all the abuses inflicted on us when subjects of a crown, were fastened on us anew when we became citizens of a free republic. We still live under the old jumble of legislative, executive and judicial powers, called a Charter. We still suffer from the old restrictions on the right to vote; we are still ruled by the whims of seven men. Twelve make the council. Seven form a majority, and in the hands of these seven are all powers, legislative, executive and judicial. Without their leave no law can pass; no law can be repealed. On them more than half of the House of the Assembly is dependent for re-appointments as justices, judges, or for promotion in the militia. By their breath are, each year, brought into official life six judges of the Superior Court, twenty-eight of the probate, forty of county courts, and five hundred and ten justices of the peace, and, as often as they please, all the sheriffs. Not only do they make laws, but they plead before justices of their own appointment, and as a Court of Errors interpret the laws of their own making. Is this a Constitution? Is this an instrument of government for freemen? And who may be freemen? No one who does not have a freehold estate worth seven dollars a year, or a personal estate on the tax list of one hundred and thirty-four dollars…. For these evils there is but one remedy, and this remedy we demand shall be applied. We demand a constitution that shall separate the legislative, executive and judicial power, extend the freeman's oath to men who labor on highways, who serve in the militia, who pay small taxes, but possess no estates. [204]

Abraham Bishop threw down the gauntlet, and in the following July his party issued a circular letter. It emanated from the Republican General Committee, of which Pierpont Edwards was chairman. It stated "that many very respectable Republicans are of the opinion that it is high time to speak to the citizens of Connecticut plainly and explicitly on the subject of forming a constitution; but this ought not to be done without the approbation of the party." A general meeting was proposed to be held in New Haven on August 29, 1804. In response, ninety-seven towns sent Republican delegates to assemble at the state house in New Haven on that date. Major William Judd of Farmington was chosen chairman. The meeting was held with closed doors, and a series of resolutions was passed in favor of adopting a new constitution. It was declared "the unanimous opinion of this meeting that the people of this state are at present without a constitution of civil government," and "that it is expedient to take measures preparatory to the formation of the Constitution and that a committee be appointed to draft an Address to the People of this State on that subject." The address reported by this committee was printed in New Haven on a small half-sheet with double columns, and ten thousand copies were ordered distributed through the state.

The issue was fairly before the people. From the Federal side, just before the September elections, came David Daggett's "Count the Cost," in which he ably reviewed the Republican manifesto, impugning the motives of the leaders of the Republican party, and eloquently urging every friend of the Standing Order and every freeman to "count the cost" before voting with the Republicans for the proposed reform.

The fall election of 1804 was lost to the Republicans, for while they made many gains here and there throughout the state, [q] the immediate slight access to the Federal ranks showed that the people generally were not yet ready for a constitutional change.

As one result of the defeat at the polls, there arose a wider sympathy for the defeated party. When the legislature met in October, the Federal leaders resolved to administer punishment to the defeated Republicans. So strong was the popular feeling, and so determined the attitude of the legislature, that it summoned before it all five of the justices of the peace [r] who had attended the New Haven convention of August 29, to show why they did not deserve to be deprived of their commissions. Their oath of office ran "to be true and faithful to the Governor and Company of this state, and the Constitution and government thereof." What right, the Federals asked, had they to attack a constitution they had sworn to uphold? At the same time, several of the militia, known to be of Republican sympathies, were also deposed or superseded. Mr. Pierpont Edwards was allowed to make the defense for the justices. Mr. Daggett appeared for the state. Reviewing the proceedings of the Republican meeting, Mr. Daggett traced the history of the government of the colony and state in order to demonstrate that the charter was peculiarly a constitution of the people, "made by the people and in a sense not applicable to any other people." He declared the New Haven "address" an outrage upon decency, and it to be the duty of the Assembly to withdraw their commissions from men who questioned the existence of the constitution under which they held them. The day after the hearing, a bill to revoke the commissions was passed unanimously by the governor and council, and by a majority of eleven in the Lower House, the vote standing 67 yeas to 56 nays. This attempt to stifle public opinion won a general acknowledgment that the minority were oppressed. The feeling of sympathy thus roused was increased by the death of Major Judd, who had been taken ill after his arrival in New Haven. His partisans asserted that his death was caused by his efforts to save himself and friends, and his consequent obligation to appear at the trial when really too ill to be about. The day after his death, the Republicans published and distributed broadcast his "Address to the people of the State of Connecticut on the subject of the removal of himself and four other justices from office."

From this time forward the minority thoroughly realized that it was "not a matter of talking down but of voting down their opponents." Their leaders also understood it. Bishop entered the lists, not only against his political antagonist David Daggett, but against such men as Professor Silliman, Simeon Baldwin, Noah Webster, Theodore Dwight, and against the clergy, led by President Dwight, Simon Backus, Isaac Lewis, John Evans, and a host of secondary men who turned their pulpits into lecture desks and the public fasts and feasts into electioneering occasions. Their general plea was that religion preserved the morals of the people, and consequently their civil prosperity, and hence the need for state support. Occasionally one would insist that it was a matter of conscience with the Presbyterians which made them enforce ecclesiastical taxes and fines, and that all had been given the dissenters that could be; that the Presbyterians had "yielded every privilege they themselves enjoyed and subjected them (the dissenters) to no inconvenience, not absolutely indispensable to the countenance of the practice" (of dissent). David Daggett maintained that there was a just and wide-spread alarm lest the Republicans should undermine all religion, and therefore it behooved all the friends of stable government to support the Standing Order.

The Republicans vigorously contested the elections of 1804,1805, and 1806. Their second general convention, that of August, 1806, at Litchfield, was more outspoken in its criticism, and so much bolder in its demands that many conservative people hesitated to follow its programme. The Republican gains were so small that after 1806 there was a lull in the agitation for constitutional reform for some years. It was well understood that the religious establishment was the greatest clog upon the government. It was also thoroughly understood by many that its destruction meant the destruction of the Federal party in Connecticut. Consequently the Federal patronage distributed the several thousand offices within the gift of Church and State with a "liberality equalled only by the fidelity with which they were paid for." So firm was the Federal control over the state that even in 1804 they risked antagonizing the Episcopalians by again refusing to charter the Cheshire Academy as a college with authority to confer degrees in art, divinity, and law. In the face of a strong protest, it was refused again in 1810. The House approved this last petition, but the Council rejected it. Naturally, the Episcopalians felt still more aggrieved when in 1812 the charter was once more refused; but still they did not desert the Federal party. The latter clung to the spoils of office for their partisans, to the old restrictive franchise, and to the obnoxious Stand-up Law, nor were they less disdainful of the dissenters and of the Republican minority.

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

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