Federalist.
[t] To preserve our institutions and reform public morals, to bring back the keeping of the Sabbath was our aim … We tried to do it by resuscitating and enforcing the law (That was our mistake, but we did not know it then.) and wherever I went I pushed that thing; Bear up the laws—execute the laws…. We took hold of it in the Association at Fairfield, June, 1814, … recommending among other things a petition to Congress." (Autobiography, i, 268.) At this meeting originated the famous petition against Sunday mail.
Dr. Beeeher urged a domestic missionary society to build up waste places in Connecticut. His sermon "Reformation of Morals practicable and desirable" warned against "profane and profligate men of corrupt minds and to every good work reprobate."
Judge Church.
[v] The final speech in favor of the bill was made by Nathan Smith, a lawyer of New Haven. When he had finished his eloquent setting forth of the benefits and dangers attendant upon passing the bill, there was an unusual and solemn silence. Dr. Gillett says if the bill had been promptly put to vote it would probably have been passed, but the churchlike silence was broken by a shrill voice piping forth, "Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, what shall we sing?" The laughter which followed broke the orator's charm and sealed the fate of the bill.
[w] See Columbian Register of June 17, 1820, for a full account of the Bishop's Fund and the final award of the bonus.
CHAPTER XV
DISESTABLISHMENT
No distinction shall I make between Trojan and Tyrian.
The Federal grip upon Connecticut, one of the last strongholds of that party, was weakening. Preceding the deflection of the Episcopalians in Connecticut, there had been throughout New England a strong Federal opposition to the national government and its commands during the War of 1812. Such conduct had shattered party prestige, and when its opposition culminated in the Hartford Convention of 1814, it wrote its own death-warrant. The Republicans, on the contrary, had dropped local questions of constitutional reform and religious liberty, preferring to bend all their energies to the support of the general government. When as a national party they humbled England and brought the war to a victorious close, the contrast of their loyalty to state and national interests steadily drew the popular favor. In the era of good feeling and prosperity that followed, the great national political parties dissolved somewhat and crystallized anew. In Connecticut a similar change took place in local politics. In the years immediately following the war, the Democratic-Republicans, the majority of the dissenters, and the dissatisfied among the Federalists, formed different coalitions that, under the general name of Toleration, [a] opposed the Standing Order. In 1816 the agitation for constitutional reform was revived, and after three years resulted in the overthrow of the Federalists and the triumph of a peaceful revolution whereby religious liberty was assured.