USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume I > Part 24
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Amherst opened the campaign of 1760 by marching over- land to Oswego, where he embarked his army for the attack upon Montreal. On arriving at Oswegatchie, where the
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river channel is narrow, two armed vessels were sighted, obstructing the passage; and the English, being in open boats, were exposed to their fire. Amherst was nonplussed; and soliciting the assistance of Putnam, the latter undertook, with 1,000 men in fifty bateaux, to board the ships. Strip- ping his men to the waist, Putnam began the attack; the enemy was dazed by this mode of warfare, and one ship was run aground, while the other struck her colors. A fort situ- ated on the island was still an impediment to the army's pro- gress, and Amherst again requested Putnam's assistance; the doughty hero by the aid of fascines and temporary bridges effected a landing on the island, when the enemy capitulated without firing a gun. Thus, through the bravery and wisdom of a provincial officer, a bloodless entrance into Canada was effected. Early in September, Amherst arrived at Montreal; a union was effected with the other divisions of the army, and all the French possessions in Canada passed under the domi- nation of the British Crown.
The conquest of Canada did not close the war, and in the spring of 1761 another requisition for troops was made on the colonies. The prime minister asked for two-thirds of the number of former levies; and the Connecticut Assembly immediately raised 2,300 men, whom they equipped and placed in two regiments under the command of Phineas Ly- man and Nathan Whiting. These recruits were used in plac- ing in a state of perfect defense all the forts and posts that had fallen into the hands of the English; they built new forti- fications, repaired old roads, built new ones from fort to fort and from settlement to settlement, erected houses and bar- racks for the garrisons, and in a word fixed a firm military and civil order on the conquests. The labors thus performed
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by Connecticut troops are as worthy of commemoration as the part taken in former campaigns by their predecessors.
At the close of the year's campaign a body of provincials, with British regulars, assisted in the reduction of the French possessions in the West Indies. The assembly had ordered in 1761 an emission of £45,000 in bills of credit, bearing the usual rate of interest, and had created a sinking fund by a tax of five pence on the pound; they also levied an extra tax of the same amount to pay the troops.
Though the war in America had eventually closed favora- bly for England, her campaigns on the European continent had proved unsatisfactory: Spain had become the ally of France, the Kingdom of Hanover was in the hands of the enemy, and Great Britain was engaged either directly or in- directly in war with all the great Continental powers of Eu- rope. England's position was such, notwithstanding her suc- cess in America, that if France and her allies should be vic- torious in Europe, the expenses and exertions of the colonies would amount to naught. In this exigency the mother coun- try was obliged to call upon the provinces for assistance. A division of troops was recruited in 1762, consisting of 500 from New York, 800 from New Jersey, and 1,000 from Connecticut ; the chief command was given to Major-General Phineas Lyman, and the troops were ordered to proceed to Havana. Lieutenant-Colonel Putnam, who was in command of General Lyman's regiment, with 500 of his men were wrecked upon the rocky shores of Cuba ; but they were res- cued and conveyed in safety to Havana. Of the 1,000 troops that left their Connecticut homes, sickness so thinned their ranks that but a handful ever returned.
The colony, to equip the West Indies expedition, issued £65,000 in bills of credit payable in five years. The dis-
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bursements for the fourth intercolonial war had caused the emission of £350,000 in bills of credit, all of which seem to have been paid at maturity; there was no legal-tender clause in connection with the issue, and the payment was based on lawful money. The standard of values had been established in England, for that country and her provinces, in the early part of the eighteenth century, by a table of values of the current foreign coins, and was known as "proclamation money"; this created a coin redemption, which preserved the equilibrium of indebtedness on a special basis throughout the monetary world.
Towards the close of the year 1762, preliminaries of peace were signed at Fontainebleau, and on the 3d of February of the following year, the Treaty of Paris was publicly ratified by the contending powers; by the provisions of this treaty, all the French possessions in North America were ceded to either England or Spain.
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CHAPTER XXIII THE BLUE LAWS
T HIS phrase, applied to the supposed legal code of New Haven Colony during its brief ex- istence, has its chief currency (though not, as generally supposed, its origin) from an anonymous "General History of Connecti- cut," published at London in 1781, before the close of the Revolution. The author was Samuel Peters, a native of Hebron in this State, grandnephew of the famous Hugh Peters, a graduate of Yale, who took orders in England in 1760. On his return to America, he was put in charge of the Church of England parish in Hebron. His position naturally placed him in antagonism to the Congregational establishment, to which he was outspoken in dislike; as a Loyalist, he could not escape the harrying which befell his class from the nationalists, but he aggravated it by political letters to parties in New York and England. He was warned to abstain from his course, but sturdily maintained his ground till he was personally assaulted by the "Sons of Liberty," and forced to fly to England in fear of worse treatment. There he wrote his "History," as by "A Gentleman of the Prov- ince"; with few sources of material except a very inaccurate memory and almost equally inaccurate notes, and neither de- sire nor capacity to employ better ones; largely a mass of credulous gossip, blundered copying, and occasional mis- chievous invention. The volume would now be a mere for- gotten antiquarian curio, but for its alleged abstract of New Haven Colony legislation, which has given it a vigorous and acrid immortality. In 1829, when a new generation had be- gun to swing wide from the Puritan moorings, and to wel- come rather than reprobate discreditable portraiture of their ancestors, a reprint was issued; and in 1877, when original copies were bringing enormous sums, one of the authors'
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descendants published another, ostensibly and oddly "to de- fend his ancestor from the calumny heaped upon him by the historians of Connecticut."
No other work ever published has had so curious a fate. It seems to have had three objects, none of which, even if some are not especially clerical, need be judged too harshly : in the main, to excite commiseration and regard for himself as a martyr to his loyalty, and obtain a better Church living ; secondly, to retaliate on his political persecutors and religious tormentors; thirdly, to hoax the English, who like their de- scendants accepted uncritically anything concerning America. Only this last explanation accounts for the remarkable story about the Connecticut River "Narrows" at Bellows Falls ("two hundred miles from the Sound," he says, which of course is not a Connecticut location), where the river runs so violently through a gorge that you cannot force a crowbar into it; and those amazing members of the Connecticut fauna, the whappernocker (i. e. "whopper-thumper," or huge lie-we can imagine his keen delight in a story whose name embodied the information that it was a hoax, yet would not be unriddled), and the cuba. As these were of no service for self-interest or spite, we are shut down to the theory that he wished to test English credulity; and this must have been a considerable factor even in his sarcastic inventions or dis- tortions of colonial laws. To consider him, as is often done, a revengeful renegade, deliberately slandering his native land, is not only unjust but ungraphic, and indicates a de- ficient sense of humor : it would be much nearer the truth to call him a very American practical joker, trying to combine amusement with business. The first object (bettering his condition) failed. But the other two succeeded, to a de- gree that would have astounded himself : that the very chil-
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dren of the people he was libeling ( for though the "laws" were of the older New England, and only one long extinct colony of that, he distinctly says that similar laws still prevail throughout the newer) should accept his most imaginative statements as literal truth, would make his spirit beam with sardonic enjoyment. The reason is the swift emancipation of the present century alike from the beliefs and the social needs of their forefathers; the consequent exaggeration of the one and its social outcome into a gloom and forbiddingness much worse than the reality, and hence a credulity concerning sto- ries of their "blueness" which more than matches the Eng- lish; and a blank ignorance of the other which issues in a glib contempt for them not intellectually respectable. The word "children" above is used advisedly : the writer was in- structed in the worst of the "Blue Laws" as accurate state- ments of fact, when a child, by a grandmother born only a few years after Peters' book appeared, and of an imme- morially New England family.
But it must be stated here that the nature of the "Blue Laws" cited by Peters is much misunderstood; indeed, it is very doubtful if one in a hundred of those who either ac- cept or denounce them have ever read them. Most of their use in current arguments, either as missiles or in rebuttal, is confined to two or three items. They are supposed in gen- eral to be almost entirely discreditable to the colony, and by the minority to have been invented as such. The fact is that the greater number are true (though not always of New Haven), and perfectly reasonable and natural. A few of them are apparently the private prejudices of extremists, cited as actual statutes. Some of them are the common legisla- tion of all civilized communities, and it is impossible to dis- cover any point whatever in Peters' citation, as a means of
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discrediting his foes. Others are the results of attempts at social censorship or sumptuary legislation which is now ad- mitted to be unwise, but which every advanced society on earth has tried again and again. Many are made to seem examples of fanaticism or folly in various ways : sometimes by inventing trivial or ludicrous applications of reasonable laws, which might be made by fussy bigots-as barbarous and silly a "blue code" as one could wish might be made out of the present statute book by the same process ; sometimes by parading laws universal in independent states as disloyal usurpations in a colony; sometimes by distortion and misap- plication; and as a whole, by asserting that the most savage punishments were inflicted for the lightest offenses. In detail, to be sure, he does not generally misstate the penalties; but his statement that the "vast multitude were all sanctified with excommunication, confiscation, fines, banish- ments, whippings, cutting off the ears, burning the tongue, and death," conveyed an impression of far greater severity than was the fact, and remained in the minds of those who did not examine them itemwise. The curious defense is made for him that such punishments were actually on the New Haven code. So they were on all other English codes ; but would Peters have stated-as he might with more truth -that they were the common penalties in England for petty offenses ? We need not suppose that this was deliberate false- hood, however: as will be noted later, he accepted a tra- dition which he had no means of verifying, though it is prob- ably doing him no injustice to say that he would have ap- plied no critical methods to it had he possessed the power.
It was long supposed by scholars that the bulk of the list was invented outright by Peters; but the whole controversy has been placed on a different footing within a few years by
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Rev. Walter F. Prince, who has proved that Peters took most of them from Neal's "History of New England,"-a well-reputed work, though sometimes accepting stories against the Puritans with too little analysis. The choice of details, however, was obviously made for purposes of detrac- tion; and the further grievance remains that he should have loaded them all on a colony whose actual code was milder than most of the others, whose actual practice shows less bloodshed if more social and meddlesomeness, and to which a good half of the alleged enactments did not pertain. It is certain, however, that New Haven had that reputation long before Peters' time, and that he did not even invent the phrase "Blue Laws" (which in fact he misunderstood, as he defines it "Bloody Laws," instead of "Over-strict Social Laws"), nor probably its application to New Haven. This is not so wonderful when we remember that the irksome daily interference with private liberty, which affected all, would strike those used to a freer system much more keenly than an occasional severe sentence, which was consistent with the feel- ings of the time; and would create an impression of uniform harshness in all departments. New Haven certainly at- tempted as did no other colony to put the Mosaic code into practical effect ; and its discordance with modern society drove the magistrates into severity which struck even out- siders in full sympathy with their purpose.
The "Blue Laws," in Peters' version, are forty-five in number, as follows :
1. "The Governor and Magistrates convened in General Assembly are the supreme power under God of this independ- ent Dominion." True : the New Haven Colony was founded and managed purely as "under God" (through His revealed word), without acknowledgment of the English Crown; and
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lost its independence partly for that reason. The charge was expected to horrify English readers, but need not dis- turb Americans.
2. "From the determination of the Assembly no appeal shall be made." True of all New England; and again, a much graver offense in English eyes than ours, which can see that many powerful offenders would have gone unpunished if they could have systematically taken their cases over to England. The English government wished to establish a regular appeal to the King in Council; the colonies would not allow it, and heavily fined any one who attempted it; nor ought they to have allowed it, as it would have made colonial justice and order nugatory to a large extent. This was merely one branch of the general fact that the home gov- ernment knew too little of the colonies' affairs to have any right to manage them.
3. "The Governor is amenable to the voice of the people." Of course, in a democracy. Peters seems to be aiming at exciting English horror of levelers.
4. "The Governor shall have only a single vote in de- termining any question, except a casting vote when the As- sembly may be equally divided." Most likely true, though not quite demonstrably. Peters' point is that in this leveling democracy, the chief magistrate has no veto and is at the mercy of the rabble.
5. "The Assembly of the People shall not be dismissed by the Governor, but shall dismiss itself." How else, in a dem- ocratic representative system where the governor is only an elected representative like the rest? To give him power of prorogation would be giving a petty tyrant the power from which, even in a king, the English people revolted.
6. "Conspiracy against this Dominion shall be punished
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with death." True of New Haven and Massachusetts, the latter shrewdly defining it as equivalent to conspiracy against the Crown. All independent communities have the same law, from the obvious right of self-defense. Peters wishes to imply that it was uusurpation of the Crown's sole right, and an assertion of independence.
7. "Whoever says there is a power and jurisdiction above and over this Dominion shall suffer death and loss of prop- erty." Apparently pure fiction; either an extravagant cor- ollary from the punishments imposed on the appellants from colonial jurisdiction (see No. 2), and his consistent as- sumption that any punishment was imposed on any offense at will, or more probably a transference from Revolutionary mob-law to the early statute-books. Peters had seen and ex- perienced so much personal violence and confiscation for up- holding English supremacy, that he perhaps thought it a venial invention to make it substantive colonial law from the outset.
8. "The judges shall determine controversies without a jury." With the long and bitter English fight for jury trial, this was well calculated to incense them against colonial law- lessness and tyranny. It was true of New Haven, and a per- fectly legitimate experiment, though open to grave abuses and doomed to failure. Judged by its fruits, there is no evi- dence that life and liberty were less safe in New Haven than the other New England colonies; and in the witchcraft matter it certainly seems to have saved much innocent blood, cultivated magistrates being on the whole less liable to panic superstition than the masses. As a fact, meddlesomeness and prurience seem to have been more characteristic of the New Haven jurisdiction than excessive severity, despite its early reputation. Probably the system changed the distribu-
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tion of injustice rather than its volume. This generation is not so infatuated with jury trials that it cannot afford to be fair to others who were even less so.
9. "Whoever attempts to change or overturn this Do- minion shall suffer death." This is merely No. 6 in another shape. We shall meet with a number of these repetitions, to increase the apparent sum of iniquity.
10. "No one shall be a freeman or give a vote unless he be converted, and a member in full communion of one of the churches allowed in this Dominion." True of New Haven and early Massachusetts, and the very foundation of a theoc- racy. This age is out of sympathy with such a system, and we can see now that it was foredoomed to failure; but the experiment was worth trying. It is true that states cannot be operated on moral canons; but the fact is nothing to rejoice over, nor opprobrious to those who hoped they could.
II. "No man shall hold office who is not found [sound ?] in the faith and faithful to this Dominion; and whoever gives a vote to such a person shall pay a fine of £1; for a second offense he shall be disfranchised." Not New Haven law, but Massachusetts, and more severe, being five pounds instead of one; but the disfranchisement was not statutory, being in the discretion of the magistrates. The first clause is only a corollary a fortiori from No. 10: to forbid dissenters to vote and allow them to hold office would be grotesque. The others are only means of enforcing the first.
12. "Each freeman to swear by the blessed God to bear true allegiance to this Dominion, and that Jesus is the only King." The first clause is true and proper (though Peters instances it as a proof of colonial disloyalty and usurpation), the second pure fiction. It is alleged in Peters' defense that as the New Haven code professed to be founded on the law
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of God, and expressly acknowledged Jesus as the only medi- ator, the oath amounted in substance to the declaration above. One shudders to think of the statutes which might be evolved from any code by such constructive logic, plus a lively imag- ination.
13. "No Quaker or dissenter from the established wor- ship of this Dominion shall be allowed to give a vote for the election of magistrates or any other office." This is No. 10 restated. The end involves the means, toward theocracy as other things; but it will be noted that these means are cut into bits and each made a separate grievance.
14. "No food or lodging shall be afforded to a Quaker, Adamite, or other heretic." True of several New England colonies. Their justification has been dealt with elsewhere. Those colonies were intended as great private clubs,-com- munities based on acceptance of a certain ideal. It is now agreed to have been an impossible scheme,-it is part of the weakness of a religious state that heresy is treason; but that does not make it less unreasonable to blame them for at- tempting it, and therefore excluding avowed foes not even seeking admission on business grounds, but purely to over- throw their hosts. Nor did the sectaries confine them- selves to quiet disbelief : they were aggressive and even in- decent assailants of the constituted order.
15. "If any person turns Quaker, he shall be banished and not suffered to return on pain of death." This is a heroic muddle of Massachusetts laws, enacted after it was can- kered with hate and terror; one banishing foreign Quakers on pain of death if they returned, another banishing Quaker converts and then if they returned treating them as foreign Quakers. New Haven imposed no death penalty on them.
16. "No priest shall abide in this Dominion; he shall be
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banished, and suffer death on his return. Priests may be seized by any one without a warrant." No Roman Catholic priest, of course. This was in substance the Massachusetts law of 1700. Remembering the stream of Huguenot refugees from the Dragonnades coming into Massachusetts, the late career of James II., and the English enactments of the times for the security of Ireland, it is not necessary to excuse them for precautions. Their knowledge, fears, and reasoning were of their age, not ours; and England shared them.
17. "No one to cross a river but with an authorized fer- ryman." That is, not with an unauthorized one. They might cross with their own boats on business, but not on pleasure parties or for hire. We need not defend a sparse community for giving a monopoly of a needful business for a time to its licensees ; but for this, many places could have had no ferries, and the greed of a few would have been the common harm of all.
18. "No one shall run on the Sabbath day, or walk in his garden or elsewhere except reverently to and from meeting." This is a good example of Peters' "inferential" statutes, and distorted ones. Both for religious reasons and social ones, the overwhelming mass of New Englanders wished to keep the Sabbath a reverently observed and quiet day; and as it offended and annoyed them to see it desecrated, and as a few noisy people could disturb the quiet of a whole community,
they passed laws for its quiet, of which if nagging they would be the chief and almost only victims. It seems to be the cur- rent opinion that they passed these laws solely to torment other people,-the other people whom they are reproached for making laws to shut out if possible,-without affecting themselves. They were in fact the whole community, were making laws to bind themselves, and should have been the
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best judges whether the laws were oppressive. When they became so, they swiftly lost their edge. As to the statutes above, the first clause illustrates what was said in the prefa- tory remarks. "Running" was only one of a series of speci- fications of noisy and disorderly acts,-screaming, horn- blowing, etc.,-which if performed near a meeting-house and disturbing worship, could be complained of. Exactly the same thing is indictable as a nuisance today : quiet people do not disturb noisy ones, but noisy people do disturb quiet ones. Why should it be assumed that the Puritans had no common-sense and no respectable motives? Peters in this was at least no worse than a large class of writers and readers at present. The unavowed postulate of all is that the colonists were foolish bigots to have any Sunday laws. As to the second clause, for the reasons above, the law for- bade "unnecessary walking in the streets or fields," that is, general pleasuring. It never forbade any one to walk about his house-yard, nor is there any reason to suppose that even under the elastic discretion of the magistrates any one was ever punished for it. They were New England farmers, and walked about their own.
19. "No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep house, cut hair, or shave, on the Sabbath day." This is a flagrant example of what we noted above,-drawing out all the frivolous or ludicrous possibilities of a rational law, and asserting it to be part of the statute. It would be no diffi- cult matter to burlesque the United States General Statutes of 1902 almost as effectively. The extreme forms in which many things in all codes are enacted are to use in case of need. To keep the Sabbath quiet and respected was the intent; to harry decent people was not so, though a fanatical meddler might so use it occasionally, and the popular notion of what
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