USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume III > Part 8
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owners speedily resumed business. In less than a month thirty-three vessels were refitted and on their way to foreign ports; commerce steadily increased. Many new vessels were: built, and the old-time impetus revived; but the outbreak of the war of 1812, like its predecessor, was to prove disastrous to all maritime enterprises. At the termination of the war, there were one hundred sea-going vessels owned in New: Haven. Commercial relations were again formed with distant ports in Europe and South America, and valuable cargoes were brought to the city. But gradually New York absorbed the commerce, though many New Haven citizens. are still interested in ship tonnage.
The foreign trade of Hartford prior to the Revolution was almost entirely with the West Indies; at a later period a few vessels were sent to Lisbon and the Mediterranean with fish, and to Ireland with lumber. After the declaration of peace, a thriving business sprung up with the Barbadoes, Cuba, and San Domingo. The cargoes from these foreign ports generally consisted of rum, molasses, and sugar. The exports to them were corn, corn meal, oats, alewives, hay, red and white oak hogshead staves, boards, shingles, and horses .. The vessels employed in the trade were thoroughly built, but slow sailers, with low deck and high waist, and of from one to two hundred tons burden. The smaller ones were sloop-rig- ged, the larger either topsailed schooners or full-rigged brigs. When a voyage was determined upon, notes were given for the cargo, payable in rum, molasses, or salt, on the return of the vessel. This necessitated but a small amount of money to carry on the trade. Ventures were made of exporting flax- seed, potatoes, and staves to Ireland, and corn, pipe-staves, and horses to Madeira, Spain, and Portugal. Occasionally
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a voyage was made to the coast of Africa for cargoes of ebony, wool, and ivory.
The constant warfare in which the European nations were involved from 1792 to 1815 acted as a stimulant to the commerce of the United States, owing to the fact that the colonies of these countries were obliged to obtain their sup- plies from her domains, exchanging their products for the bread-stuffs and live cattle of the New England States. One of the greatest articles of export was kiln-dried corn meal, which was used in feeding their slaves.
A number of Hartford merchants were actively engaged in these commercial operations; and to further their business, they established an agency at New London, and their vessels were despatched from this place, as they could not ascend the Connecticut except in times of freshets, on account of insufficiency of water. In the first three decades of the last century, the river bank adjacent to Hartford was lined with wharves that bustled with traffic; vessels were lying in the stream, often three or four abreast; warehouses and packing houses teemed with life; the wharves were filled with hogs- heads of sugar, rum, and molasses, waiting transportation "up river" by scows or flat-boats. To-day, Hartford's prom- inence as a port of entry for foreign importations is a thing of the past. In that section of the city formerly devoted to the transactions of this trade, a lone steamboat leaves her wharf for a daily trip to New York; while on the river, in place of foreign-laden vessels, a few pleasure yachts are anchored. Her citizens, instead of being interested in ocean transportation, are engaged in banking, insurance, and manu- facturing. But immense amounts of railroad stock are owned by them, and the freight cars far outnumber the schooners they have displaced.
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CONNECTICUT AS A STATE
Situated at the eastern end of the State, with a magnificent harbor of five fathoms in depth, spacious and accessible at all seasons, the port of New London, for nearly one hundred and fifty years previous to the opening of the nineteenth century, had been the ship-building mart for the colony. Shallops and pinnaces of from twelve to twenty tons were built here as early as 1660. Towards the latter part of the seventeenth century, ships of a larger pattern were con- structed; they were known by the name of Moulds' vessels, after their master builder Hugh Moulds.
As early as 1723, ship yards were started at Groton. Here, two years later, was launched what was named "Jeffrey's Great Ship." Her burden was seven hundred tons, and she was the largest ship that had been constructed on this side of the Atlantic. Other ships were soon built, and in 1733 New London had acquired a reputation for the production of large vessels which she has maintained even to the present day; as is evidenced by the fact that the largest steamboats now afloat are the products of her ship-yards. At Mystic, a near neighbor to her, was built the Quinebaug, the first "bald- headed" schooner on the Atlantic coast. Previous to 1800, New London was the most important port of entry in the commonwealth. A decade and a half later, with only a popu- lation of 3,330, her tonnage was 14,685 tons, that of the entire State being 60,091 tons. New Haven and Hartford, with nearly twice the population each, had respectively 12,439 and about 9,000 tons.
Though there were whaling voyages made from New London previous to 1794, they were confined to a near-by catch in Long Island Sound, or to the Newfoundland Banks as the most distant point. The first vessel to sail from Con- necticut on a whaling voyage to the Pacific Ocean was the
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ship Commerce; she was owned and fitted out at East Had- dam, but cleared from New London. An attempt was made the following year to form a whaling company at New Lon- don; but the honor of being second in Connecticut in the whaling enterprise is credited to Norwich. A small new ship, the Miantonimoh, was epuiqped here, and set sail from New London in 1800; but her cruise was terminated in two years, as she was seized by the Spanish authorities. The Des- patch from New London made a voyage around Cape Horn in 1802 for whales, but as it did not prove remunerative, the venture was not repeated.
The year 1805 marks the date when whale-fishing may be said to have actually begun in New London. The pioneer in the trade was the ship Dauphin; the Leonidas and Lydia were afterwards added to the fleet, and were sent to the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Patagonia. There was only time for a few successful voyages, when the embargo and non-intercourse acts were passed by Congress; this, in con- nection with the outbreak of the war of 1812, entirely broke up this species of commerce.
When the treaty of peace was signed at Ghent, the West India trade of New London, which in former days had been a source of much wealth and prosperity, was not extensively revived; but in 1819 whaling was again taken up with renewed vigor. The first fleet sent out consisted of the brigs. Mary, and Mary Ann, and the ship Carrier; from time to time the brigs Pizarro and Thames, the ships Commodore Perry, Stonington, Connecticut, Ann Maria, and Jones, were added. The Carrier was the first vessel from New London to make a voyage for sperm whale; she was absent nearly two years and a half, and returned with 2,074 barrels of oil. The Commodore Perry was the first copper-bottomed whal-
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ing vessel despatched from New London. The four brigs and the ship Carrier were withdrawn from the fleet after making three or four voyages. Of the five ships then in com- mission, two were right-whale and three sperm cruisers. Of these, the Commodore Perry after making seventeen voyages, and the Stonington after making thirteen, were broken up in 1848. The Connecticut and Jones were condemned, and the Maria Ann was run down by a French whaler in 1842 in the Indian Ocean.
The prosperity of New London is largely due to the suc- cessful prosecution of the whale fisheries. In 1827 the staunch-built ships Neptune and Superior were added to the fleet. The maximum, however, was reached in 1845, when seven vessels were newly commissioned. This, with the purchase of the McClellan in the following year, made seven- ty-eight vessels sailing from New London, engaged in the whaling industry. The city at this time was only exceeded by New Bedford in tonnage engaged in pursuit of whales. In 1820 there were three brigs and one ship, with a tonnage amounting to 950 tons; in 1846 there were seventy-one ships and barks, one brig, and six schooners, aggregating 26,200 tons, having an invested capital of nearly $2,000,000, and employing three thousand seamen. Reverses came the next year, due to the extension of the trade beyond what it could bear, a depressed market, scarcity of whales, and the out- break of the gold craze, when nineteen vessels were with- drawn for voyages to California. During the years 1849- 50 there were but thirty-four arrivals of whalers at the port of New London; but the next year brought revival instead of retrogression, and the fleet was increased to fifty vessels. But the general introduction first of camphene and then of
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petroleum as illuminants caused whale fishing to become unprofitable.
A number of New Haven merchants in 1823 equipped two ships to engage in the capture of whales in the North Pacific Ocean. While the vessels returned heavily laden, the low prices of oil and bones, coupled with the fear that the competition would destroy all the whales, caused the enter- prise to be abandoned and the ships sold.
The town of Stonington had been in its early days engaged in the West India trade, also in the attempts to obtain whales in Long Island Sound. About 1820 a number of vessels were fitted out for seal-fishing; this was at first successful, but ten years later it was discontinued for whale-fishing. There were at one time sixty-three vessels, with a tonnage of from eighty-two to four hundred and eighty tons each, engaged in the business. Thus have been briefly outlined the seaports of Connecticut in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
The other county capitals of the State, as well as those set- tlements dignified by the name of city or village, were more or less interested in manufacturing enterprises. In 1820, while eighteen and four-tenths per cent. of Connecticut's population were engaged in agricultural pursuits, only one and three-tenths followed commerce for a livelihood, while six and four-tenths were connected with manufacturing. There had been a gradual evolution, from the purely manual methods of manufacturing to primitive machinery; the cap- tains of industry and the specialists had made their appear- ance, and in a State as conservative as Connecticut, the changes thus effected were noticeable. The gravitation from the farm to the growing cities of the rising generation was to destroy the picturesqueness of colonial times; the supremacy of steam, coal, and iron, with municipal progress,
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and the advent of foreign immigration, were to change the daily doings of the people.
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CHAPTER X THE DEATH OF THE FEDERALIST PARTY
T HE prominent Democratic-Republican who pre- dicted in 1804 that the Constitution was the death-blow of Connecticut federalism, was a faithful prognosticator of future events. In the summer previous to the assembling of the Constitutional Convention, the State received a visit from the newly-elected President. President Monroe was wel- comed by the citizens of the State, not on account of his personality, but as the Chief Magistrate of the nation. It was the end of sixteen years of bitter political strife, but the era of "good feeling" was now inaugurated.
The Federalist party, while on the whole it contained the best educated, most high-minded, and most solvent part of the nation, had been wrecked by its own want of faith. The eminent Connecticut Federalists took no part in the recep- tion ceremonies tendered the President: but he was met by cavalcades of mounted citizens, groups of school children, and the roar of cannon; triumphal arches were erected. The President was not attended by any member of his Cab- inet; his suite consisted only of a private secretary, and Gen- eral Joseph G. Swift, the Chief Engineer of the War Department. The ostensible object of the tour was the inspection of the national defenses.
The Presidential party sailed from New York June 20, 1817, on the steamboat Connecticut; arriving on the after- noon of the same day at New Haven, which was the first stop- ping-place in New England. The shipping in the harbor displayed their colors, and salutes were fired from a revenue cutter, Fort Hale, and from an artillery company stationed on shore. The country and city dignitaries extended the presi- dential party welcome on board the steamboat; they were received on landing by the Governor's Horse Guards, who
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formed the military escort. The following day, being Sat- urday, the president visited Eli Whitney's gun manufactory and Yale College; and, attended by the Governor and Dep- uty-Governor, received the military.
On Monday the tour was resumed. The party was met at Durham by a large concourse of citizens from Middle- town, accompanied by a company of cavalry; arriving at the limits of the city, the President was mounted on a white charger, and escorted by several companies of infantry to the principal tavern, where he breakfasted. The morning was spent in visiting North's pistol factory, the Starrs' sword works, and Johnson's rifle manufactories. After partaking of dinner, the journey was resumed for Hartford, by the way of Wethersfield, where the party was met by the military from that city. Hartford was approached by the city bridge, which was ornamented with three lofty evergreen and laurel arches. A large concourse of citizens were assembled at the South Green, and the President was escorted to Morgan's Coffee-House, where he was tendered an address of welcome. After replying in an elegant and impressive manner, he reviewed the military. The President, during his stay in Hartford, visited the Deaf and Dumb Asylum and the State Arsenal, besides other points of interest.
Continuing his tour, the country on the west bank of the Connecticut River, through the towns of Windsor and Suf- field, was traversed; and Springfield, Massachusetts, was reached. Leaving that city and returning southward through the towns of Enfield and East Windsor, the night was spent at East Hartford. On the afternoon of the 25th, New Lon- don was reached. The following morning Forts Trumbull and Griswold were visited, and the Thames River was exam- ined to judge of its accommodations for a navy yard.
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The presidential party left New London, on the morning of the 27th, in the sloop-of-war Enterprise, accompanied by other United States vessels. After visiting Gardiner's Bay, sail was set for Stonington harbor, which was reached at three o'clock. The President received a committee from that town on board the revenue cutter Active, and prepara- tions were made to go ashore. He visited the redoubt made memorable by the bombardment of the town in 1814, also the United States Arsenal. A public reception was held in the evening, and the next day the Presidential party, on board of the sloop-of-war Enterprise, departed for Rhode Island.
The disintegration of the old Federalist principles had been going on for some years in Connecticut. The more advanced element of the party had amalgamated with the cause of toleration and reform, the standard-bearers of this new school of politics being taken from their ranks.
At the close of the Fifteenth Congress, the subject that was to agitate the country for the next half-century was mooted; it arose on the question of the admission to the Union of the Territory of Missouri as a slave or free State.
The Sixteenth Congress had an overwhelming administra- tion majority. The style of the delegates from Connecticut had entirely changed; those war-horses of the Federalists who had represented the State at preceding sessions, with the sole exception of Jonathan C. Moseley, were succeeded by younger men, of whom Gideon Tomlinson, Henry W. Ed- wards, and Samuel A. Foot were afterwards to fill the execu- tive chair of the State.
The Missouri Question was the engrossing theme of the session. There were at the time ten slave States, while the free were twelve in number. Slavery had been thoroughly eradicated in New England; in 1820 there were forty-eight
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slaves in Rhode Island and ninety-seven in Connecticut, all of whom in time would become free. In New York, New Jer- sey, and Delaware, the free black population predominated over the slaves, but there were thousands of negroes still in a state of bondage. Pennsylvania had only a little over two hundred slaves, who were to be emancipated on arriving at a legal age. In the new and undeveloped West, the States of Ohio and Michigan were entirely free from the evil, while Indiana and Illinois had but a few hundred each.
Missouri, which asked recognition as a slave State, had over ten thousand slaves. The question of slave extension was of vital importance to the advocates of human bondage. Mis- souri as a Territory at this time consisted of the country lying west of the Mississippi River, extending to the Pacific Ocean, and north from the boundary line of Louisiana to that dividing the United States from Canada, excepting the terri- tory claimed by Mexico. The admission of Missouri as a slave State would open in the future this vast area of terri- tory to the rapacious grasp of the Southern slave-owners. The members of Congress from that portion of the country were persistent in their demands for the retention of slavery in the territory, for the reason that by the new distribution of Representatives in accordance with the census of 1820, the North would increase her representation; therefore to equalize the balance of power, it was necessary that as many new States as possible should be made slave-holding States.
Every device was resorted to by those favoring slave exten- sion. The admission of Maine as a State was placed as a rider on the bill for the admission of Missouri. This was strongly objected to by those interested in Maine: they claimed, and rightfully, that there was no justice in making her admission as a State contingent on that of another with
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which she had naturally no connection. All pending differ- ences were settled, however, by the passage of the Missouri Compromise, which after being passed to give slavery one extension, was repealed to give it another.
At the ninth Presidential election, party lines were entirely eliminated, James Monroe receiving all the votes for Presi- dent excepting one from New Hampshire. Connecticut's vote for Vice-President was cast for David D. Tompkins. The electoral college of the State consisted of Henry Sey- mour, Isaiah Loomis, Samuel Welles, William Cogswell, William Moseley, John Alsop, Ebenezer Brockway, S. W. Crawford, and Samuel H. Phillips.
At the close of the first year of Monroe's second admin- istration, it became evident that new political combinations were gradually forming in the country. Federalist princi- ples and temper had not died with the party; but the classes which had formed it were forced to decide on new issues. They had only voted with the Democrats from self-interest or apathy; they now reconstituted themselves as a party to strengthen and nationalize the Union by a great system of internal improvements, protection to home industries, and the like. The National Republicans and the Whigs were only Federalists rebaptized.
There were no less than six prominent candidates for the succession to Monroe. New England presented the most Dem- ocratic of Federalists, John Quincy Adams, who had upheld the Embargo as at least showing some spirit of resentment for insult, and supported the war of 1812. Andrew Jack- son, partly owing to his triumph at New Orleans, was the idol of Democracy, especially in the new West, though his candidacy was ridiculed by the politicians. Henry Clay's passion for compromise, which had brought him national
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fame, made him the natural spokesman of the Border States. The other candidates, William H. Crawford of Georgia, William Lowndes (who died in 1822), and John C. Cal- houn of South Carolina, represented sectional rather than party preferences, though Calhoun won his section by representing the extremists of the whole South. Adams, as the ablest and most highly trained professional pub- lic man in the country, and heir of the best tradi- tions of Nationalism, and Clay, by reason of his course in the Missouri Compromise, received the support of those who had been Federalists in the North and Border States respec- tively. The Presidential campaign of 1824 was carried on with activity during the summer and autumn, though the feeling prevailed that there would be no choice by the peo- ple, and consequently the election would devolve upon the House of Representatives.
A new dividing line was introduced into politics in Con- necticut during this campaign, called the "strict-construction- ist" and "loose-constructionist." To the first belonged the former members of the Anti-Federalist party, and their chil- dren and pupils. They were advocates of a strict construc- tion of the provisions of the Constitution of the United States, with special reference to the rights of individual States, of which they were special champions. Their oppo- nents, who were for the most part originally Federalists, or of Federalist families, were in favor of the supremacy of the nation's rights, making each unit subservient and secondary to the United States sovereignty.
Connecticut, still strongly imbued with the Federalist spirit, and also having a natural desire to support the New England candidate, authorized her electoral college-con- sisting of Calvin Willey, David Keys, Oliver Wolcott, John
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Swathel, Rufus Hitchcock, Lemuel White, David Hill, and Moses Warren-to cast their votes for John Quincy Adams for President, and Andrew Jackson for Vice-President. She was the only State in the Union to give her entire vote for the latter for that office. Jackson also received one vote from Maryland, one from New Hampshire, and three from Mis- souri.
On the assembling of Congress, there being no choice by the people for President, John Quincy Adams was elected by a vote of the States in the House of Representatives.
The tariff question, which was of vital interest to Connec- ticut, was to agitate the country, and to be the rock of conten- tion on which the Democratic-Republican party was to split and form antagonistic combinations. The South, awakening to the fact that cotton was not yet the king product of the country; also realizing that with the rapid settlement of the Western States, which advocated free labor, her legislative influence in Congress was diminishing,-sought an alliance with the commercial and mercantile interests of the East to oppose protection. It had grasped the fact that slavery pre- vented the growth of manufactures in the South, and would enhance the value of European and Northern products.
The home of protection was in the Middle States, although it also had the support of the West. The latter was fast developing into an agricultural country, which demanded not only protection for her wool and other raw materials, but also for the cereals raised for bread-stuffs. New England was divided on the question, deeming it detrimental to her importing and shipping. Connecticut where manufacturing predominated, as early as 1820 gave evidence of future increasing values, was firmly in favor of protection. The distinctive protection policy is generally conceded to have:
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begun with the act of 1816, but it rather belongs to the acts that preceded than to those passed at later dates. The panic of 1819 caused the principles of protection to be backed by a stronger popular feeling than hitherto. The cause of this was the great collapse in land and agricultural products ; owing to the close of the Napoleonic era, the foreign markets were no longer purchasers, while the manufacturing indus- tries were still in the early stages of their growth.
The first step taken in this new movementwas in 1820, when an attempt to increase duties on importations was defeated by a single vote in the Senate; while bills for increased duties were regularly presented during the next two years, they were not pressed, as the gradual disappearance of the indus- trial and commercial depression tended to let the matter lie dormant.
On the eve of the Presidential election in 1824, this matter was again agitated, causing the passage of the tariff bill of that year. This was the first and most direct fruit of the early protective movement. The bill was not a party measure; it was carried mainly by votes of the Western and Middle States, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Important changes were made; by laying increased duties on products raised in agricultural districts; while there was an ad valorem duty on cotton goods. The minimum valuation was twenty-five cents a yard, which by the introduction of machinery prohibited foreign importations, thereby greatly enhancing the profits for Connecticut manufacturers of cotton fabrics. The com- mittee that framed the bill tried to insert a minimum valua- tion on woolen fabrics, of eighty cents a yard, but their recommendation was defeated by a scant majority of three.
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