USA > Connecticut > Connecticut in transition: 1775-1818 > Part 16
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73 Statutes, pp. 251-253.
74 Errors were notoriously frequent, votes of whole towns being thrown out on a technicality. Moderators even refused to put the Republican list, and through their power, it was charged, Republican towns went Federalist. Mercury, Sept. 27, Oct. 25, Nov. 1, 1804; Oct. 10, 1805; May 25, 1809; Courant, June 4, 1806; May 20, 1807. These are but typical examples.
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vote. Connecticut, it was said, had no overgrown estates or landlords ambitious to lead. In part this was true, but the economic development of the state resulted in a fairly wealthy class which, allied with the social and religious order, could exert a pressure which many freemen could not overlook. Republican newspapers ridiculed the so-called freedom of election as guaranteed by an act of the aristocratic Council.
Judge Baldwin justly characterized the act as an undermining of the venerable system of election, "in vain hope to uphold the declining fortunes of the Federalist party." 75 It was a piece of sharp practice im- possible to defend, and doomed to defeat its own end by arousing the minority bitterly to fight on to victory. It lent color to all charges of unfairness in elections. It assured the country that the majority had the will and the power to perpetuate themselves. The most ardent Federalist supporter of church and state could justify the measure only by the pernicious theory that a good end justifies a bad means.
Colonel Ephraim Kirby proposed an election bill in the fall session of 1802 which was defeated by 120 to 59 votes. Yet only a written bal- lot was asked, which would mean deliberation, secrecy, and more celer- ity.76 Another attempt to purify the election system was made by the Republicans in the spring of 1808. They were quoted on the necessity of secrecy in elections, and gave the Federalist arguments against vicious innovation with the query why the election law of the fathers had been changed.77 Again in the spring of 1817 another attempt at repeal was made, only to be followed by success in the next session.78
Suffrage qualifications were defined by statutes and hence subject to legislative change at any session.79 Any man of twenty-one years could be made a voter if he was possessed of "a free-hold estate to the value of seven dollars per annum, or one hundred and thirty-four dollars per- sonal estate in the general list ... or ... of estates by law excused from putting into the list; and [was] of a quiet and peaceable behavior and civil conversation." The property qualifications were simply the old forty-shilling freehold and forty-pound personal clauses translated into the new monetary system. No attempt was made, as in Rhode Island,
75 Bishop, Oration (1804), pp. 13-15.
76 National Intelligencer and Pittsfield Sun, articles quoted in Mercury, Nov. II, 22, Dec. 23, 1802.
77 Mercury, June 9, 1808.
78 Public Laws, p. 297; Courant, Nov. 4, 1817.
79 Statutes, pp. 185, 357, 650; Swift, System of the Laws, I, 69; Dwight, Travels, I, 223; Bronson in New Haven Hist. Soc., Papers, I, 50; Mckinley, Suffrage, p. 414.
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to adapt the property qualification to the fluctuating value of money. Hence the qualifications became more liberal and the number of poten- tial voters larger, as real and personal property increased in value. The Federalist majority by supplementary acts further restricted the num- ber of freemen and made admission more difficult. In 1813 it was en- acted that the real estate must be free of mortgage, and the one hundred and thirty-four dollars on the list must be exclusive of the sixty-dollar poll or assessments. A year later it was provided that a freeman must be a free, white male. Another law punished with a heavy fine illegal vot- ing or dishonesty in qualifying for a freeman.80
Suffrage was a gift, not a right. Every man had to be approved be- fore he was made a voter, otherwise he was legally only an inhabitant. Before any meeting of freemen the selectmen sat to consider the peti- tions of potential freemen. On certification by a majority of the select- men, the candidate was enrolled by the town clerk in open freemen's meeting, and took the oath from an assistant or justice.81 As the select- men were elected by the voters of the town, they were apt to be under Republican influence, if that party had a majority in the town. Hence the Federalists sought to take this power out of the hands of elective officers.
In 1801 the law was so revised that a man must have the written ap- proval of a majority of the civil authorities and selectmen.82 This virtu- ally placed the making of freemen in the hands of the Federalist justices. As a precaution, it was provided that the deed of the freehold must be executed and registered four months before the new voter could be approved. A freeman known to be "walking scandalously" or guilty of a scandalous offense could be disfranchised by the superior court. Here again a Federalist justice proved a valuable Paul Pry. Swift believed that a man would not be stricken from the list, though reduced in property. Republicans, however, disagreed, citing cases where men had been dis- franchised on the depreciation of their wealth.83 There was nothing to prevent the suffrage from falling a prey to party intrigue. Indeed the whole arrangement benefited the party in power; and the law could be
80 Public Laws, pp. 119, 162, 209. In 1810 there were 6,453 blacks and in 1820, 7,844.
81 Statutes, p. 357; Dwight, Travels, I, 223; Conn. State Records, I, 226.
82 Statutes, p. 358; Public Laws, p. 256.
83 System of the Laws, I, 69. For a case of a veteran of the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars, admitted as a freeman in 1769 but disfranchised under the new law, see Mercury, Apr. 3, 1806.
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so administered as to practically disfranchise prospective freemen of Republican tendencies. In the suffrage abuses, Republicans found an- other argument for a written constitution.
Extension of the suffrage became a chief plank in Connecticut Re- publicanism and made an appealing campaign cry. That men were vitally desirous of the vote is not half as certain as the determination of Re- publican leaders to impress upon them that with the suffrage they could right their wrongs. Men were sure to be interested in the party which so cherished their welfare. Federalists, thrown on the defensive, were driven to undemocratic arguments against an open suffrage. The poli- ticians struck a popular idea; they had read the people's mind.
The right of suffrage as the best privilege of man became the usual toast at Republican celebrations.84 On such occasions the old theme of no taxation without representation again commanded attention. All men were taxed; but all men did not vote. Rhetorical questions were propounded as to the success of a revolution which left many inhabitants not citizens, but "white slaves." On all occasions the "poor porpoises," as Noah Webster was accused of calling the non-freemen citizens,85 were told that they were liable to military service. They had little to defend, but in case of war would be drafted to die for their masters. Their privilege was to fight, to pay taxes, but never to select their rulers. There were even Revolutionary veterans without the vote. Of the 48,000 men in the state in 1815, about twenty thousand, it was argued, were in the militia, while the rest were in the excepted classes. Yet it was these latter classes which made up the bulk of the freemen and owned five-sixths of the property.86 The laboring man and the son of the small farmer and mechanic were not voters, yet were forced to serve
84 See, for instance, accounts of Fourth of July celebrations in Mercury, July 21, 1803; July 14, 19, 1804.
85 Noah Webster, attacking the suffrage bill in the Assembly (1802), told the following story: "While Commodore Truxton and his crew lay at Philadelphia, the crew were all invited up to Freemen's Meeting, their votes were handed them, and they voted according to the wishes of a party. Not long afterward, when they were returning up the Delaware from a cruise, they saw a school of Porpoises making toward Philadelphia. One of them asked the other, where are those Por- poises going; why, damn it, replied the other, to a freemen's meeting to vote vote for Mercury, Dec. 2, 1802. Republicans immediately accepted the term, which, it was predicted, would be as honorable as sans-culottes. Mercury, Feb. 3, 1803.
86 Mercury, Jan. 24, 1815.
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in the militia. Republicans held no brief for universal suffrage, but for all men who served in the militia or paid taxes. A property qualifica- tion 87 they decried, as unmoral and dangerous, for through it the brave yeomanry of the state were deprived of their only weapon against wealth's oppression. Col. Kirby argued with moderation in the Assembly of 1802, in favor of a bill extending the suffrage to all men of certified peaceful and moral character. There could be no danger, for there was no intention to include dissolute persons or the few aliens within the state. He felt that the majority of freeholders would not object to this simple justice to their neighbors, and that the justices and selectmen would exercise sufficient care. Another Republican member suggested that a property qualification was not deemed necessary for witnesses in the law courts, where the danger of bribery was far greater. Their arguments were vain, as they were to be taught by another defeat in 1804.88 Under the system in force even a man of means might be dis- franchised, if all his wealth was invested in trade or business rather than in land, houses, or listed personal property. This injustice loomed larger as more men turned from agriculture to business.89 It was urged that the property basis did not prevent corruption, for there were "our man- ufactured voters." Wealthy men could present their sons with seven dollars a year in land, thus gaining freemen's rights for them. Again, favoritism was charged, in that a Yale diploma gave the professional man a vote.90 Republicans made capital of every argument, some of them strikingly modern arguments in their socialistic leanings.91
Federalist leaders were aroused to the defense of the property quali- fication, well aware that its removal would mean a Republican victory. Swift in 1795 was inclined to question if character would not be a bet- ter safeguard against corruption than the possession of property, yet he saw no hardship because of the small amount of property required.92
87 Mercury, Aug. 25, 1808.
88 Ibid., Dec. 2, 1802; May 31, June 7, 1804.
89 An industrious artisan might be better off than a freeman farmer. It was said men with from $1,000 to $4,000 were disfranchised. Mercury, Jan. 9, 1816.
90 Mercury, Apr. 14, 1803; July 24, 1806.
91 "The great alarm about this [universal suffrage] is, lest the poor should gain the advantage of the rich; but all the laws in the world were never able to give the poor one-tenth of their rights." Mercury, Jan. 16, 1806. "Aristocracies dare not rely for support on the plough and the hammer. Federalists have a radical con- tempt for stone cutters and saddlers." Mercury, Jan. 9, 1806.
92 System of the Laws, I, 69.
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By 1801 these Federalist doubts had disappeared. Noah Webster in 1802 argued against moral qualifications as the sole standard, recalling the fact that Rome fell only when she extended her suffrage.93 He indignantly denied that sovereignty was derived from the people, that officers were servants of the people, or that legislators were responsible to their con- stituents. These were fallacies intended to degrade the magistracy, bring law and government into contempt, and stimulate factious discontent. He grieved that some distinction was not possible, in English as in Latin, between populus and plebs. He continued:
Equally absurd is the doctrine that the universal enjoyment of the right of suffrage, is the best security for free elections and a pure administration. The reverse is proved by all experience to be the fact; that a liberal extension of the right of suffrage accelerates the growth of corruption, by multiplying the number of corruptible electors, and reducing the price of venal suffrages.
He agreed that all men should have equal protection before the law, whether they possessed a single cow or a thousand acres, but not equal power to make that law. Every man is not worthy of a magistracy or college professorship, nor is every man capable of sharing in govern- ment through the exercise of the suffrage. It would be an injustice and a danger to allow the class who hold but a twentieth of the wealth to rule. This was his viewpoint:
The very principle of admitting everybody to the right of suffrage, prostrates the wealth of individuals to the rapaciousness of a merciless gang, who have nothing to lose and will delight in plundering their neighbors.94
David Daggett in a pamphlet, Count the Cost, decried the clamor for the vote, arguing that governmental stability meant nothing to the penniless man who exhausted his earnings in the grog shop, "to the mere bird of passage," or the merchant whose wealth was in movable goods. But to the landed man stability was everything. Unlike Webster, he did not demand a plural vote as the alternative if every man was given one vote.
George W. Stanley contended that property demanded more pro- tection than life or liberty, which were safe under ordinary circum- stances.95 As nine-tenths of the work of Legislature and courts con-
93 Mercury (debates), Dec. 2, 1802; Oration, Fourth of July, 1802, especially PP. 17-20.
94 Mercury, Apr. 28, 1803.
95 Oration, Aug. 8, 1805, pp. 12 ff.
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sisted of protecting property, the making of laws should be left to property owners. Universal suffrage would give an electorate controlled by demagogues. It would dethrone the middle class which, according to the Connecticut Courant, could alone check the ambition of the upper class and the licentiousness of the populace. Such were the Federalist views on the suffrage question.
CHAPTER VI
Rise of the Democratic-Republican Party
Con JONNECTICUT'S opposition party was of late birth. There had been a loyalist minority during the Revolution, and afterward a strong faction which favored a weakly centralized government and sympa- thized with the Shays insurrection. The Federalists controlled the Leg- islature. Oliver Ellsworth, Roger Sherman, and William Samuel John- son, three of the ablest men in the state, were sent to the Federal Convention.1 When the constitution was submitted for ratification, there was at no time a dangerous opposition. Defended by the three framers, as well as by Gov. Huntington, David Daggett, Jeremiah Wadsworth, Pierrepont Edwards, Joel Barlow, Noah Webster, Richard Law, and most of the clergy, the constitution was easily ratified by 128 to 40 votes. Yet among the opposition were several respectable patriot officers under the leadership of Gen. James Wadsworth. William Wil- liams, the senior councilor, at first an opponent because the instrument had no religious test, finally gave a half-hearted support. The victory won, the factions were merged, for they were not at odds over ques- tions of local import. Nor did the Anti-Federalists completely lose po- litical prestige.
Anti-Federalism cannot be described as the forerunner of Republi- canism. Some of the Anti-Federalists continued to be stout supporters of the Standing Order, while, as the above names indicate, some of the strongest supporters of the constitution were to lead the Jeffersonian party. As parties there was no binding link between them.
Divergent views upon foreign affairs provided the issue, though a cleavage was bound to come. All Connecticut supported the French Revolution while it retained Anglo-Saxon characteristics of modera-
1 Bernard Steiner, Connecticut's Ratification of the Federal Constitution, gives a good discussion of this subject.
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tion, but only radicals could acquiesce in its later phases. This extreme element were dubbed Jacobins; and their clubs, few indeed in Connect- icut, were with horror believed to be of French model. They proudly viewed the career of Joel Barlow, an active Girondist and an ardent revolutionist, and approved of the Anti-Federalist Abraham Bishop, who, like his master Jefferson, was an interested spectator.2 This per- sonal equation made the connection between local and French Jacobins seem to their neighbors dangerously close. Reaction made of others "Anglo-men," who saw no evil in the kings of the coalition. They were blamed for so soon forgetting the villainies of George III. As both wings became more moderate, the vast majority were able to join one side or the other. Finally the foreign bias gave way to differences of opinion on local and national policies, thereby assuring the permanence of the factions.3
During the decade 1790-1800, there was practically no political life in the modern sense.4 Elections were not contested. The only reasons for a scattering vote on the nominations of governor, lieutenant gov- ernor, assistants, and Congressmen or local officers were personal. Even then the votes were sufficiently concentrated on certain tried profes- sional leaders as hardly to warrant the description of being scattered. The poll was exceedingly small, for there was no interest which would bring out the electorate. Hardly two per cent of the population voted.5 The addresses of the governor to the Legislature were concerned with suggestions as to desirable local legislation. Men who later became the most bitter political enemies were during these years acting harmoni- ously as brother officers in the Cincinnati and Masonic lodges.
As late as 1796 Gideon Granger and Ephraim Kirby as independent candidates for the assistants' nomination, but probably supported by the
2 Stiles, Diary, II, 339; Daggett, Three Letters (1800), pp. 5-6. Barlow, in 1791- 1792, wrote Advice to Privileged Orders and The Conspiracy of Kings. He also translated C. F. Volney, Ruins or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires.
3 Cf. sketch of Connecticut politics in Mercury, Aug. 28, Sept. 14, 1800.
4 In March, 1794, "Democracy, an Epic Poem" was published in the Courant, and in August, 1795, "The Echo"-both picturing the frightfulness of mob rule. Bishop prefaced his "1800" oration with a complaint of the bastings which Re- publicans got, and Daggett in turn accused him of a ten-years hostility to govern- ment and clergy. Webster, in 1800, described the British and Jacobin factions and encouraged Oliver Wolcott to support Adams, whom he was opposing. Ford, Webster, I, 504-506. Cf. W. A. Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy in New England, pp. 2 ff.
5 See Note at end of this chapter.
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Jacobin element, could poll only a few hundred votes. Even so, Gov- ernor Wolcott in 1797 took occasion to deprecate the efforts of French partisans and agents to cause American intervention.6 Thomas Day, the state treasurer, delivered in the following year a Fourth of July oration on "Party Spirit," in which he arraigned men like Jefferson who would make American interests subservient to those of France by stirring up party rancor. Noah Webster, the New Haven orator, on the same day exhorted his fellow citizens with a true Federalist ring: "Never ... let us exchange our civil and religious institutions for the wild theories of crazy projectors; or the sober, industrious moral habits of our country, for experiments in atheism and lawless democracy. Experience is a safe pilot; but experiment is a dangerous ocean, full of rocks and shoals." 7 He then asked: Why let foreign politics divide us and make us party men?
In 1799 an occasional town was said to be controlled by the local Jacobin Club, which would send representatives to the Assembly. In all about fifteen or sixteen "Jacobins" were counted.8 Senator Uriah Tracy wrote from Litchfield, April 8, 1799:
Kirby is, to the disgrace of this town again chosen deputy, but he has no cause of triumph. . . . All the solid, respectable part of the town, without any preconcern or intrigue, voted against him, and the third time going round he just obtained, by the aid of every tag-rag who could be mustered, and a whole winter of intrigue and very expensive intrigue too. . .. His triumph is short lived, for we shall soon show the ugly whelp his face in the glass. Con- necticut is substantially right and so is Litchfield.9
In the Assembly the silence of the "Jacobins" was noted, as was their factious support of the Anglican petition. Their highest vote, given to General Hart for assistant, amounted to 1,000.10 The American Mer-
6 Courant, May 15, 1797. Of Wolcott, Azel Backus said in his funeral sermon: "That he never stooped to court the suffrage of any man is a beauty not a blemish of his character. He blushed at the thought of being a man of the People in the modern sense." P. 19.
7 P. 15. Webster wrote (May 12, 1798) to Pickering describing the election: "There never was so full an election. The citizens .. . have no wish to be involved in political disputes ... the usual vote for governor and council has risen from 3,000 to 7,000. . . . The number of votes mustered by the clubs will not rise above 590." Pickering Mss., XXII, 156, from Robinson, Jefferson Democracy, p. 18 n. See also Robbins, Diary, I, 54.
8 Courant, Feb. 25, Apr. 22, June 3, 1799.
9 Gibbs, Administrations of Washington and Adams, II, 232.
10 Courant, Oct. 28, 1799.
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cury at Hartford and the New London Bee became the organs of the emerging opposition party. A press was what was needed, as Matthew Lyon recognized when he threatened to revolutionize the state by estab- lishing a Republican paper similar to his Vermont organ.11 Yet in 1799 Federalist fears were slight, despite Governor Trumbull's suggestion to the Legislature in submitting the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, that there were appearances of "unreasonable jealousy" or "unguarded passion." 12
In 1800 the Republicans formally organized for the Jeffersonian campaign, in a meeting called at the home of Pierrepont Edwards of New Haven.13 Edwards was a federal district judge and probably the leading lawyer in his vicinity. A brother of Jonathan Edwards, Jr., long pastor of North Church, New Haven, an uncle of President Dwight and of that notorious Republican Aaron Burr, related to Tapping Reeve by marriage, he was a representative of the state aristocracy. His position was of value to the nascent party in a community bound by local family prestige. Burr probably lent his organizing ability, for later he made an electioneering tour into the state. Among the leaders in- terested were General William Hart, Colonel Ephraim Kirby, Alex- ander Wolcott, Gideon Granger, Abraham Bishop, and Asa Spalding.
Abraham Bishop inaugurated the partisan struggle with his Com- mencement Address on "The Extent and Power of Political Delusions." It will suffice to remark here that, through its cynical attack on the Standing Order, the church, the clergy, and the college, it gave the tone of bitterness characterizing the generation-long campaign of the op- position party. Bishop's attack recoiled on himself. He was described as an atheistical Jacobin, seeking to arouse the latent passions of class and sectarian hatred, in an endeavor to overturn religion and law. He was the unworthy son of a fine family whose glory was the well-being of the Christian commonwealth. He was embroiling families and neigh- borhoods in factious struggles, hitherto unknown in the state. His repu- tation was torn to shreds.
The Republican principles were not yet clearly enunciated. Aside from the religious questions, which gave Republicanism an anticlerical character, the issues were those of the national Jeffersonian party. Re-
11 New Haven Hist. Soc., Papers, VI, 291; Courant, Dec. 1, 1800.
12 Courant, May 13, 20, June 3, 1799. There is some suggestive material in Tutor Zechariah Lewis, Oration, July 4, 1799.
13 Greene, Religious Liberty, pp. 416-418, 474; Daggett, Essay (1803), p. 19.
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publicans demanded more democracy in opposition to the Anglo-men, whom they described as desirous of waging war upon France in sup- port of old-world aristocracies and their beloved English constitution. If the Federalists arrogated to themselves the title of "friends of religion and order," Republicans would be known as the successors of the pa- triots, "friends of liberty and the constitution." They called for the districting of the state, in order that the membership in Congress be representative. Presidential electors, made up of the governor, lieu- tenant governor, and the five judges of the superior court, were de- scribed as hostile to the spirit of free government.
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