USA > Connecticut > Connecticut in transition: 1775-1818 > Part 23
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45 Propagation of Federalism rather than the Gospel was said to be their ob- ject. Mercury, July 2, 1801; Apr. 10, 1806. The Vermont Gazette reported: "The wolves in sheeps' clothing thrust forth by his holiness, Pope Dwight ... get few hearts and less thanks in Vermont." "The leaders of Democracy have for a long time railed at our rulers, our clergy, & our college, but we did not suppose that
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denced by every one of them. The Bible Society and Ministers' Annu- ity Society met annually at Hartford on Election Day. As the clergy were there, it proved an excellent opportunity to transact religious as well as civil business. The leaders in these societies were the ruling men of the state. Their lay trustees were Federalist bosses. No Republican appeared on their boards, hence Republicans must logically have been irreligious. Calvin Chapin and Samuel Goodrich were leading members of the correspondence committee of the Bible Society, of which John Cotton Smith, General Jedidiah Huntington, Henry Hudson of the Courant, Daniel Wadsworth, Samuel Pitkin, Chauncey Goodrich, Theo- dore Dwight and John Davenport were among the lay directors. The Domestic Missionary Society, besides clergymen like Lyman Beecher, had as trustees and officers Daniel Wadsworth, Timothy Dwight, Jedi- diah Huntington, Henry Hudson, Samuel Pitkin, Enoch Perkins, An- drew Kingsbury, Jonathan Brace and Aaron Austin. The Connecticut branch of the New England Tract Society had a corresponding com- mittee composed of Jedidiah Huntington, John Treadwell and Calvin Chapin. The Moral Society was under a chosen few: John Treadwell, ex-president; Simeon Baldwin, president; Tapping Reeve, Roger Sher- man, Thomas Day, General Jedidiah Huntington, Speaker Sylvanus Backus, William Perkins, John Caldwell, and Ezra Brainerd, leaders.46
A glance at these names is enough. They represented Connecticut's patricians, governors, representatives, councilors, and commercial lead- ers. Associated with them were powerful clergymen. While they worked together, as they did until Treadwell's fall, the party of church and state was supreme. A more complete interlocking of leaders and families would be hard to picture. This the Republicans recognized, and struggled against, long but successfully. Such an alignment could not last for ever.
Up to 1815 one might write with a greater degree of truth than epigrams generally bear, that Connecticut's preachers were politicians and her politicians preachers. With the failure of the Hartford Conven-
they would venture publicly to denounce an institution whose object it is to sup- press vice and immorality, or a society whose only object it is, without regard to sect, or nation, to place the pure work of truth and light into every hand within reach. Yet such is the deadly hostility of these professed friends of toleration to the religion of their fathers that they cannot even tolerate a society who would endeavor to discountenance vice and immorality much less an institution which would disseminate the mild principles of the Gospel of peace; and these seem to be the principal benefits they expect will result from a change of rulers in Connecti- cut." Courant, Mar. 19, 1816.
46 Lists in Almanack and Register.
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tion, which Dr. Strong of Hartford opened with prayer, and the wan- ning hopes of Federalism, they became more careful not to antagonize the nationalist party destined sooner or later to rule the state.47
Aside from its perfect organization, the Federalist party had an im- mense advantage in its eminent respectability. This indeed offered a con- trast to the ill repute of the opposition party. In characterizing Republi- canism as immoral, irreligious, and lowly, they took the shrewdest way of hindering its success among a people so bound by convention. Had the Republican party been considered respectable, there is reason to believe that the Episcopalians would not have hesitated in joining much earlier. Nor would the lukewarm, non-covenanted member of a Con- gregational society have been so timorous in adhering to the reform party.
The charge that irreligious men were Republicans was well founded. That all Republicans were opposed to religion in their hostility to an establishment was false.48 All dissenters, save Episcopalians, could be described as Republicans by 1803. Hence Republicanism was regarded as political dissent. Half-truths fired at high velocity had their effect. For the tenets of individual members rather than for its principles, the organization was held responsible. Calvinists were religious men who followed in the steps of their fathers. Hence Federalists who were largely Calvinists were "godly men, of sober, solid, and steady habits." In their number were to be found practically every Congregational minister, nearly every lawyer of repute, most physicians, every member of the Yale faculty, and all leaders in business. Republicanism appealed only to the laboring element, the lower or lower-middle classes, as they would be termed in the semi-English social life of the time. Its members might or might not be unsteady men; but they were poor and unortho- dox. Dissent is seldom respectable, and poverty and labor were only theoretically honorable.
Judge Church well described the orthodox attitude toward the Democratic party:
The real truth was as I know from my own observation that the Republi- can party in this State, from the election of Mr. Jefferson to the Revolution of 1817, was treated as a degraded party and this extended to all individuals
47 Their connection with the Hartford Convention cast a deep cloud over the Congregational clergy. A day of prayer had been set aside for the success of the convention. Courant, Dec. 20, 1814. Baptists denied tolling their bell on that day. Ibid., Nov. 22, 1814.
48 See Note at end of this chapter.
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of the party however worthy or respectable in fact, as the Saxons were treated and considered by the Normans. As the Irish were treated by the English Government. This was seen and felt by many good men among the federalists and created a sympathy bye and bye which operated with other causes.49
Republican politicians, with exceptions, were men of little standing in the community. They were described, and not without some tinge of justice, as lawyers of uncertain practice and dubious morality; as holders of federal patronage; as "mushroom candidates" and self-seek- ing demagogues who were deluding the ignorant vote. They were not of the elect, old ruling families, but new men rising up from the people under improving opportunities. This too was at first disadvan- tageous to the party, because of the hereditary, bred-in-the-bone British feeling that leaders must be of a class apart and above the rank and file. Like Cromwell's Puritan Ironsides, they desired to be led only by gentlemen. Republican leaders were regarded as anything but gentle- men, until national success and the Episcopalian adhesion forced the admission. The stigma removed, their success was assured. Respecta- bility could no longer be regarded as Federalist.
Some of the typical descriptions of Republicans are worthy of note. Bishop cynically depicted them as "poor ragged democrats" who should pray forgiveness from "ye well-fed, well-dressed, chariot-lolling, cau- cus-keeping, levee-revelling federalists." 50 Lyman Beecher observed that "democracy as it rose, included nearly all the minor sects, besides the Sabbath-breakers, rum-selling, tippling folk, infidels, and ruff-scuff generally, and made a deadly set at us of the Standing Order." Jonathan Bird, in his sermon, drew upon St. Paul's epistle to Timothy in order, by inference, to picture his Republican fellow-citizens as selfish men, boasters, proud blasphemers, disobedient to parents, incontinent men, and truce breakers.51 Democracy and debasement of manners were pleasantly linked together. Like a whirlwind, spinning on its little end and drawing all leaves, chaff, rotten wood and light trumpery was Ja- cobinical democracy. The Tammany tribes could only be paralleled with the Terrorists at their worst. One writer asked: "Are Connecticut Democrats better, or more virtuous than those in New York? If they are, the Lord have mercy on New York." On learning that Virginia
49 Church Ms.
50 Bishop, Oration (1800), pp. 45-46.
51 Discourse, Apr. 11, 1803, especially p. 13.
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had retired five or six Republican Congressmen, the editor declared: "Ignorance and vice are losing ground." 52 Ames spoke for every parti- san Federalist when he wrote to Thomas Dwight, saying: "Democracy is a troubled spirit, fated never to rest, and whose dreams, if it sleeps, present only visions of hell." 53 Robbins could write: "This town is very little infested with Democrats." 54 Disparaging remarks, personali- ties, insulting inferences were the order of the day.55 It is hard to ac- count for the rancor of the attacks on the part of sober, conservative men, even though the attitude of the time toward party as a faction is appreciated. Nor is it possible to believe leader or follower entirely honest. Both were carried away by a partisan zeal which saw any course justified in striking down evil.
NOTE
REPUBLICAN HOSTILITY TO THE CLERGY
Anticlericalism became a chief Republican plank. Every party organ echoed it, but none so loudly as the Mercury whose editor was forced to pay a $1,000 libel judgment to Rev. Dan Huntington. See Jan. 7, 1808; Feb. 7, 1814. Republican papers outside the state like the Watch Tower, Cobbett's Register, the Baltimore Sun, vied with the Connecticut papers in heaping abuse on the ministers of the Standing Order. There is especially valuable material in Morse, Federalist Party, pp. 116-139, 220, and in Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy, pp. 129 ff.
There is no better way of arriving at the Republican attitude than by noticing a few characteristic toasts given at their celebrations: "The virtuous clergy of all Christian denominations"; "The Clergy-May they be taught to rely on the Olive Branch of the Cross; not on the Sword of the Crescent"; "Those who preach for the flock, not for the fleece"; "Our brethren in Tripoli and Connecticut-May the former be freed from Pirates and the latter from Priest-craft"; "The Clergy of all Denominations-the Bible their constitution, their politics religion"; "Give the people more Bibles, and let them buy their own pamphlets"; "The Pulpit for the priest not for the politician." Mercury, July 9, 1801; July 15, 22, 1802; July 25, Sept. 5, 1805; July 30, 1807; Mar. 16, 1809.
52 Courant, Apr. 1, 1807; Nov. 14, 1810; May 15, 1811.
53 Fisher Ames, I, 337.
54 Diary, I, 141.
55 A stanza from Theodore Dwight's hymn "Ye ragged throng of Democrats" expresses the depths to which prime Federalists would descend.
"Behold a motley crew Comes crowding o'er the green
Of every shape and hue Complexion, form and mien, With a deaf'ning noise, Drunkards and whores And rogues in scores They all rejoice."
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Republicans invariably denied the charge of atheism while boasting their hatred of an establishment. The following are typical toasts expressive of this atti- tude: "Religion-May the noble institution never be debased to the vile purpose of enslaving mankind"; "Genuine Christianity-May its ministers remember that their kingdom is not of this world"; "Religion-We love it in its purity, but not as an engine of political delusion"; "Federal Religion and Peter Pindar's Razors-All cheap, made to sell"; "Religion-That which inculcates virtue and morality; not the political religion, which inculcates sedition against the Government of our Country"; "Federal Religion-May it soon become Christian"; "Church and State united-The corner stone on which Satan builds his fabric of infidelity." With this they guaranteed the clergy their support as soon as religious men divorced them- selves from politics. Mercury, July 9, Aug. 27, 1801; July 4, 1802; July 4, Aug. 4, 1803; July 19, 1804; Mar. 4, 1805, etc.
CHAPTER VIII
Success of the Reform Party
A REPUBLICAN-EPISCOPALIAN meeting of citizens from vari- ous parts of the state was held at New Haven on February 21, 1816.1 The intention was to establish the party of opposition on a basis which would conciliate the various factions, and bridge over denominational intolerance. Elijah Boardman withdrew his name in favor of Oliver Wolcott and Jonathan Ingersoll, who were unanimously selected to run respectively for governor and lieutenant governor. The ticket soon was labeled the American Ticket or the American Toleration and Reform Ticket.2 "American" in this instance signified no nativist bigotry, but was used to describe the national spirit of the party.
The choice of Oliver Wolcott was a surprise. Yet it was proof that Republicanism had fused into the broader American party. As the son and grandson of a governor, and brother-in-law of Chauncey Good- rich, he represented the "best blood" of the state. After graduating from Yale in 1778, he prepared for the bar at the Litchfield Law School. During the Revolution he served as a minute-man, but refused a conti- nental commission. A firm Federalist, friend of Washington, Jay, Ells- worth, Cabot and others high in that party, he was appointed Comp- troller of the Currency at the suggestion of Hamilton. While Secretary of the Treasury he was subjected to furious Republican attacks, even being charged with burning the Treasury Building to conceal his misap- propriation of the public moneys. A House committee of investigation reported their inability to obtain evidence. Democrats failed to credit Wolcott's defense pamphlet. The political charges were probably un- founded, for on returning from office in 1800 he was said to be poor.3
1 Mercury, Feb. 27; Hartford Times, Feb. 25; Courant, Apr. 2, 1816.
2 Mercury, Mar. 5; Courant, Mar. 26, 1816.
3 Mercury, Feb. 5, 25, 1801; Sept. 9, 1802; Aurora, Feb. 13, 1801; Kilbourne,
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Wolcott was believed to have refused the presidency of the United States Bank. John Adams, whose renomination he had opposed, named him Judge of the United States Circuit Court for Connecticut, Vermont and New York. On the repeal of the Judiciary Act, he engaged in a mercantile business in New York. In 1803 he became president of the new Merchants' Bank. In 1812 he put his whole capital into the newly established Bank of America, of which he was elected president. Two years later he resigned because of his political differences with the di- rectorate. His next venture was as an incorporator, with his brother Frederick,4 of the Wolcottville manufacturing concern. In 1815 he re- turned to make his home in Litchfield. From then until the time of his nomination for governor, he gave his whole attention to fostering manu- factures and agriculture.
His enthusiastic support of the war caused a breach with his former political associates,5 and won Republican praise. At the time of his nomi- nation, the American Mercury, once foremost among his detractors, lauded him as a man of honor and integrity whose whole career would bear the keenest scrutiny.6 In matters religious he was tolerant, for ex- perience had counteracted the effects of his early training. His ortho- doxy was dubious, happily so for his political hopes. As a manufacturer he appealed to the class whose capital was invested in industry. As a gentleman agriculturist he gained the farmers' good-will. He was a scholar of a poetic turn and a friend of Yale. Wolcott might be a po- litical apostate,7 yet he was moderately conservative. He was a compro- mise between the old order and the new; an ideal man to work out the state's transition.8
Judge Jonathan Ingersoll, a New Haven lawyer of lucrative prac-
Sketches, pp. 35-36. See Wolcott, "An Address to the People of the United States" (1802).
4 Graduate of Yale, 1786; judge of probate in Litchfield County; councilor, 1810-1819; then in state senate. Kilbourne, Sketches, pp. 132-135.
5 His support had been active, addressing war meetings and the like. Mercury, Aug. 23, 1814; Mar. 26, 1816.
6 Ibid., Mar. 19, July 9, 1816; Feb. 11, Mar. 25, 1817; New Haven Register, Feb. 11, 1817.
7 Courant, Apr. 2, 1816.
8 Additional biographical data may be found in Dexter, Biographical Sketches, IV, 82 ff .; Stokes, Memorials, II, 189 ff .; Kilbourne, Sketches, pp. 24 ff .; Norton, Governors, pp. 149-157; campaign sketches, Mercury, Mar. 26, 1816, and Courant, Mar. 18, Apr. 1, 1817; Fisher, Silliman, I, 197; Gibbs, Memoirs, I, II.
21 3
SUCCESS OF THE REFORM PARTY
tice, was a fortunate choice for second place.9 Not a word could be breathed against his character; Federalists did not even attempt it. They regarded him as one of themselves, who could not be endorsed lest it shatter the party organization. They pointed to his previous offices as evidence of their tolerance. However, his selection for assistant Stiles assigned to a combination of deists, sectaries and Episcopalians.10 Re- publicans claimed their vote had elected him over Griswold 11 to the supreme court. A prominent Episcopalian, senior trustee of the Bishop's Fund, he was expected to bring the dissatisfied Episcopalians into the reorganized party. Republicans charged the Federalists with opposition to him because of his creed, but the Courant editorially asserted that surely this could have no effect on the freemen's decision.12
Smith, by virtue of the steady habit of renomination, was again candidate for governor. In a coquettish way, the Courant half-guiltily offered for second place the name of Calvin Goddard. It was still hard for Federalists candidly to announce a ballot, because of the old steady pretense that only the freemen should nominate.13
Like Smith, Goddard was of the old school.14 A graduate of Dart- mouth, he studied law and practiced at Plainfield and Norwich. From 1795 to 1801 he represented Plainfield in the Legislature at least eight times. Twice he served as speaker. From 1801 to 1805 he served his dis- trict in Congress. Later he won a place on the Council, which he re- signed in 1815 to become a judge of the supreme court and superior court of errors. While an assistant he also acted as state's attorney for New London County and as mayor of Norwich. Membership in the Hartford Convention was his only vulnerable spot. However, he repre- sented the office-holding class, serving as a personal illustration of plural office-holding, the correlation of the departments and of a dependent judiciary. A wealthy manufacturer, he was regarded as one who could appeal to the shipping and manufacturing interests just as John Cotton Smith would to the agricultural.
Party principles were fairly definitely stated in 1816. They were
9 Biographical material in Trumbull, Historical Notes, pp. 37-38; campaign sketches in Mercury, Mar. 26, Apr. 2, 1816.
10 Diary, III, 546.
11 Mercury, Apr. 16, 1816.
12 Courant, Mar. 26, Apr. 2, 1816.
13 Ibid., Mar. 4, 1816.
14 Gilman, Norwich, pp. 116-117; Mercury, Mar. 12, 19, 26, 1816.
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essentially local rather than national. The issues were determined by the opposition with a view to draw together the various factions making up the Toleration party.15
Their cry was for ecclesiastical reform. The national administration did not need Connecticut's support, hence its merits were not stressed. Men were advised to look toward their own hearths and altars. Let them inquire if all denominations were equal; or if one denomination had not usurped control over others, questioned their ministry and oppressed their members. Were equal advantages given in the college and schools? Whose ministers preached election sermons and received all honors? Episcopal clergymen, and once even a Baptist elder, had been invited to pray with the Assembly, but never to preach. Are Episcopalians to be placated by merely making Good Friday the fast day? Are not the Charitable, Bible and Moral Societies, under the protection of Judge Reeve, John Cotton Smith, and Treadwell, political supporters of the establishment? The present laws "have a strong tendency to produce an unnatural and adulterous connection between church and state." Their change will be deplored, as in the case of the Ephesians, by those fi- nancially interested. Yet it was observed that this "would tend to re- move that puritanic cant in our conversation, and that hypocritical deceit in our conduct, which render us a bye-word in our neighboring states, and which are said to give us a resemblance to the soldiers of Oliver Cromwell . .. would destroy that violent struggle between the desire to appear pious and the desire to obtain a good bargain." 16
Tolerationists denied any hostility to religion or any desire to inter- fere with the rights of conscience. In their opposition to an establish- ment lay the chief difference between them and the Federalists, who made this a cardinal principle. The Toleration party did not allow the force of their position to be lost in statement, though on the whole it was a fair summary of actual grievances. Federalists could not refute the charge. Their denial was ineffective, for, in the words of the Con- necticut countryman, the majority " 'lowed there must be some fire where there was so much smoke."
The question of a new constitution was not overlooked. A list of governmental reforms was advocated. Among those stressed were: the
15 Mercury, Mar. 5, 12, 19, 26. Apr. 2, 1816.
16 Mercury, Mar. 5, 1816. The New Haven Register said: "If episcopacy was the road to power, the episcopal churches would be crowded." In Mercury, Mar. 26.
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method of electing councilors and congressmen; the non-representative character of presidential electors; an antiquated system of taxation which weighed heavily on the poor; militia exceptions; the expediency of creating money corporations; and especially the suffrage require- ments. The secrecy of the Legislature, with its debates unpublished save occasionally in abstract, was complained of because it made investiga- tion so difficult. This listing of reforms was found to be less terrifying to the freeman than a call for a convention. Charges of corruption were made. At the last moment, as an electioneering move, an account of Federalist maladministration to the extent of $50,000 was widely pub- lished.
The Federalist platform was negative. Federalist writers were busy with denials. They were chagrined at the defection of the Episcopalians, who were being deceived by Republican promises to combine with men irreligious at heart. They pointed to the extravagance of the na- tional administration-war, loans, taxes, debts and high salaries-asking if Democrats would conserve the school fund. All men were counseled to uphold the holy institutions of their fathers by voting the "Con- necticut Ticket." 17
The campaign was aggressively waged. The Tolerationists made use of town committees to enroll freemen and bring them to the polls. Rich and poor, townsmen and countrymen were asked to try "the Long Pull, the Strong Pull and the Pull Together" for Wolcott and Ingersoll and Toleration. Federalists depended upon their secret, invisible ma- chine of office-holders and settled ministers.
Smith was elected, with 11,386 votes as compared to Wolcott's 10,170. Goddard ran behind his party with only 8,635 votes to Ingersoll's 10,494.18 The Hartford Convention had proven his downfall, as it did that of other delegates in their states.19 Otherwise, Ingersoll's creed would have meant his defeat. Sundry circumstances afford an interest- ing study. Close scrutiny of the eight counties of Connecticut will demonstrate beyond peradventure that sectarian towns were Tolera- tionist strongholds. Fairfield County voted for Toleration by over two
17 Courant, Mar. 26, Apr. 2, 1816.
18 Ibid., May 14, 1816; Niles' Register, X, 128, 195.
19 "New York Federalists used as an argument for the election of Rufus King, that he was not a member of the Hartford Convention." Mercury, May 28, 1816. The Vermont American, in connection with the defeat of the "Conventionists," asked: "Where is the blustering, menacing, the insolent, and ultimately the creep- ing and recreant Hartford Convention?" In Mercury, May 21, 1816.
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to one. New London did about as well. Even in Litchfield the minority was a large one. New Haven and Middlesex, while giving Smith majori- ties, turned in favor of Ingersoll. Tolland was fairly evenly divided, while Windham remained Federalist by a heavy majority. The large towns and the shipping centers were with the new party. The Episco- palians, as Rev. Thomas Robbins feared, had indeed made "trouble in the state." 20
In the Legislature the Tolerationists made a good showing, electing about eighty-five representatives, seven more than the Republican maxi- mum.21 The city of Hartford for the first time failed to return Federal- ists. This proved true after it had been predicted that Jeffersonian De- mocracy, the legitimate daughter of French Democracy, might linger a few years, but-fatally sick-would follow its mother to an early grave. Federalists accounted for the result only in sectarian, factious bigotry and the slavish discipline of Democrats to their political hierarchy. Rev. Abel Flint begged the legislators to rise above party and consider them- selves God's agents to restrain the wicked and preserve unimpaired "those civil and religious institutions for which the state is so long and justly celebrated." 22
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