USA > Connecticut > Contributions to the ecclesiastical history of Connecticut > Part 18
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The sermon was printed and widely circulated, and was afterwards adopted as one of the permanent tracts of the Ameri- can Tract Society.
The condition of the country at that time was very alarming. In a note attached to Mr. Porter's sermon, it was stated offi- cially, that 7,641,207 gallons of foreign spirits and 2,604,207 gallons of wine, paying duties of more than three millions of dollars, were introduced annually to the United States ; that the number of distilleries was 30,000, and that the spirits consumed would load 100,000 wagons, which in compact order, would extend 1000 miles ; and that the annual expense of it all, if paid in silver, would exceed 600 tons of dollars.
In Connecticut and throughout New England at that period, the most unbounded license was given to the use of strong drink. It was considered a luxury, a necessity, and universal panacea. It was in all families and on all tables, in all plea- sures, recreations and labors ; a regular ration in the hay and harvest field, in all manufactories and ship yards, in fishing, boating and coasting, in the cold of winter and the heats of summer. It was the universal proffer of hospitality, freely given and partaken of at weddings and funerals ; at ministerial calls, at ordinations and associations, without the least sense of impropriety, provided it was not used to excess. It was too the universal panacea, good in heat and cold, in weariness and painfulness, when sick and when exposed to sickness; the cure of children in all their complaints, the support of the mother nursing her offspring, and of the old man going down to the grave. It helped the lawyer plead, the minister preach, and the physician go his rounds of duty. None could tell its worth, but all were made to feel its curse. Not a family was there in which there was not, at some time or other, one dead. Sottishness and drunkenness marked every village. The high- minded lawyer, the able physician, the eloquent preacher, were found filling the drunkard's grave. The church was cursed with a blight, if not as bad as in the days of Jeremiah, yet one that filled good men with alarm as they looked into the future. Such was the state of things when Ebenezer Porter, then a young man, preached his sermon.
Litchfield County, trained under the ministry of Bellamy and
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Backus, and Hooker and Mills, had a high tone of Christian morals and was ready for resistance to all evil. As early as 1789, twenty of the leading citizens of Litchfield, had com- bined in a resistance to the universal custom of furnishing laborers with strong drink, and yet none that we know of, commenced a work of reform in their own persons or house- holds. Excommunications were frequent for drunkenness, and yet no church action was known to reach its cause. Roused by the sermon of Porter, the South Association of the county appointed a committee to inquire into the extent of the grow- ing evil and report a remedy. 1n 1811, five years after the sermon was preached, that committee reported that the evil was wide spreading, but no remedy was feasible. Rev. Lyman Beecher, then recently installed as pastor of the Con- gregational Church at Litchfield, with characteristic energy moved that the committee be discharged, (of how long stand- ing they had been, does not appear) and that a new committee be appointed. His motion was agreed to. The committee was appointed and he was made chairman. They imme- diately reported that there was "a remedy in the universal disuse of spiritnous liquors by all good men and Christians ;"' but what was implied in this does not appear ; such disuse does not seem then to have been adopted or recommended by them, or by any other body as a practical principle, or in the least binding the conscience. About the same time, and even before, President Dwight, in his discourses to students, had assumed the position, that the man who found in himself any peculiar relish for spirituous liquor was bound to abstain from it wholly, and that total abstinence was the only hope of the drunkard ; but this too made no impression ; all assented to it, ministers and people, and yet all kept on drinking as in no danger and doing no harm.
In 1812 the Fairfield Consociation entered zealously into the work of reform, and issued an address to the ministers and churches on the prevailing intemperance. It was the joint work of the Rev. Rowell R. Swan of Norwalk, and the Rev. Heman Humphrey of Fairfield, both Congregational ministers. Few temperance publications of equal power have, to this day, been sent from the press. The Consociation showed them-
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selves to be in earnest, and on the 13th of October, they unani- mously 1
Resolved, "That the customary use of ardent spirits shall be wholly discontinued from that hour."
This was, doubtless, the first decided movement of any ecclesiastical body in the country. In their address they said nothing about entire abstinence in the community at large ; but in recommending remedies for the evil they did say :
" 1. We suggest particularly to those whose apppetite for drink is strong and increasing, total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors.
"2. Let those who are yet temperate, let him who thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall. In short, let him consider that he is a weak, depraved creature, and that total abstinence from strong drink is the only course in which he can be certain that he shall not be injured and even destroyed by it."
Out of this attempt at reform in that Consociation arose the Connecticut Society for the Reformation of Morals, which, for several years, was powerful in its attacks upon gambling, lottery dealing, Sabbath breaking and intemperance ; but made no special assault upon this last vice, and prescribed no special remedy. The masterly sermons, however, of Humphrey, Chapin and others at the annual meetings, did much to prepare the ministers and churches for some bold and decided action. The demoralizing influence of the war of 1812, created much alarm among the ministers and churches ; and on the return of peace, great anxiety was felt for a better state of religion and morals ; and the use of strong drink, which had increased on all occasions to the ruin of thousands, was greatly repro- bated. In private circles and at ordination dinners and meet- ings of ministers, its use was soon materially lessened ; and through the wide circulation in the State of the " Well Con- ducted Farm," a tract written in 1822, by Rev. Justin Edwards, of Andover, Mass., ardent spirits began to be dispensed with in the hay and harvest field, in raising and removing buildings, though often occasioning much trouble among the employed. But nothing occurred to electrify and move the great body of
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ministers and churches until 1826, a memorable year for tem- perance.
In January of that year, the Rev. Calvin Chapin, D. D., of Rocky-hill, who, in a missionary tour through Ohio, had become deeply impressed with the whisky plague of that region, and the belief that nothing would save the nation but an entire abandonment of spirituous liqnors by the ministers and churches, commenced in the Connecticut Observer at Hartford, a series of short but caustic pieces, entitled " Entire Abstinence the only Infallible Antidote," over the signature T. I. A. Some laughed ; some mocked ; some were indignant, and the editor was assured by ministers and church members that if the articles were continued, it would be the ruin of his paper. He nobly replied, " If the paper stands on spirit drinking, let it fall." They were continued weekly for a considerable period, carrying conviction to many inquiring what is duty, and what can and must be done ?
Another memorable event in that year was the delivery of six sermons at Litchfield by Rev. Lyman Beecher, D. D., on the nature, signs, evils and remedy of intemperance. Those were printed and scattered widely abroad, and were destined to have a mighty influence on the church and the world. A third important event the same year was the formation at Boston of the American Temperance Society, and the employ- ment of the Rev. Nathaniel Hewit, the successor of Rev. Heman Humphrey in the pastoral office at Fairfield, in a temporary agency. This gentleman, who had already distin- guished himself in such labor at home,* at once addressed several large bodies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. He appeared before the General Association of Connecticut, the next year, 1827, in their meeting at Stratford, and made such an impression, that they unanimously
Resolved, That this Association do cordially approve of the principles and objects of the American Society for the promotion of temperance, and that we will use our influence as pastors to prevent entirely the use and all abuses of strong drink.
*Dr. Hewitt, before 1826, had " distinguished himself" by maintaining not only " at home " but in his exchanges with other pastors, the duty of entire abstinence from the use of spirituous liquors except as a medicine, and as preseribed by a temperate physician. Committee of Publication.
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In their annual report that year on the state of religion, they said : " The progress of intemperance, which once seemed beyond control, is beginning to receive a check. In many places the important discovery has been made by actual experi- ment, that union and decision among the virtuous part of the community in discountenaucing the use of ardent spirits, is effectual to check its progress, to guard the rising generation against it, and to diminish very greatly its attendant evils."
At this period most of the Congregational ministers and members of churches had become abstainers from ardent spirits, but not from vinous and fermented drinks. It took ten years more of discipline and suffering to bring them to this.
The pastor of the Stratford church at that time, was the Rev. Joshua Leavitt, who, for his clear understanding of the subject and devotion to its interests, had just been appointed to an agency for the American Society. He visited thirteen towns in the state and several in Massa- chusetts, preaching and obtaining pledges and donations ; but being considered as peculiarly fitted for the office of secretary to the Seamen's Friend Society in the city of New York, he was, after four months' labor, removed to that station.
While in Stratford, he ably vindicated the principle of total abstinence in an article published at New Haven in the Chris- tian Spectator. The Rev. Nathaniel Hewit had returned to his pastoral labors ; but, on the 14th of November, 1827, he was appointed to a three years mission in behalf of the American Society, and was accordingly dismissed from his charge by the Consociation, greatly to the regret of his people and the people of the county. The United States, aye, the world, was his field ; and the amount of labor which this son of Congregationalism performed in all the large cities and towns and in Great Britain, cannot be known until the judg- ment day. At Hartford, in the succeeding May, he addressed the governor, legislature and a great crowd of citizens in the Center Church, with all the boldness of John Knox. His subject was " The Tree Known by its Fruit." The fruits of intemperance were all spread out and laid at the door of all who by example or legislation were in any manner accessory to them ; and, as was afterwards said of an address by the same fearless preacher of temperance and judgment to come,
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" It hailed for about the space of two hours, and every stone was of the weight of a talent."
The earliest and most efficient county society in the state was that of Middlesex, organized in the Congregational Church at Haddam, September 2, 1828. It enrolled 600 members pledged to total abstinence from ardent spirits, (the extent of the pledge in that day) before there was half that number in the rest of the state. Every Congregational minister in the lower part of the county, and in Lyme in the county of New London, became an active and efficient member. It met monthly in rotation in the parishes. In each town or parish were one or more auxiliaries. Three of the monthly addresses were printed and widely circulated. Soon the moral and reli- gious community were embued with the proper spirit. At a meeting of the Middlesex Consociation at Haddam, October 26, 1829, it was nnanimously
Resolved, That this Consociation do highly approve of the measures which have been recently adopted for the suppression of intemperance, and that the success of these measures calls loudly for the gratitude of the churches to God under whose blessing it has been attained.
Resolved, That the Consociation do recommend to the members of the churches in their connection, total abstinence from the common use of ardent spirits and a union with the temperance societies-these societies being the most powerful antidote to the alarming evil of intemperance, which the providence of God has pointed out to his people.
In the autumn of this year, the Congregational minister of Haddam, delivered an address, " Putnam and the Wolf, or the Monster Destroyed," at Pomfret, before the Windham County Temperance Society. Of this, more than 100,000 copies were printed and scattered abroad, giving a new impulse to the cause.
The Connecticut State Temperance Society was organized at Hartford, May 20, 1829. The Rev. Jeremiah Day, D. D., President of Yale College, was chosen president, Rev. Calvin Chapin, D. D., chairman of the executive committee, and Rev. John Marsh, corresponding secretary. Its first anniversary was held at New Haven, and was addressed by Hon. Timothy Pitkin of Farmington, long a member of congress, Daniel Frost,
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Esq., of Canterbury, Hon. Roger M. Sherman of Fairfield, and Hon. Judge Daggett of New Haven. Seldom has such an array of talent been brought to the support of any cause. The governor and legislature were present, with most of the clergy and leading citizens of New Haven. The annual report, read by the corresponding secretary, presented the following and many other appalling facts.
In addition to large annual importations of rum from the West Indies, there were in the state two rum distilleries and ten gin and whisky distilleries, all doing a large business, and 300 smaller distilleries, chiefly cider. There were 1026 licensed retailers and 400 licensed taverners. A population of 275,248 consumed annually, (besides an untold amount of cider and wines) 1,238,616 gallons of spiritnous liquors, which, at 62 1-2 cents a gallon, cost the people $782,S84.95. Every twenty- fifth family among the 45,000 of the state was engaged in supplying the rest with intoxicating drinks. As the frightful result, there were in the state 6,881 common drunkards. In nine parishes in Hartford county, there were found by actual visitation, 594 drunkards, giving 2000 to the county. Not far from 500 drunkards died annually in the state, while, by a horrid machinery, continually kept in motion, their places were punctually filled. Of 172 paupers in Middlesex county, 114 were reduced to beggary by intemperance ; and the keeper of the State Prison, at Wethersfield, Moses C. Pillsbury, Esq., declared that all of 167 prisoners were brought, he was satis- fied, to the commission of crime by intemperance. The great foe to the church and the Sabbath, to education, to sound morals and the peace and thrift of the community was strong drink with the licensed grog shops. The report, with its accompanying cheering intelligence of reform, then commenc- ing and spreading throughout the United States, and the speeches of those distinguished men, made a deep impression.
Hitherto, the cause in Connecticut had been sustained chiefly by the Congregational ministry and members of their congrega- tions. Other denominations, as a general thing, had stood aloof from it, and even seemed willing for a time to profit by dis- sensions in what had been called " The Standing Order." But they could not appear in opposition, and, therefore, took some independent ground. The Hartford Baptist Association, Octo-
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ber 14, 1829, resolved, that, in the opinion of their body, the time had arrived when no preacher of the Gospel could either habitually, or even occasionally, except as a medicine, use ardent spirits without greatly abridging his usefulness ; but at the same time they resolved that " All the churches were tem- perance societies by profession." "This was enough for them, and precluded them, almost universally, from uniting with these organizations. The Episcopal church took no action in the matter, nor did her ministers and churches manifest any special interest in it, sympathising much with Bishop Hopkins, of Vermont, in his published views of the whole as at variance with the Gospel. But one of her most distinguished ministers, Rev. J. S. Stone, D. D., of New Haven, delivered a thorough and searching temperance sermon before the Young Mens" Temperance Society of that city. The Methodist preachers, at a camp-meeting in Somers, in 1829, adopted resolutions commending it to all their brethren to unite in the temperance societies as "a combination of all religions parties, and no religious party in a good cause ;" and the Rev. Wilbur Fiske, D. D., head of the school at Wilbraham, Mass., and afterwards president of the Wesleyan University, at Middletown, was a giant in the cause. But, as a general rule in the towns, the Methodists opposed whatever the Congregationalists favored, and furnished homes of refuge for disaffected members. Sel- dom were they found in a temperance meeting; but if they suffered the rum party to cleave to them, it was not always to their honor and glory, or even their own satisfaction. In a Congregational church in Middlesex county, controversy ran high. The pastor said, " Sink or swim, rum must be driven out of this church." A large disaffected body took refuge with the Methodists and worshiped there. The Congregationalists, hearing of the decision and boldness of Dr. Fiske, invited him to give them an address. He consented to do so. Consterna- tion seized the Methodists as they heard of his coming, and on the appointed day they sent a delegation to meet him, and, if possible, turn him back. Upon coming near they besought him not to go on, saying to him, " The Congregationalists are falling in pieces and we shall get some of their heaviest men. If you go on, confusion will cover us, and our church will
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fall." "Get out of my way, brethren," said he, " if the Metho- dist church stands on a rum barrel, the sooner it falls the better," and, putting spurs to his horse, on he went, much to the confusion of the remonstrants. As he ascended, however, his mantle fell upon his denomination, and the Methodist churches and preachers have now long been foremost in the canse.
Almost each successive General Association for years adopted some resolution in favor of temperance; and its condition entered into the annual reports on the state of religion ; but individual church action was slow. The elder members, who had been accustomed to the use of ardent spirits in the house and the field, in coasting and fishing, in ship-yards and quarries, never considering it inconsistent with Christian character if moderately indulged in, though frequently called to excom- municate a brother for drunkenness, were slow to make entire abstinence a term of communion even to those who should come after them, as being a reflection upon themselves and their fathers, and a yoke too heavy to be borne. But in the numerous revivals which were then powerful, the entire aban- donment of spirit-drinking, as at variance with the true self-de- nial of the Gospel, was demanded before any expression of Christian hope would be received as satisfactory ; and, ere long, one church after another was found adopting it as a standing rule, that no person should be admitted to church fellowship but upon the principle of total abstinence. This important action was much hastened by the Rev. Asahel Net- tleton, the great revival preacher of that period. He narrowly watched the effect of spirit-drinking upon awakened sinners, removing their anxiety and alarm and cansing them to indulge, through momentary exhilaration, a false hope ; and also upon hopeful converts, destroying their serious deportment and lead- ing them to vain associations. He would not converse with a man who came to know what he should do to be saved, if his breath betrayed the use of spirits; nor would he give encouragement to any one who professed conversion, while daily using the alcoholic stimulant. In long cases of deep distress and earnestly expressed desire to become a Christian and have the joy of God's salvation, he would, with wonderful
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skill, ferret out the secret indulgence as the only hindrance, and either break it up, or see the subject, as he often did, tum and go away in a rage. In 1829 he gave the public his views in a letter through the Spirit of the Pilgrims, published at Boston. Wherever it was read, it deeply impressed ministers and mem- bers of churches with their deep responsibility to practice total abstinence, both to save themselves and those around them.
In 1835 the Rev. Dr. Chapin published his prize essay on sacramental wines. He considered the use of any intoxicating drink at the Lord's table inconsistent with the nature of the ordinance, not demanded by the Master, and a decided hin- drance to the temperance cause. He viewed water as the emblem of purity and the fit representative of the Gospel. But while he excited attention, to no great extent has fermented wine been abandoned. Several Congregational churches, how- ever, have provided themselves with the unfermented juice of the grape, while anxiety has increased for those wines which are least imbued with the intoxicating principle.
Into the pledge of total abstinence from all intoxicating drinks, fermented as well as distilled, adopted by the National Convention at Saratoga Springs, in 1836, the Congregational ministers and churches of Connecticut at once fully entered, and without any special attention, cider went, among all Christian families, into general disuse. White tumblers graced the tables of the high and the low, the rich and the poor ; and the Washingtonian movement, in which hundreds and thou- sands of miserable drunkards were reclaimed, was universally acknowledged with thankfulness as the extraordinary and gracious providence of God.
The reformation found many members of churches in the business of importing, distilling and vending that which was so destructive to the community and to the great interests of Christ's Kingdom. Churches were built, ministers were sup- ported, and missionaries were sent forth by men who said, " By this craft we have our wealth," and whose traffic had been owned as legitimate by the churches as well as the state. With such, the conflict on the part of ministers and Christian brethren was often very severe, for were they not frequently pious and praying men, good friends and even bene-
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factors of the minister, and how could he rebuke them before all ? But the declaration of the National Convention at Phila- delphia, in 1833, that the traffic was morally wrong, the awful result of the traffic as seen in suffering families and ruined men, in jails, in poor houses, and in murders ; and more than all, perhaps, the taunts of the ungodly that such and such pious men and church members sold rum, soon aided their pulpit remonstrances, and in a short time almost the entire business changed hands, and the principle was established that the traffic as well as the use must be abandoned by all who would be like Christ. If, at any time, deacons or other influential men took offence at the fidelity of the ministry and would cause disturbance, they soon found themselves in an unpleasant position. A pastor of a church in which were two of the largest liquor dealers of the state, in a sermon fearlessly and boldly denounced the traffic as at variance with all Chris- tian character. The anger of these brethren was greatly kindled, and as publicly they denounced him. They would not stand such preaching. " That's right," said a cool by- stander." "Do you gather J. B. and T. S. and B. U., (notorious infidels and scoffers, ) and all the drunkards in the place together, and drive this fellow out of town." Looking at him for a moment and seeing the drift of his advice, they said (for they were good men at heart, though engaged in a bad business,) " We'll do no such thing ; we'll not be found in such company if we never sell any more rum." And so ended the matter. In a short time after, though it had been very lucra- tive, they had changed their business.
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