USA > Connecticut > History of Connecticut, Volume II > Part 2
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ousies." It was held that the new college could rise to a position of dis- tinction and usefulness only by depressing Yale. As a final gesture by which it hoped to avoid the creation of another college, Yale repealed its requirement of the Saybrook oath on the day before the petition for incorporation of Washington College was presented to the House. A few days later, however, in May, 1823, the petition was granted.38
Early efforts of the Methodists to establish a permanent college had failed, too. When an opportunity to purchase the military academy at Middletown was presented in 1829, the Reverend Laban Clark assumed personal responsibility for the contract and later convinced the New York and New England conferences of the Methodist churches to as- sume the responsibility and subsequently in 1831 a charter was granted to Wesleyan College. Congregationalism was not dead when Wesleyan received its charter in 1831, but the state was committed to the principle of religious liberty. This meant not only the liberty of different religious groups to establish colleges, but also that religious tenets were not to be a condition for admission of students or a determinant of eligibility for the President, other officers, or the professors. Such provisions were contained in the charters of both Wesleyan and Washington colleges.39 The narrow sectarianism, which had characterized Yale in an earlier period, was not permitted to become a permanent characteristic of Connecticut colleges.
Although chartered as private institutions, Connecticut colleges were the beneficiaries, not only of the religious bodies which petitioned for their establishment, but also of the communities in which they were located and of the state. Grants from the General Assembly aided Trinity (Washington College) and Wesleyan in their formative years just as they had frequently supplemented Yale funds. The city of Hart- ford raised in one year three-fourths of the $50,000 required to establish Trinity. Middletown had offered the rents and profits of the two quar- ries belonging to the town in an attempt to have Trinity located in Middletown. When the news circulated that the physical facilities of the military establishment in Middletown might be used for a college, $18,000 was raised by citizens before the end of the year and an addi- tional $10,000 was voted in town meeting to enable the town to secure the location of Wesleyan there.40
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The new colleges, unfettered by tradition or history, developed curriculums somewhat in response to the demand for the scientific and the practical. From the beginning, Trinity familiarized students with instruments used in surveying, and established professorships of chem- istry and mineralogy, botany, and agriculture. The emphasis on the natural sciences at Trinity presaged the emergence of a modern Con- necticut. Although Yale had instruction in the sciences since early in the century, it was not until 1847 that its famed Sheffield Scientific School was begun largely as a result of the efforts of Benjamin Silliman, his son, and John P. Horton with the approval, but without the support of the corporation.41 Meanwhile, the addition of law in 1824, the growth of the existing professional schools of medicine and theology, and the establishment of different schools within the college gave the school more of the characteristics of a true university. The emergence of the faculty as an important factor in the determination of college policy and the establishment of the alumni association in 1827 provided an impetus for further growth.42
These efforts to increase the opportunities and to improve the quality of formal higher education were supplemented by a number of societies and agencies for self improvement. These were expressions of the forces of democracy premised upon a conviction of the importance of the common man and a belief in his ultimate perfectibility, and were springing up throughout the eastern part of the United States. Among the numerous organizations formed to "learn the learned more," and instruct the manual worker the Lyceum movement was outstanding.43 A Yale-educated son of a prosperous Connecticut farmer initiated the American version of this effort at self-education. The degree to which Josiah Holbrook's efforts to establish the "Society for Mutual Educa- tion" was related to London's Mechanics Institute is not certain. Hol- brook's plan for the American Lyceum appeared, significantly, in the American Journal of Education. The purposes were to provide for youths (apprentices and clerks) and economical and practical education, "to apply the sciences and the various branches of education to the domestic and useful arts, and to all the common purposes of life," and to diffuse rational and useful information through the community gen- erally.44 Holbrook envisaged an organization beginning with local so-
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cieties and extending through county, state, and, perhaps, a national organization. Through lectures, demonstrations, and discussions, Hol- brook sought to make opportunity available to all who cared to benefit from a practical education. Instead of choosing a Connecticut town as
(Courtesy Danbury Chamber of Commerce) DANBURY-ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, DANBURY STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE
the place in which first to try out his plan, he chose Worcester, Massa- chusetts.45
Connecticut greeted the Lyceum movement with "pious apathy." It has been suggested that the impulses which established Connecticut's brand of theocracy and Yale's conservatism were the chief barriers to the Lyceum. An indifference to education, Yankee thrift, and a deep-seated aversion to change prevented the Lyceum from achieving in Connect- icut the same degree of success it enjoyed in Massachusetts.46
The Lyceum established in Connecticut was closely identified with the movement for the reform of the common schools. The Hartford Lyceum, for example, established before 1830, considered school text-
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books and the qualification of teachers. Other societies with similar characteristics but a different name followed the same pattern. Inas- much as Henry Barnard was the first President of the Young Men's Institute, founded in 1838, it is fair to assume that some of its debates were also concerned with the common schools.47 It was in New Haven that the Lyceum movement most nearly achieved the objective origi- nally intended by Holbrook. There eight young workingmen formed the Apprentices' Literary Association. In its first years it followed a pattern of debate and discussion. After two years the name was changed to Young Mechanics' Institute, and classes, which were more or less organized, were held in the practical subjects of arithmetic, geometry, geography, grammar, and bookkeeping. The Institute later attracted as lecturers some of the more civic minded of the Yale faculty, including Holbrook's old professor, Benjamin Silliman. A broader cultural appeal characterized the last phase of the institution's development and is indicated in the change of name to Young Men's Institute.
A strong, though short lived, stimulus to the Lyceum movement in the state was derived from the annual meeting of the American Lyceum in 1938 which was held in Hartford. Reports were received from more than twenty societies in the state and included the Norwich Lyceum and Mechanics Institute, the Goodrich Association of Hartford, the East Hartford Lyceum, that of Danbury and Litchfield. Also, the Atheneum, the Franklin Institute, and the Mechanics Society of New Haven reported. Interest in the Lyceum remained an important part of community activity in only three Connecticut cities. When, in 1851- 52, Oliver Wendell Holmes appeared before half a hundred audiences in Massachusetts, he addressed only three in Connecticut-in Norwich, New Haven, and Hartford. After 1846, the Lyceum limited itself more and more to lectures. The Hartford Young Men's Institute remained strong, and its counterpart in New Haven continued to secure for its programs leading figures in the literary world. The later, also, continued to five courses in many subjects including drawing, music, and language courses for German immigrants. It continued to expand its services and occupied an important position in the cultural life of the city until the American Civil War.48
Other institutions which were non-academic contributed to the
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intellectual opportunities in the state. The Connecticut Historical Society was organized in 1825 largely through the efforts of Thomas Robbins, who became its Secretary in 1844. The New Haven Atheneum was organized in 1833 and the Wadsworth Atheneum of Hartford in 1842. The state reacted to the increased interest in science by beginning the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1818, the Hartford Linnean Botanical Association in 1825, and the Connecticut Society of Natural History in 1845.49
Connecticut's literary production in this period hardly contributed to the intellectual strength of the state. The Hartford Wits had drawn but a partial picture of eighteenth century Connecticut, but not even that was attempted in the first half of the nineteenth century. The literature was not particularized by state consciousness and many of the literary figures of the period had associations with Connecticut yet can not be claimed completely by her. James Fenimore Cooper, Augus- tus Baldwin Longstreet, and Nathaniel Parker Willis studied at Yale. Mark Twain lived in Connecticut in his later years. Others, such as Amos Bronson Alcott or Fitz-Greene Halleck migrated from Connecti- cut to Boston or New York.50 There was an abundance of writing in Connecticut in the early nineteenth century and the chief mode of literary expression was poetry. Yet, Stanley Thomas Williams in his brief review of The Literature of Connecticut failed to find a poet of first rank, or even of second. He considered the poets to be merely "imitators in the sentimental tradition" who rarely revealed true poetic talent.51
One of the imitators, however, Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791- 1865) was recognized for a half century as America's leading poetess. She was born in Norwich and early began "a long career of vacuous virtue."52 Her Moral Pieces, presented in 1815, was followed by nu- merous other books, all of which were sentimental, romantic, and moralistic. Posterity has not sustained her position of eminence and popularity. Of herself she wrote, in recognition of her own limitations, "If there is any kitchen in Parnassus, my Muse has surely officiated there as a woman of all work, and an aproned waiter."53 Her popularity would indicate that she expressed the mood of the age and her poems serve as a key to its comprehension.54
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The most distinguished Connecticut poet of the period was Fitz- Greene Halleck (1790-1867). Except for the Wits, he was, perhaps, the most distinguished poet produced by the state at any time. Halleck was born in a house on the Green in Guilford. His father preserved a spirit of cavalier gallantry, his mother lived in strict accord with the Puritan tradition. Although Halleck transferred much of his affection to New York, where he spent his productive years, he felt a part of the New England temper and remained proud of the place of his birth and duly respectful of its citizens.55 Poetry was for Halleck a way of life which by identifying him with the literati opened the doors of New York society. Perhaps, Bryant's tribute was as significant for its omis- sions as for what it said. In a brief obituary notice in the new York Evening Post he spoke of Halleck as "personally a most agreeable man, and one of the pleasantest companions in the world.'56
Halleck had won among the Knickerbockers a position as a wit which was not unlike that held by Washington Irving, principally be- cause of his satirical verses, "The Croakers" (1819) and his humorous poem, "Fanny"56a (1819). Halleck's "Marco Bozzaris," although ama- teurish, was forceful. Its popularity was based on the sympathy felt for the Greek hero who fell storming the Turkish camp in July, 1823, during the Greek struggle for liberty. Edgar Allen Poe correctly proph- esied posterity's judgment when he wrote in 1846 that "Marco Boz- zaris" had been surpassed "by many American and a multitude of foreign compositions of a similar character."57 This criticism came twenty years after the poem had caught the public fancy, however, and Halleck had been able to revel in the glory. A more substantial and en- during composition was his poem on "Connecticut" which was written in two parts. The two parts were written in 1826 and 1852. The first was presented as a part of a larger unpublished poem, and appeared subsequently as one of two parts of the later poem. In this verse, Halleck combined denunciation and praise of Connecticut character in what has been considered a judicious appraisal.58 Within a decade of his death, Halleck's poetry had been forgotten by contemporary critics and the public, yet a more modern critic has concluded that "there is still life and vigor in Halleck."59
Until the publication of Bryant's second volume, James Gates
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Percival was regarded as America's most distinguished poet. Then he abandoned verse because his books did not sell. He "hid from the world even while he begged for attention," and moved from position to position.60 The stories of his life rival the material in his poetry. He was born in Kensington, orphaned at twelve, and handicapped by a defect in voice. At Yale, he posted verse on college buildings and awaited criticism; he purchased a pistol with which to commit suicide; he refused to admit Longfellow, who journeyed from Cambridge to see him; he lived in dirty rooms; and possessed the finest private library in Connecticut. He was immensely learned, and was a physician, bota- nist, chemist, linguist, and geologist, as well as poet.61
Percival possessed abilities beyond those of most of his contempo- raries. He possessed a great imagination, a power of condensation, and an ability to handle varied forms, but he refused consistently to polish his verse. Three of his works, "Seneca Lake," "The Coral Grove," and "New England," are frequently reprinted in anthologies. His biog- rapher is of the opinion that his best writing, however, has remained hidden in the longer poem "Prometheus." This poem of 274 Spen- cerian stanzas is described as "a darkly sententious, Byronic, meditative poem, in which he [Percival] slowly emerges from suicidal gloom into a mood of living."62 Although Whittier exclaimed, "We pity the man who does not love the poetry of Percival," more recent critics have viewed his lines as presenting "the materials, but not the finish of great poetry."63 Nevertheless, he was, as Whittier said, "a singular and high minded poet."64
An additional index to the intellectual activity of the state in the early nineteenth century is the number and quality of the newspapers of the time. In 1828, a visitor to the state observed that everyone read newspapers, which were to be found not only in every town, but in every farmhouse.65 This may have exaggerated the literacy of the resi- dents of the state, but it is true that newspapers existed in practically every town of any size in the state. In addition there were many papers devoted to special purposes, such as those published by the religious denominations. The Religious Herald was the organ of the Congre- gationalists, the Churchmen of the Episcopalians, and the Christian Secretary of the Baptists. There was, too, the Catholic Transcript. The
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Workingman's Advocate, also, appeared in this period. The newspaper ventures were hazardous and often short-lived. In New Haven, for ex- ample, during the period 1818-1850, an average of about one paper a year was established and the fatalities were almost as great.66 In the papers, much of the space was devoted to foreign or national events. Not until the 1830's, when the Hartford Courant announced that it was going to cover all important local news, could it be said that there was anything resembling a city press.67
A number of families were identified with the newspapers of the period: the Greens with the Connecticut Journal of New Haven, the Connecticut Courant of Hartford, the New London Gazette, and the Middlesex Gazette; the Osborns with the New Haven Columbian Reg- ister; and the Burrs of the Hartford Times. There were brilliant and notable editors such as George Dennison Prentice of the Hartford Times, who later founded the Louisville Kentucky Journal, and Ed- ward Bronson Cooke of the Waterbury American. Also associated with the Connecticut press were Gideon Welles, John M. Niles, John Green- leaf Whittier, Amos P. Wilder (later U. S. Consul in Hong Kong), and Orville H. Platt (later United States Senator).68 The first half of the nineteenth century was an era of strident journalism, with the editors boldly identifying themselves with the causes for which they spoke.
The Hartford Courant, at the beginning of the century, was the bold defender of the Federalist cause, and at mid-century was vainly proclaiming the cause of the Whigs.68ª When it was under the control of George Goodwin and his sons, it styled itself "the advocate of correct principles and the friend and supporter of good order and good morals . . . a vehicle of useful information, of correct moral sentiments, and rational entertainment." It set out "to exclude everything unfriendly to virtue or offensive to delicacy." In politics the paper sought to "de- fend those doctrines and measures . . . believed to be identified with the stability and success of our free institutions."69 When the news- paper was transferred to John L. Boswell in 1837, it remained firmly aligned with the respectable Whigs against the forces of mob rule. At mid-century it remained the organ of morality and staunchly opposed manifest destiny and the extension of slave territory.7º Few would deny
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that it fulfilled its objectives to an extraordinary degree, but there were opposition papers serving other purposes.
The Hartford Times came into being in the year of the Republican victory in 1817. It was the voice of change until the Republicans be- came responsible for action. The Times was published as a weekly until 1841, when Alfred Burr became the sole proprietor and instituted daily editions.71 With the whiplash pens of John M. Niles and Gideon Welles and the artistry of George Dennison and Whittier, it paraded as the true friend of the people. It waged journalistic warfare with the conservative journals, denouncing them "as organs of discredited aris- tocracy and a disestablished but unreconciled clergy."" 2 It considered its opposition to school reform as an expression of its democratic inten- tion and judgments. Contact with progressivism was resumed when the Democrats gained control of the state's administration in 1833. The Courant, with some accuracy, referred to the Times or its management as the "Times Junto," the "Hartford Regency," and the "Locos."73 Connecticut chose to follow a course which fell somewhere in between the propositions of the warring papers, but, by giving the citizens arguments upon which a choice could be made, these papers were dis- charging a responsibility of journalism.
NOTES-CHAPTER XXI
1 Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Education," pp. 8-13; Steiner, Education in Con- necticut, pp. 35-37.
2 Steiner, Education in Connecticut, p. 146; Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Educa- tion," pp. 37, 46; 154-62; Odell Shephard, Pedlar's Progress, The Life of Bronson Alcott (Boston, 1937), pp. 86-100.
3 Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Education," pp. 56-71.
4 Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Education," pp. 53-88, 123-27; Morse, Neglected Period, pp. 147-48; F. B. Sanborn and William T. Harris, A. Bronson Alcott: His Life and Philosophy, 2 vols. (Boston, 1893), Vol. I, pp. 68-105; E. M. Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (New York, 1888), p. 239.
5 Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Education," p. 153; Morse, Neglected Period, pp. 147-48; Steiner, Education in Connecticut, p. 37.
6 Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Education," p. 153; Morse, Neglected Period, p. 148.
7 Ibid., pp. 148-49; Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Education," pp. 163-67; Steiner, Education in Connecticut, pp. 45-46.
Ta Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Education," p. 168.
8 Ibid., 170-74.
9 Morse, Neglected Period, p. 149.
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10 Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Education," p. 188.
11 Ibid., pp. 176-93; Morse, Neglected Period, pp. 151-53.
12 Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Education," pp. 183, 193-99.
13 Ibid., pp. 199-200.
14 Ibid., p. 218 ff.
15 Ibid., p. 219 ff .; Morse, Neglected Period, pp. 152-53; Steiner, Education in Connecticut, p. 41.
16 Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Education," p. 227
17 Ibid., pp. 225-38; Morse, Neglected Period, p. 154.
18 Ibid .; Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Education," pp. 234-38.
19 Ibid., p. 240.
20 Ibid., p. 245; Morse, Neglected Period, p. 155.
21 Ibid., pp. 155-56; Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Education," pp. 245-47.
22 Ibid., p. 277.
23 Ibid., pp. 247-71.
24 Ibid., p. 282.
25 Ibid., pp. 283-89.
26 Ibid., p. 292-98.
27 Ibid., pp. 297-310.
28 Ibid., pp. 310-324; Morse, Neglected Period, pp. 158-59; Steiner, Education in Con- necticut, pp. 43-44.
29 Ibid., p. 37; Orwin Bradford Griffin, The Evolution of the Connecticut State School System, with Special Reference to the Emergence of the High School (New York, 1928), pp. 28-34.
30 Ibid., pp. 42-45; Morse, Neglected Period, p. 160.
31 Steiner, Education in Connecticut, p. 50.
32 Middletown Female Seminary, Vol. II, No. 1, August, 1853.
33 Steiner, Education in Connecticut, pp. 56-59.
Ibid., pp. 62-65.
35 Ibid., p. 53.
36 Ibid., pp. 50-52; Griffin, Evolution of Connecticut State School System, pp. 34, 37, 46-164
37 Purcell, Connecticut in Transition, p. 319.
38 Steiner, Education in Connecticut, pp. 237-43.
39 Ibid., pp. 258-60; Karl Pomeroy Harrington, The Background of Wesleyan (Middle- town, Conn., 1942), pp. 60-65.
40 Steiner, Education in Connecticut, p. 152.
41 Ibid., pp. 183-89, 241, 261; George P. Fisher, The Life of Benjamin Silliman, 2 vols., (New York, 1866), Vol. I, pp. 248-93.
42 Steiner, Education in Connecticut, pp. 150-74.
43 Morse, Neglected Period, p. 166.
44 Carl Bode, The American Lyceum; Town Meeting of the Mind (New York, 1956), PP. 3-12.
45 Ibid., pp. 12-14.
46 Ibid., pp. 42-43.
47 Ibid., pp. 51-52; Morse, Neglected Period, pp. 167-68.
48 Bode, American Lyceum, pp. 135-36.
49 Morse, Neglected Period, pp. 168-69.
50 Stanley Thomas Williams, "The Literature of Connecticut," Tercentenary Commis- sion of the State of Connecticut (New Haven, n.d.), pp. 2-3, 14-15.
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51 Ibid., pp. 15-16.
52 Ibid., p. 16.
53 Gordon S. Haight, Mrs. Sigourney, The Sweet Singer of Hartford (New Haven, 1930), p. 46.
54 Ibid., pp. ix, 77-78; Williams, "Literature of Connecticut," pp. 16-17.
55 Nelson Frederick Adkins, Fitz-Greene Halleck: an Early Knickerbocker Wit and Poet (New Haven, 1930), pp. 1-13.
56 Ibid., p. 367.
56a Williams, "Literature of Connecticut," p. 17.
57 Adkins, Fitz-Greene Halleck, p. 164.
58 Ibid., pp. 165-67, 320-21.
59 Williams, "Literature of Connecticut," p. 17.
60 Henry R. Warfel, Ralph H. Gabriel, Stanley T. Williams, The American Mind, Selection from the Literature of the United States (New York, c. 1937), p. 368.
61 Ibid., p. 368; Williams, "Literature of Connecticut," pp. 17-19.
62 Warfel et al., American Mind, p. 368.
63 Williams, "Literature of Connecticut," p. 17.
64 Ibid., p. 17.
65 Morse, Neglected Period, p. 170.
66 Osborn, History of Connecticut, Vol. II, pp. 57-189. Osborn includes a listing of Connecticut newspapers by county and city.
67 J. Eugene Smith, One Hundred Years of Hartford's Courant; From Colonial Times Through the Civil War (New Haven, 1949), pp. 196-97.
68 Osborn, History of Connecticut, passim.
68a Smith, Hartford's Courant, pp. 139-157.
69 Ibid., p. 188.
70 Ibid., pp. 177-206.
71 Osborn, History of Connecticut, Vol. II, pp. 67-68.
72 Bomhoff, "State Support of Teacher Education," pp. 153-54.
73 Ibid., p. 155.
Chapter XXII The Rise of the Republican Party
P ARTY POLITICS in Connecticut in the period before the American Civil War was characterized by a factious spirit. Re- forms previously supported only in the pulpits of the ministers and in the parlors of up-lifters spilled into the political arena. The an- tagonism of the Congregational ministers toward Catholicism was as- similated in the nativist tenet of politicians.1 After the rather abortive attempt to form a temperance party, the established Connecticut parties "turned to the question of Rum or no Rum," as both the Whigs and the Democrats made overtures for prohibitionist support.2 The issues of expansion and the suggested Wilmot Proviso brought slavery into the center of political argument.3 Temperance, nativism, and abolition were divisive issues which severed old party allegiances and established new ones. Major parties modified their positions in an attempt to at- tract the dissidents of other parties, mollify factions within their own, and hold the support of their faithful. New parties were formed by those who found these modifications insufficient. Eventually, out of the shifting political sympathies, there appeared a new banner, that of the Republican Party, under which the majority could stand.
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