USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 3 The Beginnings of Roman Catholicism in Connecticut > Part 36
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The meeting house" was the center of community life in the smaller towns. There the people listened atten- tively and sometimes critically on the Sabbath day, and frequently on other days as well, to sermons theological, historical, and political. Town meetings were opened by prayer and sometimes by an address by the minister. Usually a graduate of Harvard or, far more frequently, of Yale, the minister was the friend of education and the schools. In his home were books and he was often influen- tial in organizing lending libraries and book companies. Around his fire gathered the better educated of his parish- ioners, and travelers stopped with him in their journeys. In the country towns the minister was also a farmer and sometimes a notable one, as were Elizur Goodrich of Dur- ham and Benjamin Trumbull of North Haven, able to discuss crops as well as difficult questions of theology with his fellow-farmers.
Whether approachable and beloved or more cold and formal, as were some of the clergy, the minister was a I See Noah Porter, The New England meeting house (no. XVIII in this series).
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man of consequence, not only in his own town but in the broader affairs of the colony as well. There were ministe- rial associations and consociations where the clergy met together for conference and where, although at times bit- terly at odds, they developed means by which they could, if necessary, act together on a common issue and make their power felt. From the foundation of the colony, the ministers had been consulted in various matters of poli- tics and government and their interest was sometimes such as to arouse the disgust and apprehension of certain laymen who resented their power or disapproved their policies. The consocia tions and the platform of the churches had been established by law, and legal questions concern- ing the churches and clergy were frequently before the assembly. Annually many of the ministers came together while the assembly was sitting and the election sermon preached by a prominent minister was a long-established institution. The minister chosen was frequently a fair indication of the political complexion of the assembly.
Yale College was another center of clerical influence. The president, the fellows of the Corporation, and most of the faculty were ministers. At the time of the Revolu- tion there were about one thousand Yale graduates, the large majority living in Connecticut, who had come under the influence of the Yale faculty. A goodly number had become ministers themselves, and had often remained the friends and correspondents of their college mates who had turned to law, medicine, trade, or politics. A few of the latter had studied for a time after graduation, as did the ministerial candidates, with such well-known teachers of theology as Joseph Bellamy of Bethlehem, Levi Hart of Griswold, Benjamin Pomeroy of Hebron, and Solomon Williams of Lebanon.
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THE ministers, then, influenced the lives of their people and the life of the colony in many ways, but there were certain of their teachings which especially prepared their people for the Revolution and for the framing of new governments. For generations they had discussed fully in the annual election sermons, in historical addresses, and on many special occasions theories of government, the beauties of the English constitution and of the govern- ment of Connecticut, and the rights of men and of Eng- lishmen. They had taught that these rights were sacred and came from God, and that to preserve them they had a legal right of resistance. They taught the meaning and sanctity of the constitution and that an unconstitutional act was null and void. They quoted Locke and other po- litical philosophers and especially the Bible, until the theories-that men are born equal and have a natural right to liberty and property that cannot constitutionally be taken away from them, that society and government are formed by the common consent for the good of the people, and that, if necessary, the people have a right "to resume the powers they have delegated and alter and abolish governments and by common consent establish new ones"-had been given the sanction of religion.
These theories had taken on special meaning in the con- troversies over the so-called ecclesiastical constitution, in which each side asserted its own constitutionality and denounced the unconstitutional acts of its opponents. During the French and Indian War they had become closely allied with the preservation of religious freedom. James Cogswell of Canterbury in addressing a military company of Captain Putnam's command in 1757 said :
There is a Principle of Self-Defense and Preservation im- planted in our very Natures, which is necessary to us almost as
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our Beings, and which no positive Law of God ever yet con- tradicted. ... Liberty is one of the most sacred and inviolable Privileges Mankind enjoy; ... what Comfort can a Man take in Life, when at the Disposal of a despotic and arbitrary Ty- rant, who has no other Law but his Will; .. . To live is to be free: Therefore when our Liberty is attacked ... 'tis Time to rouze, and defend our undoubted and invaluable Privileges . . . . We fight for our Properties, our Liberties, our Religion, our Lives.
When the difficulties with England began, the attitude of the clergy was of great moment, and this fact was recognized by friend and foe alike. They had an incom- parable opportunity to influence public opinion, especially in the smaller towns. Time and again both the assembly of Connecticut and the congress of the United Colonies called upon them to use their pulpits as a means of stimu- lating and unifying the people. Although there was, of course, difference of opinion and of ardor among them, the great majority of the Standing Order were heart and soul for the American cause. Sedition, said the Tories and British, flowed from their pulpits and through the public prints.
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WHEN the Stamp Act was passed by Great Britain there was, of course, excitement and opposition, but in Con- necticut the governor, judges, and leading citizens seem to have been inclined to submit to the inevitable, and when Jared Ingersoll accepted the position of stamp- master he anticipated no great difficulty. It is not easy to trace all the causes of the trouble that arose and to com- pare them in significance, but one cause-and not an unimportant one-was the work of a few of the leading ministers.
The first attack on Ingersoll was made by Naphtali
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Daggett, professor of divinity at Yale. Gipson, in his life of Ingersoll, says that there had been bad blood between the two ever since Ingersoll opposed Daggett's appoint- ment as professor and college preacher and that Daggett was settling an old score in attacking Ingersoll. However that may be, on August 9, 1765, an article written by Daggett and signed "Cato" appeared in the Connecticut gazette, and at once produced an extraordinary effect. It was a virulent attack on the American stamp-masters, calling them "vile miscreants" with no slightest spark of love for their country. In vivid phrase, he asked:
Where are the mercenary Publicans who delight in Nothing so much as the dearest Blood of their Country? Will the Cries of your despairing, dying Brethren be Music pleasing to your Ears? If so, go on! bend the Knee to your Master Horseleach, and beg a Share in the Pillage of your Country ... . That same rapacious and base Spirit which prompted you to undertake the ignominious task, will urge you on to every cruel and oppres- sive Measure. You will serve to put us continually in Mind of our abject Condition ... for one of our Fellow Slaves, who equally shares in our Pains, to rise up and beg the Favor of inflicting them, is intolerable .. ..
The article was at once reprinted in many papers- among others, on August 19 in a Supplement to the Boston gazette and in the Newport Mercury; on the twenty-second in the Maryland gazette and the New York gazette; on the twenty-third in the New London gazette; on the twenty- fourth in Vox populi, Vox Dei, a Providence gazette extraor- dinary; on the twenty-sixth in the Connecticut courant, the Boston post-boy and advertiser, and the New York Mercury; and on the thirtieth in the New Hampshire gazette and his- torical chronicle. Often there were comments by the printers such as that in the Providence gazette: "The following . .. will shew what Reception Jared Ingersol, the Connecticut Stampman, is like to have in his native Country."
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The article aroused the bitterest hostility also. One cor- respondent in the Connecticut gazette of August 30 spoke of the author as a "conceited upstart ... not worth the notice of any but his fellow fools," and in a Boston paper, another, whose letter was partly reprinted in the same gazette, said:
That Piece particularly, ... seems to be wrote with the haugh- tiest Airs, the greatest Bitterness of Temper, Baseness of Ill- Manners and Opposition of the Christian Spirit, of any that has come to my Observation; which, at best, is but a meer Heap of inconnected Bombast, of swelling blustering Non- sense, &c, &c, &c, and by which the Author, if he were known, would be rendered infamous and become the Detestation of all serious People.
The Connecticut gazette of September 6 published a note from New York saying the article was universally approved. An illustration of its inflaming power is the statement made by James McEvers of New York, stamp distribu- tor, that, when the news of Oliver's treatment reached New York and when Cato's letter was published there, the agitation began, though there had been little or no clamor before.2 Ingersoll, under the pseudonym of "Civis," undertook to answer, saying that the article seemed to have a tendency "only to inflame and not at all to Enlighten." This was answered by Cato, in a more temperate mood, that his purpose had not been to en- lighten but to arouse his countrymen.
Down at Lyme, a small but important town, Stephen Johnson, a graduate of Yale of the Class of 1743, was minister from 1746 to 1786. He, like Daggett, was a New Light of the theological and political group opposed to the Old Lights or Arminians, as they were called. He had inherited a library of a hundred volumes and had read 2 Lawrence H. Gipson, fared Ingersoll, p. 167.
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widely and thought deeply on matters of government. As early as April, 1765, Chauncey Whittelsey of New Haven, in a letter to Ezra Stiles, had spoken of hearing of the tax and quoted Johnson as saying, "From this time date the Slavery of the Colonies." Whittelsey himself, of whose church Jared Ingersoll was a member, thought that the colonies must bear what they could not avoid and that if laid by parliament the tax must be "wise and right and best." Not so thought Johnson. His home on the Post Road was next door to that of his Irish friend, John McCurdy. It is said that McCurdy brought back from New York, secretly, the Virginia Resolves, and that he and Johnson grew "vexed and grieved," as Gordon put it in his history of the Revolution, "with the temper and inconsiderateness of all orders of people."
Writing under the pseudonym of "Addison," Johnson sent his first fiery article secretly to the New London gazette and it was published on September 6. He followed this with others, signed "A Freeman of the Colony of Con- necticut," which ran all through September and Octo- ber and were copied widely in Boston and other colonial papers. Sill, in A forgotten Connecticut patriot, credits his first article with being the first one printed which advocated unqualified and forcible resistance. It was a fervid thing, well calculated to rouse to fever heat the "uneasie spirit" of the eastern Connecticut men.
It is the most critical Season that ever this Colony or Amer- ica saw, a Time when every Thing dear to us in this World is at Stake. ... By the essential, fundamental Constitution of the British Government, no Englishman may be Tax'd but by his own Consent, in Person, or by his Representative-Privileges extorted by the brave People of England from their Monarchs by slow Degrees, and the effusion of Rivers of Blood.
He decried virtual representation and spoke of the charters LVI
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and patents as compacts which, if broken on one side, de- stroyed obligation on the other.
If the B . .. sh Parliament have a right to impose a Stamp Tax, they have a right to lay on us a Poll Tax, a Land Tax, a Malt Tax, a Cyder Tax, a Window Tax, a Smoke Tax, and why not Tax us for the Light of the Sun, the Air we Breathe, and the Ground we are Buried in?
He urged his readers not to be lulled into security by insinuations that the sum was small and not worth such a stir, and urged the election and careful instruction of repre- sentatives who would not be "bo't nor cow'd into the tame Submission of fawning Place men, nor scar'd at the Inso- lence of (our own) M ... st ... ] Tools, who (as usual) begin their Threats sooner than their Masters."
Johnson's other articles were quieter in tone. They pre- sented logically and with detail the colonial arguments and answered with equal fullness the British. He closed the series on November I with a veiled threat and prophecy. If this act is forced upon America what will happen
.. . is not perhaps within human foresight to determine :. . . we have reason to fear very interesting and terrible consequences, tho' by no means equal to tyranny and slavery .... Let all to a man determine, with an immovable stability, to sacrifice their lives and fortunes before they will part with their invaluable Freedom; and let us all with a spirited unbroken fortitude, act up to these resolutions.
He suggested scattering pamphlets by the thousand throughout the country and in England, Ireland, and even France.
In December Johnson preached at Newport, Rhode Island, a Fast Day sermon which was published anony- mously under the title, Some important observations . . . , a carefully developed but ardent discourse on the rights and privileges of Englishmen, among them the right of
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resistance. Loyal as the colonists still were, he said, Eng- land's breaking of the charter had put them back into a state of nature, and they might be driven into independ- ence. Writing articles, speaking here and there, always with logical argument and burning fervor, Johnson was a powerful factor in stirring up eastern Connecticut, but he and Daggett, who also continued writing and teaching resistance, did not work alone.
One ministerwhom Stiles mentioned as especiallyinfluen- tial was Ebenezer Devotion of Windham Third Society (now Scotland). In 1766, in a published pamphlet, The examiner examined, which went through two editions and was quoted in various newspapers, he sharply denied the right of parlia- ment to tax the colonies, and declared that if the British policy were pursued it must lead to the final loss of the colo- nies. Devotion was a delegate to a meeting of the towns at Windham in 1765, and was elected in the same year to the assembly-an unusual proof of his influence. Later he was a member of various Revolutionary committees.
Many others also preached resistance and gave strong arguments to the restless colonists. There were Solomon Williams of Lebanon, Thomas Brockway of Lebanon Crank (now Columbia), Levi Hart of Griswold, Abiel Leonard of Woodstock, Nathaniel Eells of Stonington, James Dana of Wallingford, Joseph Perry of South Wind- sor, Timothy Pitkin of Farmington, Benjamin Pomeroy of Hebron, Philemon Robbins of Branford, Cotton Mather Smith of Sharon, Noah Welles of Stamford, and many others. Some of the resolutions of 1766 drawn up by the towns, notably those of Lyme and Windham, show the effects of the ministers' teaching in the arguments and even in the phraseology used, to such an extent that it seems probable that the ministers had a hand in their composition. The constant use, by these and other min-
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isters, of the terms "slaves" and "slavery" in picturing the consequences of the British policy was particularly obnoxious to both English and Loyalists, and the plain- ness of speech and the sharp, unbridled tongues of the more fervent aroused their deep resentment.
Not all the clergy counseled resistance in those early days. One of the leaders of the conservative group was Chauncey Whittelsey of New Haven. He and other min- isters, as well as laymen, resented Daggett's violence and the activity of Johnson and his colleagues. This was due not only to cooler temperaments and more conservative opinions, but also to ecclesiastical faction and opposing political allegiances. The age-old problem of clerical con- cern in political matters cropped up again in the public prints and was discussed at intervals throughout the Revolution with bitter vituperation. One irate man wrote to the Connecticut courant in January, 1766, "Good God, what are you doing! Ingersoll. When the Clergy under- take to be Regulators of the State, what may we not expect! Verily, Verily, I say unto them, 'What dost thou here, Elijah'?"
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DURING the next few years there was a growing dread among nonconformists in the colonies that an American episcopate and ecclesiastical courts would be established, and no doubt this fear increased the interest of the clergy in their own history and intensified their opposition to any stricter control from the mother country. The Que- bec Act, especially, aroused their distrust and anger. Be- tween 1766 and 1775 there was a flood of sermons, pam- phlets, and articles dealing with every issue. Of some two hundred and thirty-two Connecticut publications (other than official documents or newspapers) between 1765 and
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1773, listed by Evans, one hundred and fifty were cer- tainly of clerical authorship, and probably some of the others also. Not all, by any means, dealt with the political issues. Some were concerned with theological and ecclesiastical problems, some were installation or funeral sermons, but a goodly number dealt directly and fearlessly with the struggle with Great Britain and the theories and principles involved.
In a short study such as this it is possible to tell the story of only a few of the more influential or more inter- esting of the ministers. In Lebanon there was Solomon Williams, for fifty-three years the local pastor. He was the tutor and intimate friend of Governor Jonathan Trum- bull who said, "His friendship hath been one of the great comforts of my life." On June 1, 1774, he was called upon to address the town, and the resolutions published in the Connecticut courant were said to have borne "the impress of his mind." Again on July 18, 1774, at their request, he spoke before a meeting of the freemen. From the begin- ning until his death in 1776 he was a zealous advocate of the colonial cause.
In North Haven there was Benjamin Trumbull, whose home was open to friends and strangers, and who was widely known in the colony. During the early years of his pastorate he used all his influence to persuade his parish- ioners to build a schoolhouse and finally succeeded in 1764, after having offered to furnish them three months' schooling. His most famous sermon was that of April 12, 1773, at the annual meeting of the freemen of New Haven, in which he argued the right of Connecticut or of any state to have its officers chosen from among its own citi- zens, and dependent for their salaries upon their fellow citizens alone:
How are governours, who are not natives of the country, and
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who are independent of the people whom they govern, harass- ing and plaguing their respective Assemblies, with proroga- tions, dissolutions, and almost every low-lived artifice, to worry them into measures fatal to the liberties and happiness of their constituents. ... Every free state therefore should maintain a most vigilant care and guard against foreign, or independent rulers and against all measures as are calculated to introduce them, and impose them upon a people. The very first step this way, ought thoroughly to rouse, thoroughly alarm them.
More interesting and smacking of a later century was his advice to the people to keep their officials dependent upon themselves, and to that end to preserve equality of property :
It should also be the particular care of every civil commu- nity to keep their rulers as much as possible dependent on them, and intimately connected with them. For this purpose it will be highly politic, in every free state, to keep property as equal- ly divided among the inhabitants as possible, and not to suffer a few persons to amass all the riches and wealth of a country: and also to have a special care how they adopt any laws, cus- toms, or precedents, which have a tendency this way. For when men become possessors of the Wealth of a state, it will be in their power to purchase, or by undue influence, which, in such circumstances, they may have ways almost innumerable, to thrust themselves into all places of honour and trust. This will put it in their power, by fraud or force to keep themselves in those important posts, and to oppress and tyrannize over their fellow-men. It will teach the people to look up to them, as to lords and masters, make them servile, and by little and little it will despoil them of all true liberty and freedom. But on the other hand, the keeping of property, as equally divided as possible among a people, will make elections more free, the rulers more dependent, and the liberty and privileges of the ruled vastly more secure.
Trumbull was one of the faction supporting Connecti- cut's title to the lands west of the Hudson river, and had disagreed with Ingersoll as to their boundaries. In 1774
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he printed a pamphlet on the subject and wrote several articles in the Connecticut journal which drew forth bitter comments. One opponent, writing in the Journal on April 8, gave some light on the occasional extreme antag- onism to clerics who ventured into politics. "Rev. Sir, The great engagedness you have for some time shown in the political controversy between the Susquehannah proprie- tors and the inhabitants of this colony, ... to the neglect of the duties of your sacred function, is a striking evidence how much greater weight carnal things have in your mind .... " Better to prepare sermons and attend to du- ties than to be "midwifing into the world such incestuous, illegitimate pieces, begot by DECRIPID MALICE upon ZEAL for PARTY-SPIRIT."
In 1775, the story goes, Trumbull descended from his pulpit one Sabbath morning, turned up the leaf of the communion table, and invited his people to enlist. Forty- six responded to his call. In 1777 he again helped the recruiting, and the muster roll is in his handwriting. Several times he served as chaplain and in 1777 was chosen captain of a volunteer company. Several times, also, he is said to have shared in the defense during raids. His services as historian of Connecticut are too well known to need mention.
Noah Welles of Stamford, a special friend of Governor William Livingston of New Jersey, had already in his election sermon of 1764, preached eloquently of liberty in a free state. In December, 1765, he preached at Stam- ford to arouse his people against the Stamp Act and until his death in 1776, of jail fever contracted during his chap- laincy with the army, continued to preach resistance.
One of the most interesting of the ministers was Elizur Goodrich of Durham, an agriculturist of note, a teacher, and a stout preacher. He had long studied and discussed
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principles of law and government and had read Grotius, Pufendorf, and the like. Consequently, when the struggle with Great Britain began, he preached eloquently and often on the colonists' rights, and urged his people, as a religious duty, to give their property and their lives to the cause. Report has it that he showed each member of his congregation how he could best help, even to the point of advising the young women to give their hearts and hands to those young men only who had given theirs to the war for independence. Goodrich became so well known and popular that at one time, so it is said, more than a thou- sand citizens voted for him for governor.
James Dana of Wallingford was also a man of influence. Dana's best-known sermons were the one of November, 1774, addressed to the town meeting, and his election sermon of 1779. In the latter he pleaded for simplicity of manners, special attention to agriculture and education, and advised the magistrates not to govern too much. "There was never sounder maxim than that lately ad- vanced by a worthy prelate. The art of government consists in not governing too much." Dana was also an early advo- cate of independence. At one time when the legislature was in session, he preached in Whittelsey's church in New Haven on Moses and his refusal, when he came to years of discretion, to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter- an allusion easily understood by his hearers.
These veiled allusions to independence through the story of Rehoboam or through other biblical tales were fairly numerous in sermons and clerical addresses, long before there was open talk of independence. The earliest seems to have been in Stephen Johnson's Fast Day ser- mon in 1765.3 One such sermon was preached on July 14, 1774, at Wrentham, Massachusetts, by David Sherman
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