USA > Connecticut > The history of Connecticut, from the first settlement of the colony to the adoption of the present constitution, vol. I > Part 8
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* See Rev. Leonard Bacon's discourse on the Early Constitutional History of Con- necticut, p. 5. See, also, Rev. Dr. Hawes' Centennial Address, which points out with great clearness and ability the distinct features of this document. Examine, too, Rev. Dr. Bushnell's " Historical Estimate," which should be read by all those unworthy sons of Connecticut, now residents here, who in traveling write themselves down upon the books of hotels, as citizens of Boston, or New York. Such wretches, who, in the language of Wordsworth, would " botanize upon their mother's grave," are the only specks that need to be washed off from the surface of our history. However, we have occasion to rejoice that they do not indicate the degeneracy of Connecticut, as it is believed that none of them sprung from the early families.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
land of constitutional freedom, whose pure air was breathed by the earliest planters of Connecticut. Under this consti- tution they passed, it is true, some quaint laws, that some- times provoke a smile, and, in those who are unmindful of the age in which they lived, sometimes a sneer. I shall speak of these laws in their order, I hope with honesty and not with too much partiality. It may be proper to say here, however, that for one law that has been passed in Connecticut of a bigoted or intolerant character, a diligent explorer into the English court records or statute books for evidences of bigotry, and revolting cruelty, could find twenty in England. " Kings have been dethroned," says Bancroft, the eloquent Ameri- can historian, "recalled, dethroned again, and so many con- stitutions framed or formed, stifled or subverted, that memory may despair of a complete catalogue ; but the people of Connecticut have found no reason to deviate essentially from the government as established by their fathers. History has ever celebrated the commanders of armies on which victory has been entailed, the heroes who have won laurels in scenes of carnage and rapine. Has it no place for the founders of states, the wise legislators who struck the rock in the wilderness, and the waters of liberty gushed forth in copious and perennial fountains ?"
REV JOHN DAVENI DIRT.
John Davenporte.
CHAPTER V.
FOUNDING OF NEW HAVEN COLONY.
IT has been found necessary to depart a little from the order of events as they transpired, for the sake of a more dis- tinct arrangement. Let us now return.
Although one powerful enemy had been subdued, the little commonwealth was threatened by others almost equally for- midable. Early in November, the ground was hidden with snow. It fell to a great depth during the winter, and re- mained until late in March. A second time the people were threatened with famine. There was an alarming scarcity of corn. Mr. Pyncheon of Agawam, (now Springfield,) a gentleman of great resources and tact, was deputed by the court to negotiate with the Indians for this then indispensa- ble staple of human food. Mr. Pyncheon contracted to fur- nish five hundred bushels. But this inconsiderable quantity would scarcely keep the inhabitants from starvation a week, and it was necessary to take other measures. A vessel was dispatched upon the same errand to the Narragansett bay, but it would seem with little success, for it soon became necessary to look further. A committee was finally sent to Pocomtock, (Deerfield,) where there was a large Indian vil- lage, and such large stores of corn, that all apprehensions of famine were soon at an end. Such quantities were bought there, that the natives came down the river with fifty canoes laden with it at one time .* But other troubles pressed hard upon the people. The colony, on account of the expenses of the Pequot war, was largely in debt. A further outlay of money was also needed to provide guns and magazines of powder and ball for future security. A tax of six hun- dred and twenty poundst-the first ever levied in Connecti-
* Mason's History.
+ J. H. Trumbull's Colonial Records, i. 12.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
cut-was ordered by the General Court to be immediately collected from the towns. This was done in February, 1638, and, in the March following, the court appointed John Mason commander-in-chief of the militia of Connecticut. He was directed to call out the militia of each town in the colony ten times during each year, and instruct and practice them in military affairs. For this arduous service he received a salary of forty pounds .* The eloquent Hooker was desig- nated as most fit to deliver to him the staff of his new official rank. The ceremony, simple as it doubtless was, must have been imposing and memorable to all who witnessed it. But I will not attempt to represent a scene that has been described by one of the most eloquent of American writers in words like the following :
" Here is a scene for the painter of some future day-I see it even now before me. In the distance, and behind the huts of Hartford, waves the signal flag by which the town watch is to give notice of enemies. In the foreground stands the tall, swart form of the soldier in his armor; and before him, in sacred, apostolic beauty, the majestic Hooker. Haynes and Hopkins, with the legislature, and the hardy, toil-worn settlers and their wives and daughters, are gathered round them in close order, gazing with moistened eyes at the hand which lifts the open commission to God, and listening to the fervent prayer that the God of Israel will endue his servant, as heretofore, with courage and counsel to lead them in the days of their future peril. True, there is nothing classic in the scene. This is no crown bestowed at the Olympic games, or at a Roman triumph, and yet there is a severe, primitive sublimity in the picture, that will sometime be in- vested with feelings of the deepest reverence. Has not the time already come, when the people of Connecticut will gladly testify that reverence, by a monument that shall make the beautiful valley of the Yantic, where Mason sleeps, as beautifully historic, and be a mark to the eye from one of the
* J. H. Trumbull's Colonial Records, i. 15.
93
ARRIVAL OF DAVENPORT AND EATON.
[1637.]
most ancient and loveliest, as well as most populous, towns of our ancient commonwealth ?"*
Meanwhile, a new colony was preparing to plant itself in the woods of New England. On the 26th of July, 1637,t arrived in Massachusetts, the Rev. John Davenport, accom- panied by Theophilus Eaton, Edward Hopkins, and a num- ber of other gentlemen of wealth and character, with their servants and household effects. They were for the most part from London, and had been bred to mercantile and com- mercial pursuits. Their coming was hailed at Boston with much joy, for they were the most opulent of all the compa- nies who had emigrated to New England.
The Massachusetts planters made strong efforts to retain these gentlemen within their own jurisdiction. If they would stay, the General Court offered them whatever place they might choose,¿ and the inhabitants of Newbury said they would give up their whole town if they would consent to occupy it. But the new emigrants had come to found a dis- tinct colony, and therefore declined to accept these generous overtures. They were only in doubt where they should go. The pursuit of the Pequots from the mouth of the Thames westward along the coast to Fairfield, had led the English to explore that charming tract of country, with its inlets, har- bors and coves, and its extended plains of rich, alluvial land, enlivened with the sparkling waters of the Housatonic, and numerous smaller streams that impart such a pleasing variety even to a level country. Those who went upon this expe- dition had brought back such a favorable report of the fertility of this territory, that it was resolved to make it the seat of a new colony. Accordingly, in the fall of the same year, Eaton with a few of his friends visited Connecticut, and made a careful exploration of the sea-coast and the back country adjacent to it. They finally pitched upon a place that had a good harbor, called by the Indians, Quinnipiack, as the most eligible spot whereon to found the capital city of their colony.
* Rev. Dr. Bushnell's Historical Estimate of Connecticut, 22, 23.
+ Savage's Winthrop, i. 272 ; Trumbull, i. 95. # Winthrop.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
Here they built a temporary hut, and left a few servants in it to keep possession during the winter. The Dutch had been familiar with this locality long before, and probably from the color of the high rocks, that are visible to a great distance, had given it the name of "Red Mount."
On the 30th of the next March, the whole company set sail for Quinnipiack. They must have had a rough voyage, as they were a whole fortnight in reaching their destined har- bor. They kept their first Sabbath, with services suited to the occasion, under a branching oak, large enough to give its imperfect shelter to every man, woman, and child, in the colony .* We may almost recall this simple yet imposing scene. The grim old oak, whose buds, just opened, have not yet passed from gray to green, stretching its gnarled limbs between the worshipers and the ungenial April sky, darkened at brief intervals by flitting clouds ; the brown trunks of the elms, their slender boughs at last evincing signs of life ; the different varieties of maple, some adorned with blossoms of pale green, others blushing in hues bright as those that flush the cheek of the young maiden; further off, the dingy cedar, with tangled grape vines coiled around its top; in the distance, a bald, red rock, bending its well-defined outline around the border of the plain ; to the east of it, another of a different form rising solitary like a sentinel, a tuft of pines surmounting its seamy forehead ; near by, a lively view of dancing blue waters, rocking two small ships with reefed sails-make out the more marked traits of external nature that meet the eye.
Beneath the oak, the worshiping assembly is ranged in due order. Near the trunk of the tree are the two Eatons-one in the robes of the English church, for they were not yet thrown aside in New England except in the Plymouth colony. The Rev. Mr. Prudden, Hopkins, Gregson, Gilbert, and other gentlemen-Davenport in canonicles forming the central
* Trumbull, i. 96. This oak, according to tradition, stood near the north-east corner of College and George-streets, (New Haven) in the present door yard of a venerable dwelling, in which was born that staunch old divine of the puritan stamp, the Rev. Lyman Beecher, D.D.
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95
THE PLANTATION COVENANT.
[1638.]
figure-opposite them, their wives and daughters; and at a respectful distance the humbler classes, the males and females in separate groups ; a sober, decent congregation of Chris- tians, setting at naught the inclemencies of the sky, or laying them to heart as the chastening frowns of God and the hiding of his face for a season, they listen attentively, first to Daven- port, as he discourses to them from the first verse of the third chapter of St. Mathew, and warns them " of the temptations of the wilderness ;"* and then to Prudden, who follows his fel- low-laborer with a well-chosen text from the same chapter, " The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." Were they druids beneath their consecrated groves, the scene would be inter- esting and instructive; but Christians as they are, under whatever forms they invoke the aid of Heaven-Christians contending with a wilderness, that must ultimately fall before them, the spectacle is sublime.
They had not been long at Quinnipiack before they entered into a "plantation covenant," the language of which is, " that as in matters that concern the gathering and ordering of a church, so also in all public affairs that concern civil order, they would all of them be ordered by the rules which the Scripture held forth to them."
The spring of that year was backward and forbidding. The seed corn rotted in the ground, and the farmers were obliged to plant their fields twice, and in some instances three times, before the tardy grain sprouted and grew .; This sadly disheartened them. But it came up at last, and throve so well that they took courage. But on the first of June their prospects were again overcast. Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon of that day, the whole surface of New England was shaken by an earthquake. We are told that it came "like continued thunder," or the rattling of coach-wheels along a paved street. In some places it was so violent that it threw down the chimney-tops. Nor did it
* Bacon's "Historical Discourses," 13; Kingsley, 80; Trumbull, i. 96. t Winthrop ; Morton.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
stop with the land. The ships trembled in the harbors. The islands, as well as the main land, felt the shock. The chron- iclers tell us, perhaps with some exaggeration, that the earth shuddered for several minutes, and that for many days after it was unquiet and tremulous .*
In the following November, Theophilus Eaton, Mr. Daven- port, and other gentlemen, made a contract with Mo-mau- gu-in in reference to a sale of lands. A very interesting document it is, being in the nature both of a deed of sale of Quinnipiack and a league or solemn treaty, offensive and de- fensive ; the chief covenanting neither to terrify, disturb, nor injure the English, who in return agreed to protect the chief and his tribe, and see that they had lands on the east side of the harbor both for hunting and tillage. The celebrated Thomas Stanton interpreted the indenture, and it was exe- cuted with the usual formalities. On the 11th of December following, the same gentlemen bought another large tract of land lying northerly of the former purchase. This second piece of land was ten miles wide from north to south, and thirteen miles in length from east to west. It was deeded to them by Mon-to-we-se, son of the great sachem of Mat-ta- be-seck. It was a valuable territory, and has since been di- vided into the towns of New Haven, Branford, Wallingford, East Haven, Woodbridge, Cheshire, and North Haven.t To one who now stands upon the summit of West Rock, and looks off upon the church steeples that are visible within the limits of those towns, it seems scarcely credible that the considera- tion of this deed was thirteen English coats, with the reser- vation of the right to plant and hunt upon the granted pre- mises. But the price was an adequate one. What could the grantors do with money ? and the liberty to occupy the land for the two purposes named in the deed, comprised in the mind of an Indian, nearly all that lawyers mean by the term fee simple.
In the character of its immigrants the colony of New Haven was peculiarly fortunate. Early in the year 1639, another
* Trumbull, i. 96. + Trumbull, i. 99.
97
MEETING IN MR. NEWMAN'S BARN.
[1639.]
company of gentlemen of high character arrived from Eng- land. This new emigration was headed by the Rev. Henry Whitfield. Its other principal men were William Leete, afterwards governor of the colony; Samuel Desborough, (or Disbrowe,) to whom Cromwell afterwards assigned the post of lord chancellor of Scotland, at a time when he was in need of efficient men; also Robert Kitchel and William Chittenden, both men of high character.
On the 4th of June, 1639, the free planters of Quinnipiack met for the first time to form a civil and religious organiza- tion. They had no spacious hall, as now, where they might assemble and discuss affairs of state. The best shelter from the sun that the humble architecture of the place could then afford its population, was "Mr. Newman's barn"- Robert Newman's, probably-a locality doubly consecrated, for here, within a few feet of the spot where the planters of Quinnipiack first convened to found a commonwealth, lived and died Noah Webster, the first philologist of modern times .* A grave matter was pending, and Mr. Davenport brought the minds of the planters to a suitable frame, by preaching to them from the words of Solomon : "Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars." It was a pungent and weighty discourse, in the sentiments of which Theophilus Eaton probably concurred, as he appears to have had a good understanding with his pastor upon all topics. The preacher expressed himself very explicitly in reference to the divine origin of government, and argued that the church and the civil polity were inseparable. Davenport claimed that the church ought to be supported by seven pil- lars or members of eminent piety, and that the other mem- bers should be added to the seven pillars.
* For the discovery of the location of this primitive hall of legislation, the public are indebted to the researches of the Rev. Leonard Bacon, D.D., whose eloquent " Historical Discourses, on the completion of two hundred years from the begin- ning of the first church in New Haven," have brought to light many interesting facts in the early history of the New Haven colony, which were before either wholly unknown or entirely misapprehended.
7
98
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
A series of resolutions were adopted at this meeting, of which I subjoin a copy.
I. That the scriptures hold forth a perfect rule for the di- rection and government of all men in all duties which they perform to God and men, as well in families and common- wealth, as in matters of the church.
II. That, as in matters which concerned the gathering and ordering of a church, so likewise of all public offices which concern civil order, as the choice of magistrates and officers, making and repealing laws, dividing allotments of inheritance, and all things of like nature, they would all be governed by those rules which the Scripture held forth to them.
III. That all those who had desired to be received as free planters, had settled in the plantation with a purpose, resolu- tion, and desire, that they might be admitted into church fel- lowship according to Christ.
IV. That all the free planters held themselves bound to establish such civil order as might best conduce to the secur- ing of the purity and peace of the ordinance to themselves and their posterity according to God.
V. That church members only should be free burgesses ; and that they only should choose magistrates among them- selves, to have power of transacting all the public civil affairs of the plantation ; of making and repealing laws, dividing in- heritances, deciding of differences that may arise, and doing all things and businesses of like nature.
That civil officers might be chosen, and government pro- ceed according to these resolutions, it was necessary that a church should be formed. Without this there could be neither freemen nor magistrates. Mr. Davenport, therefore, proceeded to make proposals relative to the formation of it, in such a manner that no blemish might be left on the " beginnings of church work." It was then resolved to this effect :
VI. That twelve men should be chosen, that their fitness for the foundation work might be tried, and that it should be
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99
[1639.] THE CONSTITUTION OF NEW HAVEN COLONY.
in the power of those twelve men to choose seven to begin the church .*
Under this constitution, so original and unique in some of its provisions, that I have been able to find no other pre- viously existing to which I might compare it, the colony of New Haven was organized and continued to flourish for many years. The seven pillars were Theophilus Eaton, Es- quire, Mr. John Davenport, Robert Newman, Mathew Gil- bert, Thomas Fugill, John Punderson, and Jeremiah Dixon. It has attracted much attention, and many severe remarks have been made, arraigning it for bigotry and intolerance. That it was not erected upon that basis of universal freedom peculiar at that early day to the constitution of Connecticut, and that some of its terms are harsh and jar upon the ears of men who, in the nineteenth century, have been reared under a system of government where the church and the state, though on terms of friendly intercourse, have no forced or arbitrary connection, can not be denied. The govern- ment organized under this constitution has been called a the- ocracy, but with what propriety the term has been applied to it, I am unable to see. The free planters, without reference to church membership, and before their church was instituted, met together, debated earnestly the principles that were to be embodied in their constitution, and then voted with one consent that "church members only should be free burgesses, and that they only should choose magistrates among them- selves, to have power of transacting all the public civil affairs of the plantation." This is not a claim set up by the church, to rule the people by virtue of a divine right. As yet, they have no church. But the planters themselves designate, of their own choice, for reasons that they deem valid, a body or class of men whom they choose, out of which all officers of civil trust shall be elected. Nor are the interests of the church and state in any way blended. No church officer, as such, has any civil power. But we are told that these men were surely fanatics in one respect; that they adopted the
* Trumbull, i. 104, 105.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
laws of God as laid down in his revealed word. The reader will remember that the people of New Haven were fourteen months deliberating what kind of constitution they would form. They were still more slow and cautious in coming to a conclusion what should be the temper and spirit of the laws passed under it. And in order that no act of legislation might be passed with unseemly haste, they decided to adopt the laws of Moses until they could form others more appli- cable to the state and condition of their people. What out- rage did they perpetrate under these laws ? What injustice did they practice either toward the wild tribes of savages that surrounded them, or toward their own citizens ? What was the practical working of their system ? Let their schools, where learning, elastic and free as the air of the north, yet substantial and well-grounded as the hills on whose summits that air lingers to sport with the cheek of health that meets it there-let that fair city, laid out in squares by its first foun- ders, as if they were prescient of the beauty that was to adorn its forehead like a chaplet of unfading flowers, long after the green mounds should be leveled and the monuments thrown down that claimed for the leaders of the colony " the passing tribute of a sigh"-let these, and the good order that still springs up and grows upon the spot as if it were indigenous there like the leaves of the shade trees that make the city a bower, yet grows not old and fades like them-answer for the spirit and the practical workings of the constitution and laws of their commonwealth. " By their fruits ye shall know them." Bigotry, superstition, intolerance, are words of weighty significance in the mouths of wise, dispassionate men, when applied to the history of civil and religious lib- erty in England and America. But when adopted as the catch-words of a party, ecclesiastical or political, and hurled like thunderbolts from army to army of the combatants to blast and shatter their adversaries, what are they but the implements of a blind destruction, at sight of which reason retires from the field, and Christian charity shudders as she turns away her face ? It is my purpose to avoid the appli-
1
101
MILFORD SETTLED.
[1639.]
cation of those words as much as possible in delineating the various parties and classes of people representing different interests in Connecticut, both before and since the American revolution. The laws of the colony of New Haven I shall treat of, when I come to express my views of the jurispru- dence of Connecticut.
Having thus established itself at home upon safe founda- tions, the colony of New Haven began to send out liberal swarms from the metropolitan hive. On the 12th of Feb- ruary, 1639, Wepowage (Milford) was purchased,* and Me- nunkatuck (Guilford,) in September of that year. Both towns were settled according to the New Haven plan. The Rev. Peter Prudden led the way in the settlement of Milford. The "seven pillars" of the Milford church were, Peter Prudden, William Fowler, Edmund Tapp, Zechariah Whitman, Thomas Buckingham, Thomas Welch, and John Astwood. Milford was an independent commonwealth until 1643, when it be- came merged in the colony of New Haven.t Their civil institutions did not differ essentially from those of New Haven. The planters of Milford were most of them from the counties of Essex, Hereford, and York, in England. A part of them came first to New Haven ; a still larger part followed Mr. Prudden from Wethersfield, where he preached for a little while in the course of the year 1638. Among the principal gentlemen who came from Wethersfield to Milford, were Robert Treat, Esq., afterwards governor of Connecti- cut, and renowned both as a civilian and soldier, and John Sherman, a venerable name, of whom I shall by and by give a more extended sketch. There were fifty-four heads of families, and more than two hundred persons in all, who first went to Milford .¿ A more substantial company of emigrants never followed a clergyman into the wild woods of America, than the fathers of Milford. Guided by Thomas Tibbals, they went through the forest from New Haven to Wepow- age. An Indian trail was their only path. The territory at that time was occupied with the Paugussett Indians, of whose
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