USA > Connecticut > The history of Connecticut, from the first settlement of the colony to the adoption of the present constitution, vol. II > Part 38
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The committee reported, and the convention agreed, that each state represented should be entitled to one vote; and that seven states should constitute a quorum ; all committees were to be chosen by ballot ; the doors were to be closed ; and an injunction of secresy was placed on the debates. The members were even prohibited from taking copies of entries on the journals .*
In a few days, about fifty delegates had presented their credentials and were sworn. They represented eleven of the thirteen states. Before the convention broke up, the dele- gates from another state arrived.
The character of our legislature, and indeed of our people, at this time, could not have been better represented, than by the choice of delegates to attend this convention. They are to this day called to mind, and their familiar faces appear whenever the state, which was honored in doing them honor, is mentioned at home or abroad. Their names were William Samuel Johnson, Oliver Ellsworth, and Roger Sherman.
Dickinson of Delaware, Johnson of Connecticut, and Rutledge of South Carolina, all of whom had acted so con- spicuous a part in the Congress of 1765, again had the oppor- tunity of renewing the reminiscences of a day antecedent to the Revolution. Franklin had been a member of the con- vention at Albany in 1754-thirty-three years before. Wil- liam Livingston, George Read, Elbridge Gerry, Robert Mor- ris, Alexander Hamilton, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Edmund Randolph, and others of a similar cast-old men and young-the civilians, lawyers, and military leaders, who had counseled or fought in the Revolution, and others who had grown up to the estate of manhood under its auspices, were there, alike to testify to the frailty of the confederacy, and to devise a substitute for it. But what should that sub- stitute be ? This was a question not easily to be settled. Those gentlemen representing the large states of Virginia,
* Hildreth, iii. 482.
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THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.
[1787.]
Massachusetts with the Carolinas and Georgia,* were in favor of a national government based upon proportionate representation ; while, on the other hand, the smaller states of Connecticut, New Jersey, and Delaware, with most of the delegates from Maryland and New York, were in favor of giving to the states, by virtue of their individual sovereignty, a power under the Constitution not depending upon numbers.
The reader has seen that state sovereignty had been a favorite political maxim of Connecticut from the earliest times. Small as she was, she had been obliged to contend for her individuality with her whole strength in order to keep it.
Governor Randolph was the first to speak upon the inade- quacy of the articles of confederation. He spoke with his usual earnestness and ability. At the close of his speech he offered a series of resolutions, fifteen in number, proposing important changes in the federal system. The main features of these resolutions were, a general legislature or congress having two branches-one to be chosen by the people accord- ing to the free population, or taxes; while the other was to be selected by the first from candidates nominated by the state legislatures. It was also suggested that there should be a national executive, judiciary, and council of revision, to be elected by the proposed Congress. Randolph's resolutions, with another series from the pen of Charles Pinckney, were referred to the committee of the whole. The principal debaters in the committee were Randolph, Madison, and Mason, of Virginia ; Gerry, Gorham, and King, of Massa- chusetts ; Wilson, Morris, and Franklin, of Pennsylvania ; Johnson, Sherman, and Ellsworth, of Connecticut; Hamilton and Lansing, of New York; the two Pinckneys, of South Carolina; Patterson, of New Jersey ; Martin, of Maryland ; Dickinson. of Delaware; and Williamson, of North Carolina.
* The Carolinas and Georgia, which at that time embraced the present states of Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, anticipated that they should at no distant day contain a greater population than all the rest of the Union together. See Hildreth, iii. 486.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
It is with pleasure that we contemplate the position of our little state in the long debates that followed. Three men could hardly have been selected from the whole body of the people, who were so different in their mental characteristics, and yet so well fitted to give weight and influence to each other. It will not be disputed, as no one thought of disputing it then, that they were all men belonging to the first rank of American statesmen. Sherman was of a grave and massive understanding, a man who looked at the most difficult ques- tions, and untied their tangled knots, without having his vision dimmed or his head made dizzy. He appears to have known the science of government and the relations of society from his childhood, and to have needed no teaching because he saw moral, ethical, and political truths in all their relations, better than they could be imparted to him by others. He took for granted as self-evident the maxims that had made Plato prematurely old, and had consumed the best hours of Bacon and Sir Thomas More, in attempting to elaborate and reconcile the anomalies and inconsistencies of the British constitution. With more well-digested thoughts to communi- cate than any other member of the convention, he used fewer words to express his sentiments than any of his compeers. Indeed, his thoughts could hardly be said to be expressed but were rather incorporated with his language. His views, uttered in a plain though didactic form, seemed to be presented not so much in a course of reasoning as to be an embodiment of pure reason itself.
With a broad-based consciousness, extended as the line of the horizon where calm philosophy and wild theory meet and seem to run into each other, he saw at a glance the most abstruse subjects presented to his consideration, and fused them down as if by the heat of a furnace, into globes of solid maxims and demonstrable propositions. Nor did he look merely at the present hour, but with a sympathy as lively as his ken was far-reaching, he penetrated the curtains that hid future generations from the sight of common men, and made as careful provision for the unborn millions of his country-
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THE SHERMANS.
[1787.]
men, as for the generation that was then upon the stage of life. With no false pride to sustain at the expense of virtue, or schemes of grasping ambition to gratify, with no favorites to flutter around him and claim the first fruits of his confi- dence and labors ; fearless to announce an opinion, as he was modest and delicate in his mode of doing it, he was able at a moment's warning, to bring his best intellectual resources into the field of debate.
These traits of character belonged to Sherman by the double tenure of inheritance and the endowments of nature. He was descended from the Shermans of Yaxley, in the county of Suffolk, England, as well as from the Wallers, the Yaxleys, and other families in the maternal line belonging to the solid landed gentry who had helped to frame the British constitution. Three members of the Sherman family emi- grated to America in 1634. Two of them, Samuel Sherman, who soon removed to the valley of the Connecticut and was one of the strongest pillars of the colony, and the Rev. John Sherman, who was famous throughout New Eng- land as the best mathematician and astronomer of the colo- nies, and one of the most eloquent preachers of that day, were brothers, and are not unknown to fame. The other emigrant, designated in our old books as Captain John Sherman, was their first cousin, and not inferior to them in moral worth if indeed he could be said to be in intellectual ability. He was a soldier of high courage, and that his education had not been neglected, his beautifully legible and clerkly hand which still perpetuates the records of Watertown, in Massachusetts, as well as the phraseology of the records themselves, bear ample testimony. Roger Sherman was a grandson of this gentleman, and inherited the best traits of the family. But good lineage and intellectual powers of a high order, were not adequate of themselves to form such a character as Sher- man's. It was to be tried in the school of poverty, and to buffet the waves of adversity, before it could gain nerve and strength enough to baffle the sophistries of the British min- istry, defy the sword of a tyrant, or successfully oppose itself
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
to the headlong flood of popular passions. His personal his- tory, of which so much has been written and so little under- stood, is given in the subjoined note, and will show with what success he addressed himself to support his numerous brothers and sisters, and to overcome the obstacles of evil fortune .*
* The name of Sherman is by no means a common one in England, though it has been highly respected and honored. Sir Henry Sherman was one of the exe- cutors of the will of Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby, county of Lancaster, dated 23 May, 1521. William Sherman, Esq., purchased Knightston, in the time of Henry VIII. A monument to Wm. Sherman, is in Ottery, St. Mary, 1542. John Sher- man, and his son both died in the same place, in 1617. John (above named,) married Dorothy, sister of John Drake, Esq., of Arke. William Sherman, of Ottery St. Mary (county of Devon,) had a daughter Catharine, married to Gilbert Drake, of Spratsays, Devon.
" Pedigree of Sherman, of Yaxley-From Davy's manuscript collections relat- ing to the county of Suffolk, (England,) deposited in the British Museum.
1. Thomas Sherman, (1st,) of Yaxley, county Suffolk, married Jane, daughter of John Waller, Gent., and had nine children, viz., Thomas, Richard, John, Henry, Richard, Francis, James, Anthony, and a daughter who married Lock- wood.
2. Thomas Sherman, (2d,) also of Yaxley, married Elizabeth, daughter of An- thony Yaxley, Esq., of Mellis. He was living in 1561. His children were- Thomas, Elizabeth, Anne, John, Rev. Richard, Owen, William, Margaret, and Faith.
(3.) Thomas Sherman, (3d,) Gent., of Yaxley, and Stuston, (afterwards of Ipswich,) married a daughter of - Thwaytes, of Hardingham, in Norfolk. His will is dated March 9, 1618, and was proved in 1619. To his wife Margaret, he gave a life-lease of his dwelling-house, after which it should go to his son John. To his son Thomas, he gave a house and lands in Swilland. His son Samuel, his " daughter Mary Tomlinson," his " daughter Carpenter," his " brother Alexander Sherman, late of Tyhenham, in Norfolk, deceased," and his two daughters, Margaret and Barbara, are also mentioned in his will. I have good reason to believe that the John and Samuel of this family were none other than the Rev. John Sherman, of Watertown, Mass., and the Hon. Samuel Sherman, of Weth- ersfield, Conn.
3. John Sherman, second son of Thomas Sherman, (2d,) and brother of Thomas Sherman, (3d,) married Anne, daughter of William Cane, and had eight children, viz., Faith, William, Thomas, Eleanor, Jane, Milicant, Elizabeth, and Anne. He resided in Newark, Leicestershire.
4. William Sherman, eldest son of the preceding, married Mary Lascelles of Nottinghamshire. He was aged thirty-one years in 1619. His son John, came to America, in 1634, and settled in Watertown, Mass., near his cousin of the same name, from whom he is distinguished in history as Captain John Sherman.
441
OLIVER ELLSWORTH.
Ellsworth was logical and argumentative in his mode of illustration, and possessed a peculiar style of condensed statement, through which there ran, like a magnetic current, the most delicate train of analytical reasoning.
His eloquence was wonderfully persuasive, too, and his man- ner solemn and impressive. His style was decidedly of the patrician school, and yet so simple that a child could follow
5. Captain John Sherman, married Martha Palmer, and had five children, viz., Martha, Sarah, Joseph, Grace, and John. He died January 25, 1690. Martha, his widow, died February 7, 1700.
6. Joseph Sherman, (eldest son of Captain John,) married Elizabeth Winship, Nov. 18, 1673. They had ten children, viz., John, Edward, Joseph, Samuel, Jonathan, Ephraim, Elizabeth, William, Sarah, and Nathaniel. He died January 20,1730-'31.
7. William Sherman, married (1.) Rebecca Cutler, of Charlestown, Mass., and had one son who died in infancy. He married (2d,) Mehetable, daughter of Benjamin Wellington, of Watertown, Mass., Sept. 13, 1715. Their children were, William, of New Milford, Mary, Roger, Elizabeth, Rev. Nathaniel, of Bedford, Mass., Rev. Josiah, of Woborn, (Mass.,) Goshen, and Woodbridge, (Conn.,) and Rebecca.
8. Hon. Roger Sherman, (son of William and Mehetable,) was born at New- ton, Mass., April 19, 1721. At the age of twenty years his father died, and the care of a large family thus early devolved upon him and his elder brother. In 1743, he removed to New Milford, and became a partner of that brother in the mercantile business. Two years after, Roger was appointed county surveyor ; and in 1754, he was admitted to the bar of Litchfield county. While a resident of New Milford, he also became a justice of the peace, deacon of the church, repre- sentative, and justice of the quorum. Removing to New Haven, in 1761, he was soon chosen an assistant, and appointed a judge of the superior court, which office he held for twenty-three years. He was a member of Congress for nineteen years, and was a signer of the declaration of independence. He was a member of the council of safety, member of the convention which formed the Constitution of the United States, and United States Senator. He died July 23, 1793, aged seventy- two. Mr. Sherman's first wife was a daughter of Dea. Joseph Hartwell, of Stoughton ; his second wife was a daughter of Benjamin Prescott, Jr.
Hon. Roger Minott Sherman, LL. D., was a son of the Rev. Josiah Sherman, (above named,) and was a nephew of the Hon. Roger Sherman. He was born in Woborn, Mass., in 1773, and graduated at Yale College in 1792, in which institution he was for three years a tutor. In 1796 he was admitted to the bar, and soon commenced the practice of the law in Fairfield, where he resided until his death, Dec. 30, 1844. He was frequently a member of both branches of the legislature, and was subsequently a judge of the superior court. Judge Sherman was one of the most accomplished and eminent men in the state.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
without difficulty the steps by which he arrived at his con- clusions. That he also had the best judicial powers that were known in that elder age of our republic, will not be disputed. Add to these qualities, an eye that seemed to look an adver- sary through, a forehead and features so bold and marked as to promise all that his rich deep voice, expressive gestures and moral fearlessness, made good, add above all, that reserved force of scornful satire, so seldom employed, but so like the destructive movements of a corps of flying artillery, and the reader has an outline of the strength and majesty of Ells- worth .*
Johnson, added to the gifts of nature that had been so un- sparingly lavished upon him, the ripest perfections of the scholar and the most astute discipline that the study of the civil code and the common law of England can impart to their self-sacrificing devotees.
He had represented Connecticut in the Congress at New York in the year 1765, where he had met the first men of the continent. The address of that body to the king, remonstrating against the course pursued by the ministry and the parliament toward the American colonies, flowed mainly
* Josiah Ellsworth, of Windsor, was admitted a freeman in May, 1657, and was married to Mary Holcomb, Nov. 16, 1654. Their son Thomas Ellsworth, was born Sept. 2, 1665. William Ellsworth (son of Thomas,) was born April 15, 1702, was married to Mary Oliver, of Boston, June 16, 1737.
Oliver Ellsworth, LL. D., son of William and Mary Ellsworth, was born at Windsor, Conn., March 24, 1746-'7, (as appears by the Windsor records,) and graduated at the College of New Jersey, in 1766. He soon became one of the most eminent legal practitioners in the colony. He was successively a member of the council of his native state, delegate in the Continental Congress, judge of the superior court, member of the national constitutional convention, and of the state convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States. He was also chosen one of the first United States Senators from Connecticut, and was appoint- ed chief justice of the supreme court of the United States, as the successor of Jay. In 1799, President Adams appointed him Envoy Extraordinary to France-a post which he accepted. Having accomplished the business of his embassy, he spent some time in England where he sought to avail himself of the benefit of its miner- al waters. Returning, he again became a citizen of his native state ,and was once more elected to the council, and in May 1807, he was chosen chief justice of the state. He died at Windsor, November 26, 1807, aged sixty-five years.
443
WILLIAM SAMUEL JOHNSON.
from his fervent soul and was most of it penned by him. It is still preserved among the British archives, and evinces a lofty spirit of patriotism that might have breathed life into the dry bones of any administration based upon other principles than the spoils of office and the obstinacy of dis- appointed ambition. The very next year, the University of Oxford made him a doctor of laws, notwithstanding his efforts in behalf of American liberty. His fame as a law- yer was also pre-eminent. In 1782, he had appeared as counsel for Connecticut in the celebrated Wyoming con- troversy, where he met the ablest advocates that Pennsyl- 'vania could bring into the field against him, and was acknowl- edged to have exhibited on that occasion unrivalled powers both of reasoning and eloquence .*
These were formidable opponents when met single-handed; and united, they were irresistible.
The resolution proposing to elect the first branch of Con- gress by the people, was met on the threshold by Sherman. He was in favor of a system of checks and balances that would guard the great mass of the voters from the intrigues of politicians. In this he was seconded by the delegates from Massachusetts and South Carolina. But Ellsworth and Johnson were in favor of the plan of electing one branch of the national legislature by the people. After an earnest debate, that called out an exhibition of talent and learning that could at that time have been surpassed in no assembly
William Samuel Johnson, LL. D., eldest son of the Rev. Samuel Johnson, D. D., first President of King's (now Columbia) College, was born at Stratford, Conn., October 7, 1727, and graduated at Yale College in 1744. He was often a member of both branches of the Connecticut legislature, besides being a mem- ber of the old Congress of 1765, and of the Continental Congress during the revolution. In 1766, he visited England as the agent of the colony, where he remained until 1771 ; and during the following year, he was elected a judge of the superior court. He was also, as we have seen, a member of the convention which formed the Federal Constitution, and of the convention which subsequently ratified it. In 1787, he was elected a United States Senator, and during the same year was chosen President of Columbia College, in New York, a post which he . held until 1800, when he returned to Stratford, where he died Nov. 14, 1819, aged ninety-three.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
of men in the world, the proposition was carried. Having determined to elect one branch of Congress by the popular vote, the question then came before the committee for what term the members of that body should be chosen. Sherman, who had before taken what he thought to be more conservative ground than the Virginia delegates, proposed the term of one year. He was in favor of short terms. It made the mem- bers amenable to the power that elected them, and put them upon their good behavior. He did not desire that the new government should call into being and foster a class of poli- ticians such as had grown up under the shadow of the British parliament, and had, for a century and a half, in the shape of emissaries, colonial governors, and commissioners to settle boundary lines, preyed upon the people of this country. He was seconded in this view by Elbridge Gerry, his warm friend and ardent admirer, and by the other delegates from Connecticut, as well as by those of Massachusetts and South Carolina. Madison and his colleagues proposed three years for the same reason that Sherman had opposed the election by the people. This longer term was finally agreed upon.
Sherman made the same objection to the length of time named by Mr. Randolph and advocated by Madison as the term of the senatorial office. Seven years seemed by the gentlemen from Virginia short enough. Randolph urged that "the democratic licentiousness of the state legislatures proved the necessity of a firm senate." Sherman argued differently. He had lived in a part of the world where the licentiousness of state legislatures was at that time a thing unknown, and where the voters-such was their stability- were in the habit of annually going through with the form of electing the same state officers and the same judges year after year, with the regularity of the sun and the tides, until the functionaries thus submitted so often to their scrutiny, and brought within their reach, either withdrew their names as candidates or died. With habitudes of mind formed under the operations of a free government instituted and kept alive by such a people, Sherman, who had more confidence in
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DEBATE IN CONVENTION.
[1787.]
the masses than he had in those who might impose upon their credulity, found no difficulty in believing that seven years was too long a term of office. He used the same arguments that he had employed when advocating the annual choice of the members of the first branch of the legislature.
The question was then agitated, how the second branch of the legislature should be chosen. Wilson proposed that the people should do it ; but this did not meet the approval of any state represented in the convention except Pennsylvania. Dickinson and Sherman spoke strongly in behalf of confid- ing this election to the legislatures of the respective states. This was hotly contested, but at last prevailed.
The smaller states, of which Sherman was a principal champion, were afraid of being overwhelmed by the larger ones, and insisted that the upper or second branch of the legislature should be made up of an equal number of mem- bers from each state, without regard to population. Sher- man entered into this debate with his whole soul, and was ably seconded by his colleagues. Five states voted in favor, and six against the side that he so warmly espoused.
It shows the prescience of this great man, that he advoca- ted before the committee, against such opponents as Rutledge and Butler of South Carolina, the same basis of representa- tion that now prevails in Connecticut, strenuously claiming that the number of free inhabitants without regard to the property of the citizens, should form the basis of representa- tion. This recognition of the rights of citizenship, discon- nected with any consideration of land or money, shows how much he was in advance of the other members of the con- vention, and of the age in which he lived, in all that related to the elective franchise.
After this, followed the debates in relation to the executive and the judiciary. The question as to whether the execu- tive should consist of one person or of several, was, after an animated debate, decided in favor of a single person-New York, Delaware, and Maryland voting in the negative. Wil- son then proposed that the national executive be chosen
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
directly by the people. Sherman proposed that Congress should elect the President, and that he should be dependent upon that body. Other suggestions and propositions were made, but as no other plan could be agreed upon, that of Sherman was concurred in. As to the length of his term of service, the same difference of opinion existed. Sherman, Wilson, and others, advocated three years, with re-eligibility. Mason was in favor of seven years, and ineligibility ; and this was finally carried-Connecticut, the Carolinas, and Georgia, voting against it ; and Massachusetts being divided.
The judiciary was long a subject of earnest consideration on the part of the convention. Numerous propositions and suggestions were made, the mass of which were voted down. It was at last determined that the judges should be chosen by the second branch of the national legislature ; and a veto upon all laws inconsistent with the articles of union or to treaties with foreign powers, was conceded to the executive.
Such were some of the main features of the bill, which, on the 13th of June, was presented to the convention by the committee of the whole. Scarcely had the formularies, so long debated, been submitted to the convention, when the opposition, that was supposed by many of the friends of a consolidated government to have vanished before the eloquence and reasoning of the delegates representing the larger states, burst forth into a flame. Patterson, of New Jersey, and some others, appearing in behalf of the smaller states, had been brooding in secret over some propositions that had been adopted by the committee of the whole, that must, as they believed, should they receive the ultimate sanc- tion of the convention, prove fatal to the already feeble influ- ence of the smaller states in the general government.
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