USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, Volume II > Part 14
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Had it not been for the appointment by the House in May, 1773, of a Committee of Correspondence with sister colonies consisting of seven members, which committee had called for a meeting at Exeter, July 21, 1774, for the purpose of choosing delegates to a Continental Congress, the departure of Governor Wentworth from the province would have left it without any semblance of governmental authority except such as was pos- sessed by the towns under their charters, and anarchy must have resulted. This meeting of deputies which has been styled the First Provincial Congress, elected delegates to the Continental Congress, but transacted little other business. A second meet- ing, the Second Provincial Congress, met in Exeter, January 25, 1775, with a more general representation of the towns, no less than one hundred and forty-four members being present, and issued an address to the people of the province. It also ap- pointed a committee of seven to act in behalf of the province in calling "a Provincial Convention of Deputies, when they shall judge the exigencies of public affairs required." They were also, with the addition of two others, to act as a Committee of Correspondence. A third Provincial Congress met at Exeter,
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April 21, and a Fourth, May 17, 1775. At this Congress one hundred towns were represented, and it continued in session until November 15. After the departure of Governor Went- worth from the Province, this Congress was the only organiza- tion making any pretense of exercising provincial authority. In answer to an appeal to the Continental Congress for in- structions as to what course should be taken in the exigency existing, that body voted the following :
Resolved that it be recommended to the Provincial Convention of New Hampshire, to call a full representation of the people, and that the Repre- sentatives if they think it necessary, establish such a form of government, as in their judgment will best produce the happiness of the people and most effectually secure peace and good order in the province during the Continu- ance of the present dispute between Great Britain and the Colonies.
In accordance with this recommendation, the Congress at Exeter, November 4, 1775, stated "that every town, parish or precinct in this colony containing one hundred freeholders may send one delegate to the Congress or general assembly and that every such town, parish or precinct having a greater number of free- holders may send a member for every hundred such free- holders." It was further voted that if a town, parish or precinct have less than one hundred, it should be coupled with one or more others until the requisite number was made up. This was a partial recognition of the theory of the town as the politi- cal unit, but only partial.
The plan or method of representation as adopted November [4, was the following :
That every legal inhabitant paying taxes shall be a voter.
That every person elected shall have a real estate in this colony of the value of two hundred pounds lawful money.
That no persons be allowed a seat in Congress who shall themselves, or any person at their desire, treat with liquors, &c., any electors with an apparent view of gaining their votes, or by treating after an election on that account.
That the precepts signed by the President of this Congress, be sent to the Selectmen of each town named singly to be represented, to elect and choose a person to represent them in Congress to meet at Exeter on the twenty-first day of December next; also to the town or parish designated where towns or parishes are classed together, to notify the several towns or parishes in their respective classes to meet at the most convenient place in their town or parish to accommodate the whole electors, to choose some per-
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son qualified to represent them as aforesaid; and all selectmen are directed to give the electors fifteen days' notice of the time and occasion of meeting.
Said members when met to sit in Congress as often and so long as they shall judge requisite for acting the public business of this colony's and to be impowered by their constituents to prosecute such measures as they may deem necessary for the public good during the term of one year from the first meeting unless they shall see fit to dissolve themselves sooner.
And in case there should be a recommendation from the Continental Congress for this Colony to assume government in any way that will re- quire a House of Representatives, that the said Congress for this colony be impowered to resolve themselves into such a House as may be recommended, and remain such for the aforesaid term of one year.
Having adopted this plan this Fourth Provincial Congress came to an end November 15. There were in this Congress in attendance a whole or part of the time, one hundred and fifty- one delegates representing one hundred and thirteen towns. The plan adopted for the Fifth Congress provided for eighty-nine delegates representing one hundred and sixty-one towns and parishes. Rockingham County with its forty-four towns was to have thirty-eight members; Strafford County, nineteen towns, thirteen members; Hillsborough County, thirty-one towns, seventeen members; Cheshire County, thirty-three towns, fifteen members; Grafton County, thirty-four towns, six members. The province had been divided into these five coun- ties in March, 1771, but Strafford and Grafton were to be "parts and members of the County of Rockingham," until the Gover- nor and Council should "declare them sufficient for the exercise of jurisdiction." This condition was fulfilled for Grafton, and courts were established at Haverhill and Plymouth in February, 1773. Grafton County, however, had no representation in the General Assembly of the Province. In the Fourth Provincial Congress, sixteen Cheshire towns were represented by sixteen delegates, and Grafton County sent sixteen delegates represent- ing also sixteen towns. The new plan of representation which had been adopted for the Fifth Provincial Congress, it need not be said met with great disfavor in Cheshire and Grafton towns especially in the Connecticut Valley. The town as the unit of government was ignored. With the exception of the towns of Keene, Westmoreland, Walpole, Charlestown and Claremont, all the thirty-three towns of Cheshire County were classed, and
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all the thirty-four towns of Grafton were placed in six classes, each class being given one representative.
The controversy which was a fateful one began with pro- test of Hanover, and this protest was but natural. Dartmouth College had been established at Hanover in 1769. It was remote from the seat of Provincial government at Portsmouth, and with the exception of the patronage and encouragement given it by the liberal minded Governor John Wentworth, it was not looked upon with favor by the leaders in Rockingham County. There were men fitted for leadership in the Connecticut Valley towns on both sides of the river, and Hanover became the natural centre. The river was only nominally a dividing line between separate provinces. Indeed, as a channel of communication up and down the valley it fostered a community of interest in the river towns. The leaders among the settlers were many of them scholarly, all able men, versed in the science of gov- ernment, whose zeal in public affairs had given the river towns prominence. At Hanover there were President Eliezer Wheelock, his son and successor John Wheelock, his brother- in-law, Bezaleel Woodward, first professor of mathematics, and Jonathan Freeman. In Bath and Haverhill there were the Bedels, the Hurds, the Porters, the Johnstons, the Hazens, the Ladds and Woodwards; in Orford the Moreys; in Lyme, the Childs; in Cornish, the Chases; in Lebanon, the Paynes, while the Bayleys and Kents in Newbury, the Marshes at Hartford, the Olcotts at Norwich on the west side of the rievr were equally able and influential. Portsmouth gave them little or no recog- nition, and there was little bond of political sympathy between the two sections. The settlers of the towns west of the river had also little in common with those of the towns west of the Green Mountains. These latter were in religious matters known as Separatists, who, suffering persecution at the hands of the prevailing "standing order" in Connecticut and Massachusetts had gone in large numbers to the towns or Grants west of the mountains, and established themselves in communities where their theories of government and religion had free play. Among them were the Fays, the Robinsons, the Deweys, the Warners, the Allens. Bennington was the political centre of these bold and daring men who were opposed to any central executive
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power as inconsistent with political and religious liberty, and who were from the first rebels against the government of New York.
The revolt against the Crown gave them their opportunity. They were the organizers of the State of Vermont, and in the controversy which began they were known as the Bennington party. They in common with the valley towns on both sides of the river held to the theory of the town as the unit of govern- ment, but the natural barrier of the Green Mountain range pre- vented other genuine community of interest. The valley towns had common interests, and they were separated alike from the towns on the west of which Bennington was the centre, and from the towns on the east of which Portsmouth under royal authority, and Exeter under revolutionary authority, were the centres. What wonder the dream of a new and separate State in the Connecticut Valley with Hanover the center and capital! What more natural than four distinct parties, each with distinct aims and purposes, the Exeter party, the College party, the Bennington party, the New York party !
As has been said the first protest against the plan of gov- ernment, especially the lack of town representation in the leg- islature of that government, came naturally from Hanover. Hanover had been represented in the Fourth Provincial Congress, but in the plan of representation adopted for the Fifth had been classed with Lebanon, Canaan, Grafton, Relhan (now Enfield) and Cardigan (now Orange). A precept was sent to Hanover as the chief town of the class, but the precept was sent back by the selectmen without return, and a second precept was like- wise ignored. The other towns in Grafton county, dissatisfied with the plan of representation, complied so far as to send dele- gates, and when the Congress met December 21, 1775, the Han- over class was the only one unrepresented. John Wheelock was however sent with a petition in behalf of the towns in the class which was presented to the Congress, December 25. This peti- tion represented "that the towns of Hanover and Lebanon con- tain nine hundred souls, a number more than is necessary to be entitled to the privilege of sending a member to the Congress ; and as the six towns in the class contain about eleven hundred souls, and as their communication is so difficult and distance
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so great that they cannot be properly represented by one person, considering a representation in this unsettled critical and in- teresting day as being most necessary,"-it was requested that the House grant these six towns the privilege of two repre- sentatives during the year only by which the present plan of representation is limited, and that precepts be issued accord- ingly. This petition received scant attention, and was some- what abruptly dismissed. The other towns in Grafton County, which, while dissatisfied, had sent representatives, were still more dissatisfied, when the Congress early in January, 1776, re- solved itself into a House of Representatives, and adopted a provisional constitution, which provided for a Council as an upper branch of the legislature, which Council it proceeded to elect from its own membership. At the session in March, 1776, the Haverhill class, consisting of that town with Bath, Lyman, Gunthwaite (now Lisbon), Landaff and Morristown (now Franconia) was unrepresented, and before the close of the year, practically the whole of Grafton County and a large part of Cheshire had followed the lead of Hanover and Haverhill. Col. John Hurd of Haverhill, who had been a favorite of the Wentworth government, and who had been elected to the Coun- cil for Grafton, adhered to the Exeter government. Dissatis- faction and disaffection soon resulted in plans for combination. Lebanon at a town meeting held in February took the first step in choosing a committee to correspond with other towns. In April circular letters were sent out from Hanover, which led to a meeting of the united committees of eleven towns at College Hall, Hanover, July 31, 1776. The towns represented at this meeting were Plainfield, Lebanon, Enfield, Canaan, Cardigan (Orange), Hanover, Lyme, Orford, Haverhill, Bath and Landaff. Action taken by this meeting resulted in a series of complications which lasted through the entire war of the Revolution, complications of serious import, which fell short of bloodshed only because the patriotic devotion to the common cause of country, shown by these rebels against what they re- garded as unwarrantable usurpations of power by the Exeter government, was greater than their sense of local grievance. No account of the proceedings of this meeting or convention has been preserved, but an address "to the people of the several
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towns throughout the colony," signed by Nehemiah Estabrook as chairman, and Bezaleel Woodward as secretary of the meet- ing, was printed and widely circulated, producing a profound impression. President Meshech Weare of the New Hampshire Council, in transmitting a copy of it to the New Hampshire delegates in the Continental Congress, speaks of it "as fabri- cated at Dartmouth College and calculated to stir up conten- tion and animosities among us at this difficult time: especially as our government is only temporary and the state of the matter not allowing a revisal. However this pamphlet with the as- siduity of the College Gentlemen has had such an effect that almost the whole county of Grafton, if not the whole, have re- fused to send members to the new Assembly which is to meet next Wednesday." (December 18, 1776.)
This address, subsequently known as the College Hall address, is a remarkable document. It sets out with the declara- tion : "The Important Crisis is now commenced wherein the providence of God, the Grand Continental Congress, and our necessitous circumstances, call upon us to assume our natural right of laying a foundation of Civil Government within and for this colony. Our anxious concern how the present time may be improved, whenever we are acting, not only for our- selves, but ages yet unborn; and on which the fate of posterity politically depends, imbolden us to address you in this manner upon the important subject." Here is a complete ignoring of all that had already been done at Exeter, and in part of which some of the towns represented at this College Hall meeting had been participants. But the authors of this address proceed to give at length, and with what must be regarded rare ingenuity and force, their reasons. They point out that the American colonies had lost their liberties under the British constitution- supposed to be the best in the world-by a really criminal neglect on their part to insist on their right to representation in Parliament. They lay down as a self-evident proposition "that, whenever a people give up their right of representation, they consequently give up all their rights and privileges: this being the inlet or door of arbitrary power and oppression ; there- fore upon the present exigency of affairs, it behooves every indi- vidual who is a subject of Government to attend to the
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important business-see and act for himself. No one is excused as we are all upon equal footing, and all are equally interested. Therefore let us, like free born Americans, know our rights and privileges, and like rational men act up to our exalted character. Let us not give occasion to our neighbors or posterity to re- proach us, by saying, that we made a glorious stand against the strides of arbitrary power, and oppression; and with our blood and treasure gained the happy conquest, but in the first advance we made towards establishing a constitution for ourselves and posterity, we either inadvertently or carelessly gave up our most essential rights and liberties, or rather that we did nothing to preserve them."
They then proceed to inquire into the present state and circumstances of the colony :
"We shall doubtless agree that the former government of this colony was in a manner absolute especially in point of representation, which was solely under control of the Magistrates of the Colony and also that the whole intention of the people now is to abolish the old, and form a new government upon a republican establishment. It will also be allowed, no doubt, that as the colony hath formerly been divided into counties, towns and districts, for the con- venient and regular government of the same, they will still act as such."
They proceed to argue that the necessary step to be first taken is for the people to elect representatives for the purpose of laying a foundation or form of civil government for the colony.
"It will be objected, no doubt," they go on to say, "that there is now subsisting in the colony an Assembly lately ap- pointed by the people; who have formed themselves into a Council, and House of Assembly, and that said Assembly have already formed a plan for electing a new Assembly, this ensuing fall, for the then ensuing year; and therefore it would be pre- posterous now to appoint a new Assembly ; to which we answer, Ist, that at the time when the members of said Assembly were elected, the reasons which make it now necessary that an As- sembly should be appointed did not exist: as the reasons for calling said Assembly then, and the purpose for which they
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were appointed, was only of a temporary duration: (viz.) to act in the exigencies of the Colony, under their distressed and difficult circumstances, as the case might require. No one we believe thought at that time, they were appointed to institute a lasting plan of Civil Government for the Colony: especially independent of and in contradistinction to the Crown of Great Britain ; therefore they were not elected for that purpose: and consequently have not the power that an Assembly now ought to have." They then proceed to state the ground of their dis- content, and their position as follows:
A former convention, sitting in this Colony, elected much, as it chanced to happen, under our then broken and confused circumstances, assumed to themselves the prerogative to regulate and determine how the assembly should be elected,-omitting some towns-uniting a half dozen others together for the purpose of sending one. * * as they of their sovereign pleasure thought fit to dictate, * by means of which many towns were de-
The prived of any representation at all, and others so in effect, * number of inhabitants in this case in point of right argues nothing in favor of the proposition; for every body politic, incorporated with the same pow- ers and privileges, whether large or small, is legally the same. We may with parity of reasoning as well argue that a small body, consisting of all the constituent parts to a man, is not a man, because there are some others of the same species of a larger size. *
* To unite half a dozen or more towns together, equally privileged, in order to make them equal to some other one town is a new practice in politics. We may as well take the souls of a number of different persons, and say they make but one, while yet they remain separate and different, as in a political sense to compound a number of different corporate bodies into one, and yet they remain distinct. * * * If this principle must take place, we had better lay down our arms, and spend no more precious blood and treasure in this contest; for it is only destroying on the one hand, and setting up the same thing, or that which is worse on the other: they who will tamely submit to such a government as this, deserve not a cohabitation among a free people. * The true state of the case is that we have no legal power subsist- ing in the Colony, for the purposes, for which it is now necessary there should be. It is still in the hands of the people to whom we address our- selves; and whom we call upon to exercise the rights and privileges they have to erect a supreme legislative Court for the Colony, in order to lay a foundation and plan of government in this critical juncture of affairs; and that we no longer remain as in a state of nature or anarchy, without law of government. Now is the time, when we may not only act for ourselves- but we are called upon to do it; and if this opportunity be lost, we shall not have it renewed again, although we may seek it carefully with tears when it is too late. As for ourselves we are determined not to
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spend our blood and treasure, in defending against the chains and fetters that are forged and prepared for us abroad, in order to purchase some of the like kind of our own manufacturing.
Indeed it was claimed that the whole power of the state could not deprive a single town of its right of representation, as such, in the legislature without its consent, and the way was prepared for a subsequent declaration that the State of New Hampshire, so far as the grants might enter into it, could be only a voluntary confederation of towns. It was a bold stand taken by the delegates from these towns. The authorship of the address is not known, but it was probably written by Bezaleel Woodward or Col. Elisha Payne of Lebanon or was the joint product of both. They were both trained lawyers and men of recognized ability. Payne had only recently been appointed by the Exeter government one of the four judges of appeals of the new state, and later in 1781 became chief justice of Vermont. Woodward also was in 1778 appointed one of the five judges of the Supreme Court of Vermont, though two years previously in an' evident attempt to conciliate him and his supporters he had been appointed one of the justices of the Court of Common Pleas for Grafton County.
This address had a powerful influence in increasing the disaffection in other towns. The meeting was adjourned to meet at College Hall in October, and again adjourned to meet at the same place in November. There is no record of what was done at these meetings, except that some resolutions were passed which did not meet with the approval of all the towns represented. It is probable that no less than sixteen towns were represented at the November meeting. An attempt was made by the Assembly to conciliate the towns comprising the Hanover class so that Hanover, Canaan and Cardigan (Orange) should be entitled to one representative, and Lebanon, Relhan (En- field) and Grafton to another, and precepts for the new Congress to meet December 18, 1776, were issued accordingly. The Han- over selectmen returned the precept stating that a meeting of the inhabitants of Hanover, Canaan and Cardigan had been held at which it was voted unanimously to approve the address issued by the College Hall meeting of the previous July, and not to choose a representative to the Assembly as directed in
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the precept. Among other reasons for their refusal they stated the following :
Because no plan of representation is as yet formed in this state con- sistent with the liberties of a free people, in that the people have not uni- versally had a full representation in any assembly since the state was de- clared independent of the Crown of Great Britain, by which declaration we conceive that the power of government reverted to the people at large, and of course annihilated the political existence of the Assembly which then was. *
Because the precept in consequence of which this meeting was called, is inconsistent with the liberties of a free people, in that it directs to have dif- ferent corporate towns, who have a right to act by themselves, unite for the purpose of choosing a representative and Councilor.
It was also voted not to give in vote for Councilor, as directed in the precept :
Because we can see no important end proposed by their creation unless to negative the proceedings of the House of Representatives, which we humbly conceive ought not to be done in a free state.
Because every elector ought to have a voice in the choice of each Coun- sellor, in cases where they are needful, and not to be restricted in his choice to any particular limits within the state. For which reason we pro- test against any Councilor being chosen in this county.
Other towns took action similar to that of the Hanover class. Among those which returned the precepts giving at length their reasons therefor, of which record has been preserved, were Lyme, Acworth, Marlow, Alstead, and Surry. Chesterfield gave its representative instructions to insist on the right of towns to have representation, as such, and failing in this to return home. The towns of Haverhill, Lyman, Bath, Gunth- waite, Landaff and Morristown in returning their precept gave substantially the same reasons for non-compliance as the others, with this declaration additional: "That when the Declaration of Independence took place, the Colonies were absolutely in a state of nature, and the powers of government reverted to the people at large, and of consequence annihilated the political existence of the Assembly which then was."
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