USA > Ohio > Ohio and her Western Reserve, with a story of three states leading to the latter, from Connecticut, by way of Wyoming, its Indian wars and massacre > Part 2
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Introductory
half, became the heritage of the whole Amer- ican people.
In a word, there was engrafted upon Puritanism in America a new idea and a new source of power. Unto Puritanism there was added progressivism. Connecticut was its best and first outcome and exemplar. She led the new advance. It is the popular opin- ion that no people were less progressive or more stubbornly conservative-"hide-bound " is the vernacular of the condition-than these Puritans. That is unquestionably true of them in a hundred matters-civil, social, and religious ; but it is equally true that in the great fundamentals they made early, quickly, and surely, colossal strides beyond all the other colonists of America.
Let us look briefly upon the manner of its doing, and see how and why Connecticut led the vanguard of civilization in its newest and mightiest march.
The passionate love of liberty that con- stituted the Puritan's predominant trait was the leaven that, little by little, worked its slow way toward its consummation, and evolved from the Connecticut character the
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greatest of Connecticut achievements. Yet this was not accomplished through a simple process. It was complicated-inveterately in- terwoven, one may say-with the Puritan's religion. The settlement of Connecticut and her early service for freedom, for self-govern- ment, for democracy, and ultimately for nation- ality, could not conceivably have come about save for the fact that Puritan local govern- ment went hand in hand with religion.
To the now execrated "union of Church and state," on a miniature scale, we owe in part, at least, the remarkable progressivism with which Connecticut imbued Puritanism. The " town " and the church were practically one. It followed naturally-and it was a frequent occurrence, among a people who had learned as no English-speaking people before had done, to think and act for themselves- that when schism arose in the church the dissenting minority, firm in their conviction of right, and unwilling to be coerced, moved out and onward, and established a "town " and church of their own.
Sometimes the incentive arose from the regard for political rather than religious free-
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dom. But in either case the result was the same. The seceders were naturally in moral advance of those whom they left, and thus it happened that each exodus from Massachu- setts into Connecticut planted in the latter State some of the choicest souls from the older colony. If Massachusetts "was sown with selected grain," as has been truthfully enough claimed, Connecticut was sown with twice-winnowed grain.
Thus conscience, courage, love of religious and civil liberty, in their influence upon char- acter (already made individually independent and self-reliant by the very conditions under which the pioneer Puritans of New England lived), performed automatically, as it were, a kind of silent, but incessant, and enormously effective work of selection for the building up of Connecticut, and her moral equipment for that sublime service in which she took the bold initiative.
The settlement of 1633, the first lawful, organized English occupation of Connecticut, was made by a little party of the dissatisfied from Plymouth. They founded Windsor. It was shortly after that another company from
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Massachusetts settled Wethersfield, and in 1636 a much larger party founded Hartford. In the last-mentioned year a desire for a more democratic form of government caused a con- siderable exodus from the mother colony, and all three of these towns then received their chief bodies of immigrants.
It was of immense importance that at this juncture there came to Hartford one Thomas Hooker, an English clergyman, driven
GRAVE OF THOMAS HOOKER, IN CENTER CHURCH CEMETERY, HARTFORD, CONN.
The inscription reads : "In memory of the Rev. Thomas Hooker, who in 1636 with his assistant Mr. Stone removed to Hartford with about 100 persons, where he planted the first Church in Connecticut. An eloquent, able, and faithful Minister of Christ. He died July 7th, 1647. ÆT. LXI."
from his native land for non-conformity, a resident of Holland from 1630 to 1633, then a settler of Boston, and finally, after three
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years there, being dissatisfied with the illib- eral spirit that prevailed, leading into the wilderness the broader-minded men who were willingly his followers, and among whom, in their new home, he planted and nourished the fundamental thought that was formulated in an instrument on January 14, 1639, and adopted by the three towns thus compacted in a body politic. This was the first written constitution known to history, with the pos- sible exception of the "Union of Utrecht," under which the Netherlands were then liv- ing, and which it is permissible to call a con- stitution, and it was absolutely the "first in America to embody the democratic idea."
It is a popular fallacy that democracy dawned upon America in the compact made on the Mayflower-a compact that opened with a formal acknowledgment of the king as the source of all authority, and which con- tained no new political principle and no sug- gestion of democracy or liberty whatever. Such democracy as Massachusetts had in its early days was in reality accidental, and not institutional, while that of Connecticut was created consciously and deliberately ; and the
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true democracy, to which the Bay State after- ward became so splendidly devoted, she owed chiefly to the example set by her eldest daugh- ter, Connecticut.
There is now no question of Hooker's authorship, at least of the idea, of this re- markable document of 1639. An abstract of a sermon that he delivered in 1638, seven months before the constitution was signed, has been discovered in very recent years, which puts the preacher's claim upon an impregnable basis. He spoke from the text, Deuteronomy i, 13-15 : "Take you wise men, and understanding and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you
. captains over thousands, and captains over . .
hundreds, over fifties, over tens," etc. ; and with this as his basis, he pointed out "that the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people, by God's own allowance; that the privilege of election, which belongs to the people, must not be exercised according to their humors, but according to the blessed will and law of God; that they who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set the bounds and
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THE REV. THOMAS HOOKER, PURITAN PREACHER (1586-1647).
No authentic portrait of Thomas Hooker exists, but Niehaus's statue in the Connecticut Capitol is a carefully made composite based upon the like- nesses of various members of his lineal posterity and historical description.
Introductory
limitations of the power and place to which they call them; because (1) the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free con- sent of the people; because (2) by a free choice, the hearts of the people will be more inclined to the love of the persons chosen and more readily lend obedience."
Finally, the Puritan preacher spoke of the "uses " of the text and the doctrine he deduced from it, being such as "to persuade us, as God hath given us liberty, to take it," and " as God hath spared our lives, and given us them in liberty, so to seek the guidance of God, and to choose in God and for God."
Herein, at Hartford, was lain down the germinal idea of political liberty for the in- dividual, the beginning of democracy, and the corner-stone, at least, of that foundation on which the firm fabric of the American commonwealth was slowly upreared. Herein was the first practical assertion of the right of the people not only to choose, but to limit the powers of their rulers. There was neither in the inspiring sermon of liberty-loving Thomas Hooker nor in the constitution based upon it, any allusion to a "dread sovereign "
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nor any expression of deference to class. Ser- mon and constitution were alike instinct with liberty and democracy.
It may seem like a little thing that was gained on the banks of the Connecticut in 1638 and 1639 when we compare it with the civil liberty we now enjoy, but the true his- torical methods of estimate is to compare every movement of advance with what ex- isted before, and not with what came after, and thus viewed the Connecticut Puritan declaration of rights of a quarter of a mil- lennial since, in the very infancy of the colo- nies, was a giant stride in the history of human liberty.
The constitution, says one of the State historians, provided "a system of complete popular control, of frequent elections by the people, and of minute local government," and it remained throughout the confiscations, modifications, and refusals of charters in other colonies the exemplar of the rights of self- government, which all colonies gradually came to aim at more or less consciously.
A brief glance at some of the other en- actments with which these Puritans benefited
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the whole people, and we have done with Connecticut achievement in this line, and pass to the consideration of other forms of her evolutionary force. First of all, she legalized, by the famous constitution of 1639, the written ballot, in a form introduced by Hooker, which was a great improvement upon that adopted in Massachusetts; and, unlike some of the other colonies, kept it in per- petual use until it was fixed as an integral part of the political system of the nation. She established and maintained the "town " system on a basis even more independent of outside control than that of Massachusetts, making it emphatically the unit of political organizations, which, because it came nearest to the people, won the recognition of Tocque- ville as a leading factor in true democratic government. More, too, than Massachusetts she was influential in passing this invaluable institution to the West, where it perpetuated many of her principles, and became a potent cause of the political supremacy of the regions to which it was carried.
Connecticut by this same famous first constitution practically indorsed Massachu-
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setts's educational system, but exceeded the mother colony in the strenuousness of its ad- vocacy, and made those towns which should fail to maintain free schools subject to fine.
Finally, when the Constitution of the United States was formed, through the pecul- iar position her delegates held in the conven- tion and by adroit management, she was enabled to incorporate in it that measure for the benefit of the small States which gave equality of representation in the upper house of Congress and a proportional representation in the lower-a measure which was derived directly from her own system of town repre- sentation established in 1639.
Even when apparently stationary, Con- necticut was constantly moving forward- a pioneer in the lines of human liberty and political righteousness-moving forward mightily, though invisibly, in thought, until she was ready for the conspicuity of vigorous action, for she was constantly recruited by the most advanced men of less liberal Massa- chusetts and of England.
We have said that Connecticut's signal service to humanity along the pathway of
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Introductory
liberty lay in her adding progressivism to Puritanism. Many instances have been cited. There remains one which all cavillers at Connecticut's alleged conservatism should bear in mind. In 1650, twelve years before the union of Connecticut and the New Haven colony, both colonies, which had similar laws, reduced the number of crimes for which capi- tal punishment was inflicted from 160 to 15 -the number remaining formidable enough, in all conscience. But let us look at that England from which these Puritans had mi-
grated. As late as 1819, over a century and a half after her American offspring's action, we find that she carried no less than 223 capital offenses upon her code. No commen- tary is needed, one may think, upon this in- dication of the comparative advance of hu- manity in Old and in New England.
The whole of this wonderful achievement under the Connecticut Puritan constitution of 1639, and a vast deal more that we can not specify within our limitations, was the outgrowth of the ever-evolving idea of liberty, constantly quickened and fostered to early fruition in Connecticut by the peculiar con- 21
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Ohio and Her Western Reserve
ditions in Massachusetts that the radical, conscienceful character of some of her people could not comply with. Massachusetts's illib- erality continuously acted as an expulsive force upon some of her foremost men, and certainly her most progressive minds, and thus built up the more progressive Puritan- ism of her neighbor.
Glancing swiftly over the field and across the years, it would seem as if, in the language of modern science, an immense idea evolved through the minds of Puritan Thomas Hooker and his Connecticut followers, as the vital principle evolves through protoplasm, to form a new order of life. But if, instead of the cold locution of science, we employ the rever- ent language which the Puritan himself might use, when we think of what the Connecticut colonists did for liberty in those early years, and coming down to the later ones, contem- plate their descendants, as we shall, when they fought for liberty in 1776, and still later made the idea of liberty apply to the abolishment of black slavery, by moral agita- tion in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, and by martial action in the '60s-if, as I say, thinking of
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Introductory
all this, and of Connecticut men in Connecti- cut, joined by Connecticut men in Pennsyl- vania and in the Western Reserve, heroically urging and soundly legislating for the propa- ganda of freedom, we should say, even as the Puritan himself would say, that in the larger affairs of men and nations-as in the raising up of Oliver Cromwell and of Abraham Lin- coln-the hand of God in some mysterious manner reaches directly down to humanity and impels mankind forward in the march of destiny.
Let us turn now to another line of Con- necticut achievement, in which every episode flowing, like those already considered, from the fondly cherished idea of liberty, but in- fluenced also by varied moral and material conditions, in some degree reacted upon, modified, and remolded the original Con- necticut Puritan character in which they had their inception. The reference here made is, of course, to that altogether remarkable and unparalleled colonial expansion of Connecti- cut which had its origin in the middle of the eighteenth century, upon the ground since
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made historic as Wyoming-the true Windsor of the West-where heroic blood dyed the Susquehanna in the same progressive cause of liberty that had its first announcement on the Connecticut.
The great westward pressure of Connecti- cut was in a measure resultant from the same forces that governed the settlement of Con- necticut itself-that is, church secession and the desire for a more democratic government, both elements in the passion for freedom. But material conditions also entered into the complex cause of the exodus.
As early as 1680, when Connecticut had already sent offshoots of population into New Jersey and lower Pennsylvania, as well as into some contiguous territory, the colonial government, in obeying a request from Eng- land for a statement of its condition, re- sponded through a letter in the hand of John Allyn, stating, among other things, that the country was mountainous, full of rocks, swamps, hills, and vales ; that most of it that was fit for planting had been taken up; and that " what remaynes must be subdued and gained out of the fire, as it were, by hard
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blowes and for small recompence." If this was the truth in regard to the then existing condition in Connecticut, it was no less a correct prophecy of what was awaiting the settlers at Wyoming a century later. To subdue and to gain "out of the fire, by hard blowes and for small recompence," was indeed the usual lot of the Puritan in Connecticut and the Puritan patriot in Pennsylvania. It was to this circumstance that was attributable the development of a very unusual spirit of enterprise and an indomitable courageousness in a character already well equipped with other sterling virtues.
Now Connecticut, which had when Allyn wrote his description in 1680 a population ¿ of only 10,000 to 12,000 souls, and was poor in property, though rich in the quality of its men, weak in actual fighting strength, though strong in the stout hearts and independence of its people (as was shown half a dozen years later by their secreting the royal grant of their colony in the Charter Oak rather than surrendering it to the British Govern- ment), grew steadily, though slowly, in popu- lation. Trumbull estimates its people at
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17,000 in 1713, and the Board of Trade at 100,000 and Bancroft at 133,000 in 1755. At the latter date older and larger Massa- chusetts is estimated to have had 207,000, and vast Virginia only 168,000 population.
Thus it will be seen Connecticut held no mean position in the group of colonies. In proportion to its territory, it was perhaps the most populous of all of them, and long be- fore 1762, when all of the soil had been allotted into towns, the people had mani- fested a disposition to swarm from a hive that seemed to them too small to accommo- date their liberal views of life.
The Delaware Company was first in the field with its settlement at Cushutunk in 1757, and the Susquehanna Company fol- lowed in 1762, after the close of the Indian War. Pennsylvania, but for the blind or misconceiving policy of its people, largely influenced by the interested proprietaries, might have had as a result of this settle- ment as large an influx of the best popula- tion in America as Ohio afterward received. But an indiscriminate and incessant opposi- tion deprived the very State which most
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particularly needed it of nine-tenths of the body which would probably have come on conditions of fair terms and friendliness.
One result of this deflection of immigra- tion was exhibited in the founding of a settlement of Connecticut men in the far South, which has been generally neglected by Connecticut historians. This was the set- tlement in 1776 (projected at Hartford in 1772) of Natchez, Miss. (then included in West Florida), made by several hundred New England families, mostly from Con- necticut. There were some among these people who scantily sympathized with the political revolt in New England, but Justin Winsor has said : "There was enough, how- ever, of the Revolutionary fervor of the Atlantic seaboard in others to make the set- tlement an important factor in shaping the destiny of this Southern region." And we deem it eminently deserving of a place in the list of Connecticut's achievements in the line of colonization.
If Wyoming was the settlement made and maintained under the most strenuous exer- tions and heroic sacrifice, almost literally
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×
"subdued and gained out of the fire by hard blowes and for small recompence," the West- ern Reserve in Ohio was the settlement made most easefully and successfully-absolutely without any expenditure of blood within its limits-and most fully and continuously stood as an expositor in the West of all that was admirable in Connecticut.
But we must not forget that Wyoming, so to speak, sounded the inspiring music and set the pace for the westward march; that Wyoming really influenced the settlement of a great number of Connecticut men in other parts of Pennsylvania than by the Susque- hanna's waters ; and last, but not least, that the blood of the Wyoming martyrs, shed a century and a quarter ago, in reality paid the unnamed price for the Connecticut Western Reserve.
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Nor must we fail to recognize the impor- tance of those unorganized and scattering set- tlements with which Connecticut dotted Ver- mont and western New York, southern Mich- igan, northern Indiana and Illinois, Iowa and Kansas, and even California and the Pacific Slope. Further let us bear in mind that it
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was Moses Austin, a Connecticut man tem- porarily settled in Missouri, who conceived and his son, Stephen F. Austin, who ex- ecuted a considerable scheme for the " Amer- icanization " of far-off Texas, and in the sec- ond decade of the last century diverted from the natural westward course a sufficient number of mixed Connecticut and Missouri men to found auspiciously the flourishing city of Austin. Thus we see that while Connecticut, like a mighty vine, shot its main stem 600 miles westward, stanch and strong, through three States -Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio-the tendrils, so to speak, of that vine touched the widely remote shores of the great Gulf and the Golden Gate.
It is to this wide dispersion of Connecti- cut men, caused by the discontent with the conditions in the old colony which their own progressivism gave birth to, and to the pre- dominance of capacity and energy in their characters that we must ascribe the influence of Connecticut in the affairs of other States and in the nation and the great number of individual Connecticut men who rose to positions of honorable conspicuity in the
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middle region of the West. One historian says that as early as 1857 the single county of Litchfield was noted as the birthplace of thirteen United States senators, twenty-two representatives from New York, fifteen Su- preme Court judges in other States, nine presidents of colleges and eighteen other professors, and eleven governors and lieuten- ant-governors of States. If we were to at- tempt a similar list for the whole State and bring it down to the present time, we should find that it would contain thousands of names of men eminent in public life from Chief Executives down to congressmen.
One can appreciate the feelings of the in- quiring foreigner who hearing constantly that this or that great man, though a resident of Pennsylvania, or Ohio, or New York, was born in Connecticut, went to the atlas to look up the wonderful region that was so prolific of men of power, and was most wofully disap- pointed to find that Connecticut, after all, was " nothing but a little green spot on the map."
Another notable effect of the whole west- ward movement from Connecticut was that upon the men who took part in it. While
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in the original colony progressive liberalism in civil and religious thought moved by inches, we find-whether it was owing to some subtle alchemy in the aroma of the new soil and of the wild wood, or to the simple fact that those who became pioneers were naturally more advanced than their stay-at-home contemporaries-that progress was made by leaps and bounds, surpassing all precedent. Particularly was this true in the outward aspect of religion. Formality to a great extent was relinquished.
In the first settlement of Ohio, made at Marietta, principally by Massachusetts men, we find that the unnatural and awe-compel- ling dignity of the New England clergyman had so far fallen from him, that he run a foot-race on the Fourth of July and distanced his competitor, a lawyer, a circumstance that the local poet preserved in the allusion :-
It was a fact, they all gave in, Divinity could outstrip Sin.
And there was a similar relaxation of sacerdotal severity with similar retention of power to triumph over sin in Wyoming and the Western Reserve.
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The probability is that the Yankee idea, long growing, though unobserved, the quali- ties of thriftiness and shrewdness under the hard conditions, and the increasing compe- tition for livelihood in Connecticut, had finally added a beneficial practicality to progres- sive Puritanism. And did not this practi- cality include an advance in that commercial capability for which this people became noted ? At any rate, it is safe to say that the Connecticut Yankee in the West evinced with surprising unanimity and certitude that if he conformed his life to the exhortation " Be thou fervent in spirit; not slothful in business ; serving the Lord," he regarded the second clause of the injunction as equally with the first and the final one calling for his obedience.
The general statement is true that Con- gregationalism, which had in 1742 been made the established religion in Connecticut, was within the old colony, and even in the mother State, a kind of congealed creed, con- taining much of the débris of an effete Cal- vinism, with the cold purity that formed its really majestic mass; but in the frontier set-
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tlements much of the former was liberated by a general melting process. The Yankee in his new homes engrafted practicality upon his religion as he did upon all things, and gradually the amenities and humanities of a wholesome life displaced the asperities and austerities of Calvinism without any notice- able abatement of the splendid moral force that had originally moved the people with the idea of liberty.
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