Connecticut in transition, 1775-1818

Front matter

o V

<W

• * v v

Preface

HP HIS study of an epoch in the history of Con- -*• necticut was begun at the suggestion of Professor Max Farrand. Under his scholarly guidance it gradually took the form of a doctoral dissertation and was submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University. At the Yale Commencement of 1916 it was awarded the John Addison Porter prize. Since the award to the writer of the Justin Winsor prize, the essay has been revised and somewhat abridged, especially with reference to charts and notes. Among those who have read the manuscript, I desire to express my appreciation for suggestions to Mr. Anson Phelps Stokes, the secretary of Yale University, and to Professor Carl Russell Fish of the University of Wisconsin.

Richard J. Purcell.

College of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Introduction 1

I. 1. The Rise of Infidelity to 1801 5

Introduction

fl^HE Revolutionary generation and its sons -■■ witnessed a remarkable revolution in the character of the old commonwealth of Connecticut ; they lived through an era of transition from 1775 to 1 81 8. Connecticut passed from a colonial dependency into a sovereign state. This all men realized. They did not recognize, however, that this was only the beginning and that at best it was a change in form rather than in spirit, in theory rather than in practice. Contemporaries were quite unaware of the gradual growth from an aristocratic, paternalistic into a modern democratic state. That they overlooked this is not surprising, for the famed "steady habits" were bettered or undermined, as you will, by a natural movement of forces imperceptibly gradual in action.

Other colonies had internal revolutionary struggles which have been aptly compared with the national revolt from the mother-land. Massachusetts, Vermont, the Carolinas, Virginia and Pennsylvania had seen alinements of the frontier democracy over against the governing aristocracy of the settled tide-water regions. There had been virtual Declarations of Independence on the part of the West and threatened or actual resort to force, before the East acceded to their demands for adequate representation and protection against the Indians. In Connecticut such was not the case ; for

2 INTRODUCTION

there was no real frontier, no essentially frontier grievances, and no racial lines. If anything, recently settled, sparsely populated districts were over-represented in comparison to the larger and older towns. Hence, as there was no occcasion for an outbreak to force the hand of the ruling element, the transition was left to the quiet, but irresistably levelling evolution of time. This evolution will be considered in its three broad phases : religious, economic, and political or constitutional.

These years marked a vast change in the religious life of the state. The rigorous Puritanism of the past lost much of its dogmatic intolerance and repelling harshness. Irreligion, deism and dissent of every brand gained strength among those who revolted from Calvinistic teachings. The religious constitution of the state was modified, so that at least legal toleration was granted to all honest Christians. This was not enough to satisfy the demands of the unorthodox, schismatic, and heretic. Joining their suffrages at the polls, they won religious liberty as a right, not a boon. In their struggle for this religious freedom which nearly all the other states guaranteed, they effected the overthrow of Calvinism as an establishment and burst the bonds linking Congregationalism to the state.

Great was the economic awakening of this period with its shift in the industrial life of the community. Agriculture was giving way to manufacturing. Newly established banks were displacing the country merchant as a money loaner and broker. Insurance companies were founded. Money became

INTRODUCTION 3

available as wealth rapidly increased. Western emigration increased to such dangerous proportions that to induce men to remain at home, it was found necessary to stimulate domestic industry, improve agriculture, and build roads. Schools were bettered; libraries were established; agricultural and scientific organizations were incorporated. As population turned from the country to the cities, a laboring class was being developed. Only through an understanding of these changes can one interpret the long struggle for democracy and reforms, governmental and social.

The religious and economic changes in the conv munity life afford an explanation of the political contest. Men called for religious and social equality, practical democracy and popular sovereignty. Their demands were but the expression of the ideas of the American and French revolutions. They would emancipate themselves from the rule of an aristocratic, clerical class. They were the more insistent, for they knew of the freedom of the West through reading letters from emigrants and from the omnipresent Yankee peddler. For the fulfillment of their desires they soon realized the need of a reorganization in the structure of the government. Hence through an opposition party, the Democratic-Republican and later Toleration party, they sought the adoption of a constitution, with a bill of rights guaranteeing the natural privileges of republican citizens instead of the royal charter. This was done by waging a generation-long campaign by which the people were convinced of the

INTRODUCTION justice of the demands and the safety with which they could be granted. The result was the bloodless Revolution of 1818, which gave the state a constitution as democratic as any then in existence.

Chapter I

i. The Rise of Infidelity to 1801

rpHIS era, 1775-1818, of the breaking down of ^ the old religious life of Connecticut was marked by the inception and rapid spread of infidelity. Irreligion finally permeated all ranks of society. Gaining strength, it took the offensive, becoming aggressive in thought and radical in politics. Hence, aside from the academic interest in the history of liberalism, there is a practical one in computing the numerical strength of those whom their fellow freemen termed infidels.

Connecticut Congregationalism was at a low ebb in the second half of the eighteenth century. Revivals were as rare as great divines. The moral rigor of seventeenth-century Puritanism had disappeared. It is to this fact that the inflow of deistic thought must be ascribed. The Great Awakening of 1 740 accomplished wonders for a time in invigorating the religious life, yet its results from the viewpoint of the Standing Order were not entirely advantageous. It caused the schism of the Separates or, as they styled themselves, the strict Congregationalists and paved the way for those enthusiastic exhorters who were to win over so many moribund Congregationalists to the infant Baptist and Methodist organizations. A decided impetus was given to the Church of England. In a word, while the revival stimulated religious interests and instilled a passing vitalizing force into the established church, there came in its wake sectarianism and dissent. Excesses to be deprecated rather than overlooked aroused skepticism and furthered the introduction of infidelity.

While the French and Indian War was generally regarded as the first milestone in the progress of infidelity in the staid and steady old commonwealth, deism was known in America much earlier. 1 Men like Dean Berkeley and Samuel Johnson were affected by a sort of idealism, at times dangerously deistic. Ezra Stiles as student and tutor, having read the thirty or so deistic books included in the Berkeley donation to the Yale Library, had passed through a painful skepticism. 2 Rector Thomas Clap was said to have depended largely on Woolaston's Religion of Nature for his philosophy. There may have been considerable skepticism among the literati, in the form of a rational protest against the harshness and determinism of Calvinism, though this was not true among the people at large, many of whom might have been unreligious without being irreligious.

Writing in 1759 relative to the probable effect of the war on religion and morals, Stiles noted :

I imagine the American Morals & Religion were never in so much danger as from our concern with the Europeans in

1 I. Woodbridge Riley, The Founder of Mormonism, p. 151 ; in the same author's American Thought from Puritanism to Pragmatism there is a discussion of infidelity during this period.

3 Rev. Abiel Holmes, The Life of Ezra Stiles, pp. 42, 43-63.

THE RISE GF INFIDELITY TO 1801 7

the present War. They put on indeed in their public Conduct the Mark of public Virtue — and the Officers endeavor to restrain the vices of the private Soldiery while on duty. But I take it the Religion of the Army is Infidelity & Gratification of the appetites .... They propagate in a genteel & insensible Manner the most corrupting and debauching Principles of Behavior. It is doubted by many Officers if in fact the Soul survives the Body — but if it does, they ridicule the notion of moral accountableness, Rewards and Punishments in another life .... I look upon it that our Officers are in danger of being corrupted with vicious principles, and many of them I doubt not will in the End of the War come home minute philosophers initiated in the polite Mysteries and vitiated morals of Deism. And this will have an unhappy Effect on a sudden to spread Deism or at least Skepticism thro' these Colonies. And I make no doubt, instead of the Controversies of Orthodoxy and Heresy, we shall soon be called to the defence of the Gospel itself. . . . . The Bellamys &c. of New England will stand no chance with the corruptions of Deism, which, I take it are spreading apace in this Country. 3

Stiles was right. The British regular from the barracks, where loose morals and looser free thinking prevailed, proved a dangerous associate for the colonial militiaman. The rank and file were familiar with the Anglican Church of the Georges and the officers were frequently imbued with the prevalent continental philosophy or its echoed English rationalism. Their unorthodox thinking impressed men, and their philosophy was assiduously copied as having a foreign style. Thus the militiaman on returning from the campaign introduced his newly acquired habits of thinking and of life among the humble people of his town or

3 Stiles Mss., letter dated Newport, Sept. 24, 1759, quoted in Riley 5 American Thought, p. 215.

wayside hamlet. Judging from the reported change in the religious tone of such a town as New Britain, no society was too secluded to escape the baneful contagion. 4 Thus the infidel philosophy of the old world gained a foothold in the new.

The trying years of the Revolution were critical for New England orthodoxy. It was an unsettled period filled with demoralizing tendencies. The use of intoxicants was well-nigh universal, Sabbath violations were winked at by the authorities ; swearing, profanity, and night-walking passed all but unnoticed. Depreciated money encouraged speculation and avarice. Hard times broke into patriotism. Unmoral business ethics was too apparent, if one may judge from the acts and their supplementary re-enactments, to prevent engrossing and exporting goods out of the colony, and to establish a minimum wage and a maximum price for articles of consumption. 5 Men were becoming materialistic. The minister was fast losing his autocratic sway in the parish. Congregationalism was seriously weakened. The Church of England was all but destroyed, for as a religious body it was discredited as being Tory at heart. Its churches were closed and its ministers silenced. Hence one is not surprised at the inroads " nothingarianism" 6 made into the established order. A reader of the records finds no difficulty in accounting for Presi-

6 James Dana, Two Discourses, p. 65, made use of this apt term.

dent Dwight's observation that war is fatal to morals.

Dwight wrote a few years later of the revolutionary days as follows :

At this period Infidelity began to obtain, in this country, an extensive currency and reception. As this subject constitutes far the most interesting and prominent characteristic of the past Century, it would not be amiss to exhibit it with some degree of minuteness and to trace through several particulars the steps of its progress. 7

The positive responsibility was placed again on the intercourse with "corrupted foreigners." French free-thinking proved dangerously contagious. In the first place, the French brothers-inarms, as America's brave allies, commanded both our gratitude and respect. In the second place, denying where the English doubted, their thought was aggressively destructive rather than apologetic. As men of some learning and of an insinuating, polished address, they were skillful proselytizers, answering arguments with a sneering smile or effective shrug. Thus, American officers imbibed the ideas of the continental philosophers without necessarily intimately knowing at first hand their writings.

Stiles had declared that cries of orthodoxy would not suffice, but that Scripture must be explained on logical, rational grounds so as to appeal to critical minds. In his Election Sermon of 1783, driven by fear of deism, he emphasized the dependence of Luther and Calvin on the Church Fathers

7 Discourse (1801), p. 19; cf. Travels, IV, 355 ff.

and predicted evolutionary changes in the "fashions in religion." "We despise the fathers and the pious and learned divines of the middle ages," he wrote. "Pious posterity will do the same by us; and twirl over our most favorite authors with the same ignorant pity and neglect: happy they, if their favorite authors contain the same blessed truths. ' ' 8 This was dangerously toleran t. Congregationalism had to turn away and await a different type of Yale president to defend her from the onslaughts of deism and its disciples.

The religious status of most towns after the Revolution was that of Windham, whose historian writes :

Her secular affairs were most flourishing. It was a transition period — a day of upheaval, over-turning, uprootal. Infidelity and Universalism had come in with the Revolution and drawn multitudes from the religious faith of their fathers. Free-thinking and free-drinking were alike in vogue. Great looseness of manners and morals had replaced the ancient Puritanic strictness .... Now, sons of those honored fathers and the great majority of those in active life, were sceptics and scoffers, and men were placed in office who never entered the House of God except for town meetings and secular occasions. 9

Without doubt, growing irreligion had much to do with the prevalence of vice. The increasing infidelity in weakening the awful grip with which the Calvinists' 'hereafter' once held their minds, removed the greatest influence enforcing the stern old Puritan morality.

8 Stiles, Sermon, May, 1783, p. 96.

9 Ellen D. Lamed, History of Windham County, II, 220.

The years of peace wrought little in the way of restraining the irreligious propensities. Some were constrained to believe that men were more religious during the war than in the period immediately following, when, with trials removed, they became even more worldly. 10 It was pointed out that "infidelity assumed an air of importance." It was half feared that the augury of an American philosopher who had predicted some years before to David Hume that another century would see the extermination of religion in America, was prophetic. 11 Yet considered retrospectively President Stiles's survey of the nation's future religious life struck nearer the mark:

As to nominal Christianity, I have no doubt but that it will be upheld for ages in these states. Through the liberty enjoyed here, all religious sects will grow up into large and respectable bodies. 12

Yet Stiles feared the headway deism was making and took advantage of this Election Sermon to trumpet aloud its dangers. His attack was too scholarly to be effective outside the cloister. The average man could not follow his refutation of Hume, Voltaire, Tindal, or Shaftesbury, the last of whom he termed the "amiable Confucius of Deism," and condemnation of their usual glorification of other systems above Christianity.

Some caution is necessary, as these are contemporary accounts by severe moralists to whom the

10 Two Brothers, pp. 6 ff.; Samuel Wales, Sermon, May, 1785.

11 Dwight, Address, July 4, 1798, p. 18.

present is ever likely to appear hopeless and dark, and the past alone bright. With the vantage of several years perspective the same men may see much that was light in the once gloomy vista. Such was the case with President D wight, who wrote from memory some thirty years later that infidelity decreasing after 1783 gave way to the ancient virtues of New England, and became only a by- word for immorality while at the same time business standards reached a higher plane. 13 To a certain extent this may have been true, and the desperate conditions which Dwight painted after 1795 in his contemporary sermons may have been due to the baneful influences of the French Revolution, which counteracted the work of the reformers. Such a theory is not untenable in the light of facts. If, however, Dwight was correct in defining the beginning of the reform movement, he was mistaken in not stating or, more likely, in not perceiving its cause.

In 1784 Connecticut passed a general toleration act which revealed the tolerant spirit seen in the Virginia act of the same year and the clauses in the new state constitutions. As this act made dissent halfway respectable by freeing a dissenter, who presented a certificate declaring himself a member of some regular society recognized by law, from the payment of a Congregational tithe, it no doubt served to increase the adherents of non-Congregational churches. Still it must also have decreased the irreligious propaganda; for the legal dis-estab-

13 Dwight, Travels, IV, 355-361.

lishment of Congregationalism of the Saybrook Platform broke the point of the ' 'infidels' " strongest weapon of attack. Men, dissatisfied with the established order, could join one of the dissenting societies by complying with the certificate technicality. It acted as a safety-valve, for men were less apt to give up the church altogether. Furthermore, Congregationalism itself was morally strengthened. President D wight would never have agreed with such reasoning, for a little later he was inveighing uncompromisingly against the so-called "modern liberality." 14

Ethan Allen in 1784 printed his Oracles of Reason, which President Jared Sparks of Harvard at a later time assailed most vigorously and which Dwight of Yale noticed as the first formal publication in the United States against Christianity. 15 Allen in his preface wrote that he was called a deist, though he himself did not know what he was, save that he assuredly was not a Calvinist, or hopeful of immunity from clerical attack. The book might best be characterized as an assault on Puritanism and its preachers. How widely the treatise was circulated, cannot be determined, but, judging from Allen's popularity in Vermont, his Revolutionary services, his Litchfield birth, it is likely that it was read throughout New England. Its publication alone would incline one to doubt that there was the genuine, gen-

14 Discourse (1801), p. 16; Zephaniah Swift, A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut, I, 145.

16 Riley, American Thought, pp. 12-17, 56-58; Riley, American Philosophy, The Early Schools, pp. 48 ff . ; Proceedings of Vermont Historical Society (1902), p. 6.

eral aversion to deism which too great dependence on D wight or Judge Swift might lead one to believe.

President Dwight learned that as early as 1786 there were in America several branches of the IIluminati, that professedly higher branch of Free Masonry founded (to his regret, later on) by Professor Weishaupt of Ingolstadt. His auditors were not informed as to whether Connecticut had a chapter, but were told that this society propagated doctrines striking at the very root of human happiness, virtue, society and government. 16 If its purpose was to weaken the hold of religion on men, the time was propitious.

The years before the French Revolution and the establishment of a strong national government were lean, unstable years, when change was in the air. The critical period was one of discontent, a searching after a panacea. Is it surprising if many saw in deism a hope; in the church, a tyranny; and in the clergyman, an enemy? Hard times, commercial depression, slack shipping, depreciated currency, national, state and private debts in great volume, speculation, avaricious longing for wealth, inter-state land disputes caused general dissatisfaction. Then came the party or class struggle for and against a strong centralized government, with the people of property, social standing and orthodox religion on one side and the debtor and man of doubtful or no religion on the other. Once the national constitution was adopted, one would expect that religious discontent would cease, as did political and economic dissatisfaction. An adjustment

16 Dwight, Address, July 4, 1798, pp. 13-14.

of religious differences in broader toleration, if not a turning from philosophic thought to the more practical concerns of every-day life, might have resulted if the French Revolution had not broken forth. The importance of the French Revolution on the religious thought of Connecticut can hardly be overestimated, yet it must not be held responsible for all the ungodliness of those years of Connecticut's darkness. As we have seen, the roots of irreligion and moral shortcomings went far behind the days of the French Revolution. That Revolution merely gave a powerful stimulus to deism and to all that was generally connoted by the term " Jacobinism." On the other hand it aroused the clergy to a united opposition to the enemies of religion. As evidence that the French Revolution was not the cause of the religious decline, consider the fiftieth anniversary sermon of Rev. Mr. White of Windham, delivered in 1790, before the effects of the Revolution could possibly have been felt:

In those days there were scarce any that were not professors of religion, and but few infants not baptized. No families that were prayerless. Profane swearing was but little known, and open violations of the Sabbath not practiced as is common now. And there were no Deists among us. The people as a body were fearers of the Lord and observers of the Sabbath and its duties. But the present day is peculiar, for men's throwing off the fear of the Lord. Declensions in religion have been increasing for about thirty years past, such as profaneness, disregard of the Sabbath, neglect of family religion, unrighteousness, intemperance, imbibing of modern errors and heresies and the crying prevalence of infidelity against the clearest light. 17

17 Quoted in Rev. Elijah Waterman, Sermon, Dec. 10, 1800, p. 33, and in Lamed, Windham County, II, 221.

Jesse Lee, the pioneer Methodist exhorter, on his tour of 1789 found religion at a low ebb, though his testimony must be closely scrutinized. However, he seems to be borne out by other witnesses to whom the same declension of morals and religion was plainly, if painfully, visible. 18 This condition was not confined to particular sections of the state, for, if it had been, these early Methodist and Baptist itinerant evangelists would not have been so generally successful. Such was the religious life of Connecticut when the French Constituent Assembly was drafting the Constitution of the Clergy.

The French Revolution in its early years was as generally approved in Connecticut as elsewhere in America. 19 The attack on the church was applauded in a short-sighted, if not bigoted, manner, as the fulfillment of their long-predicted overthrow of Anti-Christ, of Babylon. 20 For the sake of consistency, it would have been well if the Congregational ministers had realized that Jacobinism was essentially an attack on Christianity. This would have relieved them in ensuing years from the biting ridicule of bitter democratic pens when they favored the coalition to such an extent that they could

18 Nathan Bangs, History of the Methodist-Episcopal Church, I, 288- 290; Bishop Francis Asbury, Journal, II, 102; Sketch of R. M. Sherman, pp. 20-22.

19 Ezra Stiles, Diary, III, 391, 432, 467; Noah Webster, Ten Letters; The Revolution in France; James Gould, July 4th Address (1798), pp. 21 £E.; James Dana, Two Discourses, pp. 54 ff.; Dwight, Travels, IV, 371-375; Charles D. Hazen, Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution.

20 Anson Ely Morse, The Federalist Party in Massachusetts to the Year 1800, pp. 88 ff.

rejoice in the Concordat and even in the ultimate re-establishment of the Bourbons and the church. This complete turn of sympathy on the part of the ministry and in general of the upper social class can be accounted for by England's declaration that bhe stood as the bulwark of religion as well as by the unbridled excesses of the revolutionists. America could not condone the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the worship of the Supreme Being, the full Terror, and the blood of Toulon and La Vendee. Then the fear aroused by the close association of Jacobinism with the Revolutionary Societies of England and with the beginnings of the Republican movement at home brought many to the other extreme of not being able to see any good in the whole convulsion.

At length the Connecticut ministry concluded that Jacobinism was not only anti-clerical, but positively anti-Christian. Dwight stood foremost among his brethren when, in 1798, he pointed out that the persecution to which the Catholic church was subjected, was contrary to his desires. However, he carefully explained that he was no friend to its system. 21 In 1801 he set forth his opinion — somewhat dictatorially — in answer to certain excuses for French infidelity, as follows:

It is true, that the persecution of modern Infidels has fallen principally on Catholics, and not on Protestants, and

21 Address, July 4, 1798, p. 9; Rev. Nathan Strong exhibited the same views in his Thanksgiving Sermons of 1798 and 1800. Strong's toleration was evidenced in his invitation to Abb6 Matignon to use his pulpit when on a visit to Hartford in 1813. Catholic Historical Review, I, 151.

it is equally true, that they have not persecuted them at all as Catholics, but merely as Christians. They themselves have often told us their real design. They have ridiculed, denied, and decried Religion as such; and not as the Catholic system; and have fought and butchered the Catholic soldiers, and the people, as the Armies and adherents of Jesus, by name. . . . . The religion, the piety of these men constituted the crime, for which they died; not the character of Catholics. Accordingly the persecution has fallen indiscriminately on Protestants as well as Catholics; not so often; because there were not so many of them; but never the less, because they were Protestants. This distinction was invented here, and by us; and was not so much as thought of by themselves. 22

Furthermore, D wight painfully maintained that he was equally unfriendly to Rome and such infidels as refused to differentiate between true and false religion, while he admitted, on the other hand, that there were pious Catholics. In thinking otherwise he felt that one would be guilty of the bigotry with which they are charged. What wonder is it, then, that the Republican of 1801 ridiculed the political inconsistency of the federalist ministry? 23

During the closing years of the century Dwight assumed undoubted leadership. His study of the deistic movement and literature was more thorough than that of any Connecticut man since President Stiles. As scholarly as Stiles, he was a more aggressive character, a stouter debater as well as a more popular preacher. He was a born leader. His orthodoxy was unquestioned. As Yale's head, he was the chief of the clerical faction which was

22 Discourse (1801), pp. 54-56; cf. Dwight, Travels, IV, 367.

23 Constitutional Telegraph quoted in American Mercury, June 12, 19, 1800; April 22, July 8, 1802.

fast forming in answer to Jacobinical attacks on the clergy and their interests. His sermons demonstrated not only that he knew his subject, but that he had closely studied the writings of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, of Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Hume, Bolingbroke, Gibbon, d'Alembert, Voltaire, Rousseau and a host of minor philosophers, as well as the leading English works refuting them. He was able to trace the rise of the Illuminati. He had even looked into the " loose moral principles" of Kant and other German writers. The immature thinker of 1788 who had written the Triumph of Infidelity, 24 was now ready to lead and able to convince men of his inherent right of leadership in the crusade against irreligion.

The Congregational clergy, seeing the necessity of concerted action, were thankful to have a D wight for their leader. Scarcely one failed to take his place in the line of battle in defense of church and state. That they might wage a more effective campaign, was their chief plea for a general entrance into politics. In so doing, they made themselves the mark for virulent Republican attacks, with the result that Republicanism represented to them all that was blackest in Jacobinism. Between the two, they would not differentiate. The increasingly numerous sectarians also strove against infidelity by preaching and revivals, with rather more success, for they did not assail Republicanism as part of the deistic movement. Methodist and Baptist exhorters even as Republicans contended against

* Stiles, Diary, III, 326.

irreligion. As the excesses of the French Revolution had cured of their revolutionary ardor all but the violent partisans, Republicans themselves realized that the popular association of deism, infidelity and Republicanism would endanger their cause. This concerted action on the part of the settled ministry, supplemented by the telling labors of churchmen and despised sectarians, preserved religion in Connecticut 25 during this period of crisis.

French books of philosophy were coming rapidly into vogue with translations and popularized pamphlet abridgments. 26 The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine was read with avidity and by all classes, as editions were cheap and frequently distributed gratis. Rev. William Bentley noted that Paine was universally read in Connecticut, and assumed importance, because of the diatribes or eulogies heaped upon him by the respective parties. 27 He might be labeled a genius without morals, a "strolling preacher of Jacobinism;" but men had not forgotten that, like Ethan Allen, he deserved well of America and evil of England. Moreover, he reached the masses by popularizing the philosophers whose thoughts were too obscured in their rhetoric and diction to be comprehended by the uneducated. In this way the simple-minded frontiers-