Colony-Town Relations

A line of argument different from Fiske's does not claim that American constitutional federalism was modeled on the Connecticut system but 'does maintain that our creation of the Fundamental Orders justifies the appellation "Constitution State." Perhaps the most credible proponent of this view was Simeon E. Baldwin, who wrote in 1925 that "Historians generally concede that the first written constitution of representative government was [the] Fundamental Orders, which were a social compact for immediate use, constituting a new and independent commonwealth, with definite officers, executive and legislative, and prescribed rules and modes of government." (Osborn's History of Connecticut in Monographic Form, 1:4) Carlos Bates also challenged Andrews in "Were the Fundamental  Orders  a  Constitution?"  Connecticut  Bar Journal  l0 January, 1936)1:43-50. Bates makes the case that the Founders conceived of the Orders as a constitution as the concept was then understood, and concludes, "Were not these Orders ... ‘the earliest written constitution in history'?" (p. 50)

A related question sometimes debated by historians is whether the General Assembly--or General Court, as it was called until 1698--dominated the towns or the reverse. Of greater controversy has been an associated question: was the original Connecticut government a confederation of sovereign towns, or was the colony government plenary from the start? Charles Andrews makes clear in "The Beginnings of the Connecticut Towns" (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, October, 1890) that the Connecticut government at no time could be construed as a mere confederation. Rather, he contends, the colony government achieved plenary authority at the first meeting of the General Court in 1636 and has held it ever since.

Several writers have insisted that, regardless of what the de jure conditions were, the towns in fact exercised wide local authority. One such writer, to whom perhaps Andrews was responding, was Clarence Deming who, in "Town Rule in Connecticut" Political Science Quarterly 4(1889), maintains that, because the deputies were elected by the towns, the towns held de facto control over the Colony government Modern legal scholars and jurists support Andrews contention that, from at least 1639 and probably from the date of the Massachusetts Bay Commission of 1636, the towns were agents of the colony government. The most thorough of the scholars holding the view that towns were substantially independent of the colony government is Thomas Walter Jodziewicz. His William and Mary dissertation (1974), “Dual Localism in Seventeenth-Century Connecticut: Relations Between the General Court and the Towns, 1635-1691,” deals with “the working-out of colony and town interests within the structure of Connecticut’s respective political institutions: the General Court and the town meeting.” “The Study concludes that while the General Court held ultimate sovereignty in the colony the Court was moderate in its exercise of such authority. The towns’ subordination to the General Court was accepted by the towns yet within certain limits Connecticut’s towns practiced an everyday independence.” (from the abstract)

Charles Andrews, as noted above, insisted that the three original towns had put themselves under the colony government which they—or perhaps the Massachusetts Bay Commission—-had created, and that since 1639 or 1636, the central government has been plenary. This view had also been developed by William Weeden in “Three Commonwealths, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island; Their Early Development,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 15(October, 1902): 134-64. Weeden contrasts Connecticut with Rhode Island, where a high degree of town autonomy prevailed. Weeden also points out that Connecticut and Rhode Island were political constructions rather than constitutional or legal ones. See also Ralph V. Coleman’s The Fundamental Orders (Westport, priv. printed, 1934) and his piece in all three editions of the Dictionary of American History. Bruce Cohn Daniels echoes Andrews’ and Weeden’s position in “Contrasting Colony-Town Relations in the Founding of Connecticut and Rhode Island Prior to the Charters of 1662 and 1663,” CHS Bulletin 38(April, 1973)2:60-64, and “Town Government in Connecticut, 1636-1675: The Founding of Institutions,” The Connecticut Review 9(November, 1975).

The legal status of towns in Connecticut, from 1634, is traced in Christopher Collier, "New England Specter: Town and State in Connecticut History, Law and Myth," Bulletin of the CHS. 60(Summer/Fall 1995) 3-4:137-92, a shorter version of which is "Sleeping with Ghosts: Myth and Public Policy in Connecticut, 1634-1991," The New England Quarterly. (June, 1992) 179-207.