The Fundamental Orders

In the late nineteenth century the historical popularizer and Connecticut native son John Fiske wrote that the Fundamental Orders were "the First written constitution known to history, that created a government and it [sic] marked the beginnings of American democracy.... The government of the United States today is in lineal descent more nearly related to that of Connecticut than to that of any of the other thirteen colonies." Perhaps Fiske's most concise statement of the case was that delivered to the Ruth Wylly's chapter of the D.A.R. in Hartford. It was published in a little thirty-one-page pamphlet in 1901 as Connecticut’s Part the Federal Constitution. Fiske's contention that the U.S. Constitution was modeled on a Connecticut confederation with a bicameral legislature which manifested the federal principle is pure nonsense. Nevertheless Fiske articulated a belief which became so pervasive that it finally found expression on the rear end of every car registered in Connecticut.

Some jurists joined Fiske's supporters, and their spokesman, Alexander Johnston, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton, wrote one of the most widely read statements of the thesis in the post-Fiske era. "In the development of new towns, Connecticut had always been careful to maintain the substantial equality of each town in at Least one branch of her government" he wrote, incorrectly. Under an archaic nineteenth-century formula, many towns were limited to one deputy, while most had two. Nevertheless, the ill-informed Johnston contended that in the context of the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, Connecticut's "combination of commonwealth and town rights had worked so simply and naturally that her delegates were quite prepared to suggest a similar combination of national and state rights as the foundation of the new government ... This is the crowning glory of the system which Hooker inaugurated in the wilderness and of the commonwealth of Connecticut" (Connecticut. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1887; 2nd rev. ed., 1903, p. 321.) To characterize Thomas Hooker in 1639 as the father of the Connecticut Compromise of 1787 stretches credibility more than a bit; but, then, Johnston was not a historian.

Charles M. Andrews, a far better scholar than Fiske and a much better historian than Johnston, disputed the contention as early as 1889 in The River Towns of Connecticut: A Study of Wethersfield, Hartford, and Windsor (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1889) and continued to attempt to dispel the myth to his dying day. His most concise statement is found in a piece published the year after his death "On Some Aspects of Connecticut History," New England Quarterly 17(March, 1944)1:3-24, originally a talk given at Woodstock "The Fundamental Order," he said "are a constitution or civil compact in the sense that any body of law that defines a government has a constitutional character. But they are not a constitution analogous to our Federal Constitution or state constitution of today, nor have they ever been taken as a model for any of the constitutions of modern times." (p. 11) Andrews' The Colonial Period vol. II, remains the best source for the Fundamental Orders, the Warwick Patent and the Charter of 1662.

See also Andrews'

Connecticut's Place in Colonial History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1923. A talk that also concisely states his views.

The Beginnings of Connecticut, 1632-1662. New Haven Yale University Press, 1934. Tercentenary pamphlet XXXII (1934); chapters from vol. II of The Colonial Period.

Christopher Collier tries to explain matters in : The Fundamental Orders and American Constitutionalism," Connecticut Law Review 21 (Summer 1989) 4: 863-70; and "Why Connecticut  Is the Constitution State," Connecticut Bar Journal.  61 (August 1981) 4:210-14.

An adequate short discussion of the documents is Mary Jeanne Anderson Jones' Congregational  Commonwealth:  Connecticut,  1636-1662 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1968). She adds little to Andrews, but puts it all together in a handy format and in an appendix includes the relevant documents: the Warwick Patent, the Massachusetts Bay Commission, and the Fundamental Orders. She also includes a nice bibliography of her topic. Jones has been faulted, however, for her lack of familiarity with Puritanism, so that the Congregational part of her story is badly flawed. (Timothy Breen's review in the New England Quarterly 421969:474) For older comment by sound but probably incorrect students, see

Bacon, Leonard. A Discourse on the Early Constitutional History of Connecticut. Hartford: Case, Tiffany and Burnham, 1843. This was a talk presented before the CHS. Bacon was the first to suggest that the Fundamental Orders were the foundation of American federalism.

Baldwin, Simeon E. "The Three Constitutions of Connecticut." Papers of the NHCHS 5(1884):179-246. The Fundamental Orders, The Charter of 1662, and the Constitution of 1818. Baldwin also insists that the Orders were a constitution.

The Tercentenary Commission published as pamphlet XX (1934) Albert Carlos Bates' "transliteration" of the Fundamental Orders, with a short introduction by George M. Dutcher. The pamphlet includes a photographic reproduction of the original document, which is kept at the State Library.

For Thomas Hooker's significant part in the development of the Fundamental Orders and that of Roger Ludlow, see entries in the "Biographies" section. But don't miss, also, the piece by Ferry Miller, for a generation the dean of historians of Puritanism, "Thomas Hooker and the Democracy of Early Connecticut," in New England Quarterly 4(October, 1931)4:663-712. Miller, without disparaging the significance of Hooker's work, sees Connecticut's government as a logical development from the Massachusetts experience; the Orders were a natural evolution, not a radical innovation.

See also Bronson, Henry "Chapters on the Early Government of Connecticut with Critical and Explanatory Remarks on the Constitution of 1639," Papers of the NHCHS 3(1882):291-404. This work is interesting and sound but superseded by Andrews and Jones.

Hart, Samuel. "The Fundamental Orders and the Charter." Papers of the NHCHS 8(1914):298-54. A short survey, no longer useful.

Humphrey, E. F. “Connecticut's First Constitution." Connecticut Bar Journal 13(January, 1939).

McCook, Philip. "The Fundamental Orders." Connecticut Bar Journal 13 January, 1939)1:52-65. Issues another tercentenary rebuttal to Andrews.

Santos, Hubert J. "The Birth of a Liberal State: Connecticut's Fundamental Orders." Connecticut Law Review 1(December, 1968)2:386-400 Does not enter the fray but concludes about another aspect that the Orders were an effort to decentralize political control and, though essentially conservative, were more liberal than any other government then existing in the Western world (p. 400)