Federal and Early National Periods (1789-1818)

The Federal and Early National periods are of great importance in Connecticut history because they saw very significant economic, demographic, and political changes. In the last category, for instance, are included the rise of political parties and the adoption of the Constitution of 1818, our basic governing document until 1965. The era has produced very little published scholarship, however, though there is a significant dissertation and thesis literature.

Richard J. Purcell's Connecticut in Transition, 1775-1818 (Washington~ 1918; reissued by Wesleyan in 1963) is the best published work. Purcell, who also wrote an American history text for use in Catholic parochial schools, emphasizes the religious differences among competing Protestant sects as an impetus toward the development of political parties, the disestablishment of the Congregational church, and the separation of church and state in the Constitution of 1818. This work is authoritative but far from definitive, and not without errors. Indeed, Bruce Steiner, who has looked into the matter, tells us that Purcell has attributed incorrect religious affiliations to several of the figures he discusses--an aspect central to his interpretation. Nevertheless, this will have to do till a better one comes along.

The rise of political parties is treated in summary form by Christopher Collier and Bonnie Bromberger, eds., in the "Introduction to Volume XI of the Public Records of the State of Connecticut (Hartford, 1967), but fuller accounts are found in general Connecticut histories, such as those by Bingham and Van Dusen. Perhaps the best study of the matter is William Robinson's Jeffersonian Democracy in New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916; reprinted by AMS, 1969). Noah Webster's A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral Subjects (New York: Webster and Clark, 1843) includes an excellent presentation, "Brief History of Political Parties," from the point of view of Connecticut Federalist.

The contemporary Jeffersonian perspective was not widely shared in Connecticut, but the most articulate Jeffersonian, Joel Barlow, left a manuscript, which was edited by Christine M. Lizanich, "The March of this Government: Joel Barlow's Unwritten History of the United States," in William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series 33 (April, 1976) 2:315-30. Another Connecticut Jeffersonian, Christopher Manwaring of New London, published Essays Historical Moral, Political and Agricultural in 1829, but some the pieces were written in the early part of the century. There is one very interesting essay attacking Connecticut’s tax system.

James C. Welling's Connecticut Federalism, or Aristocratic Politics in a Social Democracy (New York: New York Historical Society, 1904) was a talk he delivered before the Society in 1890. It is a very one-sided apologia for the Federalists, 1790-1812.

Margaret E. Martin describes in great detail the mercantile activities of Connecticut’s leading capitalists in "Merchants and Trade of the Connecticut River Valley, 1750-1820" Smith College Studies in History 24 (October, 1938-July, 1939) 1-4. This study is packed with information about who the merchants were and how they operated in the domestic and West Indian trade, in flush times and bad. Martin describes the merchants as allied with the Standing Order in establishing the dominance of the Federalist Party, and given evidence of their animosity toward Jeffersonians. This is a down-the-line Progressive interpretation, and Martin's frequent citations of Vernon Parrington, J. T. Adams, and others substantiate that characterization. The interpretation is what one would expect of an economic study written during the 1930s but, despite its predictability, the mass of detail Martin piles up makes her interpretation very convincing. There is little attention given to the period before 1783.

There are four significant doctoral dissertations that discuss political developments of the period and one in which the focus is on economics.

Briceland, Alan Vance. "Ephraim Kirby, Connecticut Jeffersonian, 1757-1804: The Origins of the Jeffersonian Republican Party in Connecticut" (Duke University, 1965). Kirby (1757-1804) is known chiefly as the author of the first law reports in the United States, but he was an important Jeffersonian politician. Briceland puts Kirby in a broad political context, and the study is as much about politics as it is about Kirby.

Dennis, William Cullen. "A Federalist Persuasion: The American Ideal of the Connecticut Federalist" (Yale, 1971). This dissertation is a study of the social ideals of six prominent Connecticut Federalists: Timothy Dwight, Benjamin Silliman, Thomas Robbins, Simeon Baldwin, John Cotton Smith, and Oliver Wolcott, Jr. It concludes that they were conservatives and aristocrats, bur not of the "sort their enemies accused them of being. They shared with their opponents, the Jeffersonian Republicans, a belief in the worth of the individual, the necessity for human freedom if life was to be of value, the need for popular virtue if government was to be free, the strength of republican government, the value of agrarian life, and the love of parochial circumstance. Their conservatism came then not from a hostility of republican government but from their religious beliefs and their study of history." (from the abstract)

Platt, John David Ronalds. "Jeremiah Wadsworth: Federalist Entrepreneur" (Columbia, 1955). This study begins in 1789, when Wadsworth stood at the apex of his commercial career. It carries him through the economic difficulties of the Confederation era and shows how his commercial interest impelled him toward politics and finally to take the leadership in Connecticut of the nationalist forces, 1786-89. His service in Congress is also described. "Wadsworth's essentially constructive impulses are emphasized. They were the impulses of a man who strove to build upon the potentialities he perceived in his Country and himself." (from the abstract)

Stamps, Norman LeVaun. "Political Parties in Connecticut, 1789-1819" (Yale, 1950). This is a study of party organization. "After 1800 political parties in Connecticut had a thorough and efficient system of organization. By 1803 both Federalists and Republicans had an organization which reached from the grand caucus at the top to the local district committee concerned with ‘getting out the vote’. Both political parties were autocratically organized and there was a high degree of party discipline." (from the abstract) The caucus degenerated after about 1816, and discipline waned.

Thomas, Edmund B. "Politics in the Land of Steady Habits: Connecticut's First Political Party System, 1789-1820" (Clark University, 1972). "The Federalist party was stronger in Connecticut than in any other state in the Union. It never lost a statewide election before 1816 and never won one afterwards." (from the abstract) Thomas credits deference, tradition, and the interconnection between politics and religion for Federalist strength. The party fell apart when differing conceptions of "republicanism" became manifest after 1800.

Politics during the Federal and Early National eras is dealt with also in articles by James Beasley and Bonnie Collier cited in the section on the Western Reserve, above. The nasty little fracas on the floor of the Senate in Washington in which Senator Mathew Lyon of Vermont and Senator Roger Griswold of Connecticut went at it with wooden cane and iron fire tongs is described in an article by Senator Orville H. Platt, "The Encounter between Roger Griswold and Mathew Lyon in 1798," in Papers of the NHCHS 6 (1900):283-300. A short piece written to accompany an illustration was anonymously published in the CHS Bulletin, "Battle of the Wooden Sword" 27 (January, 1962) 1:28-32. Thomas Harold A. LaDuc, in Connecticut and the First Ten Amendments to the Federal Constitution (Washington: U.S.G.P.O., 1937) tells why the amendments were not ratified in Connecticut a subject also discussed in Christopher Collier's Roger Sherman's Connecticut. The legislature got around to endorsing the Bill of Rights in 1941, for reasons that are explained in W. H. Thomas "The Ratificahon of the Bill of Rights...in Connecticut" in The Alabama Lawyer 4 (October, 1942) 4:419-32.

Chester Destler's excellent Joshua Colt: American Federalist, 1758-1798 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1962) is a political biography of a Connecticut congressman and the best treatment in print of Connecticut's part in national politics during the 1790s. Destler includes a good, bibliography for the era. See also

Baldwin, Simeon E. "The Early History of the Ballot in Connecticut." Papers of the American Historical Association 4 (1886):407-22. This piece includes discussion of the Stand-up Law of 1801 and the efforts of the standing order to manipulate the ballot in order to stay in power.

Dexter, Franklin Bowditch, ed. "Selections from Letters Received by David Daggett, 1786-1802." American Antiquarian Society Proceedings. New series, IV.

--A Selection from the Miscellaneous Historical Papers of Fifty Years. New Haven: Privately Printed, 1918. This includes "Abraham Bishop, of Connecticut and his Writings," first published in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (March, 1905). Bishop was one of the state's leading Jeffersonians.

Foster, Augustus John. Jeffersonian America: Notes on the United States of America Collected in the Years 1805-6-7 and 11-12 by Sir Augustus John Foster Bart. Edited by Richard Beale Davis. San Marino, Calif.: The Huntington Library, 1954. Pages 306-20 constitute a very nice description, not only of Connecticut politics, but also of geography, roads, social manners, etc.

Good, L. Douglas. "Theodore Dwight: Federalist Propagandist." CHS Bulletin 39 (July, 1974) 3:87-96.

Grant, Philip, Jr. "Connecticut's National Political Leaders, 1789-1797." CHS Bulletin 38 (July, 1973) 3:73-75. Very brief biographies.

Kihn, Phyllis. "The French San Domingo Prisoners in Connecticut." CHS Bulletin 28 (April, 1963) 3:47-63.

Lokke, Carl Ludwig. "The Trumbull Episode: A Prelude to the 'XYZ' Affair." New England Quarterly 7 (March, 1934) 1:100+. John, the painter, was one of five commissioners sent to Paris in 1796 to adjust claims of American shippers against the English, as provided in Jay's Treaty.

McBride, Rita Mary. "Roger Griswold: Connecticut Federalist." Doctoral dissertation, Yale, 1948.

Persky, Samuel A. "When Connecticut Almost Rebelled” Connecticut Bar Journal 1 (October, 1927) 4:311-19. Discusses briefly, with the text of the resolutions, General Assembly objections to the embargo imposed by Jefferson and Madison, 1807-09.

Williamson, Chilton. "The Connecticut Property Test and the East Guilford Voter." CHS Bulletin 19 (October, 1954) 4:101-04. An important item. See under "Suffrage."

Willingham, William F. "Grass Roots Politics in Windham, Connecticut During the Jeffersonian Era." Journal of the Early Republic 1 (Summer, 1981) 2:127-48. Based on his doctoral dissertation (cited under "Town Studies" in the Colonial section, above), this essay demonstrates the need to focus on local political struggles in order to understand the development of state and national parties. In Windham the most important party issues in 1817-18 were the ideological differences that grew out of the fight for a state constitutional convention, and these issues affected individual alignments with the national parties.

Society and religion in the era are generally discussed in relevant sections below. But two books, both based on doctoral dissertations, stand out as particularly revealing of the times. Dorothy Lipson's magnificent Freemasonry in Federalist Connecticut, 1789-1835 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977) sheds considerable light on Connecticut society through the investigation and description of a "counterfactual" model. Charles Roy Keller's The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942) is a classic study of an early nineteenth-century revival of religious zeal which tells about much more than religious movements. For more on Keller, consult the index.