Week 15: Towards Freedom

Like the inability to hold a live, squirming fish in one’s hands with a firm and strong grip, England was unable to hold onto a colonial world that was squirming under socio-economic shifts. Perhaps if England had exercised a looser hold with reactionary muscles, the squirming colony would have remained at least in their hands. The force exerted against the colony served as its’ emancipative strength. This was certainly the sentiment at large in the Connecticut colony.

Those who had the influence and vehicle to make known dissenting spirits seemingly held the voice of the people, and proved such influence by the Revolution itself. For example, a 1765 newspaper printed in New Haven by Benjamin Mecom is a page long diatribe against ideological slavery, personifying it as a horrific monster bent on obtaining a total and indiscriminating bondage of the will. Interestingly enough, Mecom himself was nephew to another famous ideological printer, Benjamin Franklin.

The Great Awakening not only revitalized a personal and emotive relationship with God, it applied a new hermeneutic to Scriptural authority and what earthly authorities should look like and how they are to function. Some conservative Old Lights in Connecticut were loyalists in that they believed God’s earthly authority over them rested in the English crown. New Lights, they argued, were intoxicated with the emotional enthusiasm that clouded their rational minds and diverged them from a traditional path of Biblical precepts. The scales were even in more favor of the impassioned New Lights and pre-revolutionaries because of the original purpose of religious freedoms in the Great Migration to the colonial world almost 150 years prior. England resorted to the strong arm in trying to assuage the situation to their detriment.

A 1773 copy of the English report of Connecticut’s session laws detail repeals of sundry laws made by Connecticut’s own general assembly. It seems that England was seeking to flex a monarchial muscle for the sake of doing so, to make the point that the crown was the final and authoritative arbiter in colonial matters. A response is unknown, but it can be assumed that by 1773, people like Benjamin Mecom were incensed at this strong-arming of English policy. History obviously shows that revolutionary sentiments gained momentum and reached a fever pitch in 1775 when there was no going back. Connecticut was soon to transition from English colony to American state.

Mecom, Benjamin. “To the Publick of Connecticut.” 1765.

George, Wyllys. “Heads of Enquiry, Relative to the Present State and Condition of His Majesty’s Colony of Connecticut.” New London: Judah P. Spooner, 1773.

Week 14: (Lack of) Religious Diversity (much of) Religious complexity

The colony of Connecticut was founded in the early 17^th

century with the full intention of operating under Biblical parameters. This ecclesiastical autonomy from the Anglican Church served to model the Puritan ideals for living within a framework whose ultimate authority was God above any earthly, though submitting to earthly authority within the precepts of such submission as laid out in scripture. The resultant religious system was popularly known as Congregationalism, named for the unique nature of the churches’ authority as autonomous from any regional or national association.

The Congregational system remained the majority religious group through the colonial period, with the Connecticut government, called the Establishment, or Assembly, acted as the civil ruling body. In 1708 an allowance by the English crown allowed the minority dissenting churches in Connecticut to form, but few actually did before the Awakening. These marginal religious groups included Anglicans, Baptists, Quakers, and a smattering of Presbyterians with a few others. Interestingly enough, after the Awakening revivals in Connecticut, these marginal groups gained momentum due the growth in population and the plain theological schisms that ensued within the Congregational polity.efault d

In 1708 the Saybrook Platform was passed effectually giving ecclesiastical authority to pastors and taking it out of the hands of the congregation. This Platform was enacted to help truncate the number of dissenting churches and to address the declining spiritual interest of the people of the community. The Saybrook Platform was a colony-wide reform effort that carried a sense of politic with it; religious though it was in function, it affected life for everyone in the colony and introduced divisiveness among the people. This type of public interest would gain momentum as the 18^th century progressed and culminate in revolutionary ideologies of the 1770’s. The Platform was a source of contention that gained momentum during revival fires in the 1730’s and ‘40s.

In 1735 a marked change occurred that would precipitate the protestant Great Awakening five years later. Jonathan Edward’s (a Connecticut native) church in Northampton, Massachusetts and Jonathan Marsh’s parish church in Windsor, Connecticut experienced an outpouring of God’s spirit on these respective congregations. Until this time, the general spiritual state of the Connecticut churches had been in a seemingly gradual decline since really the founding of the colony. Described as a spirit of declension, ministers constantly exhorted their congregations to repent of sinful idolatrous lethargies and return to worshiping Jesus Christ exclusively. It is arguable that a decline in spiritual interest directly correlated with economic expansion and increased material acquisitions available. This distraction with temporal interests abruptly changed colony-wide starting in 1735.

Benjamin Trumball, in his Civil and Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut, records this precipitating awakening occurred first in Windsor, then in East-Windsor (where Timothy Edwards, Jonathan Edwards’ father, was minister), in Coventry, Durham, Lebanon-Crank, Mansfield, Bolton, Tolland, Hebron, New Haven and Norwich. These were only pockets that experienced an increase in affections and attention to Christ and the majority of the colony remained in a state of spiritual lethargy.

These small awakenings gathered much momentum during the winter of 1740-1741, when Anglican George Whitefield visited New England. Whitefield, an Anglican reformer, gave highly emotive yet doctrinally sound sermons reflecting Calvinistic dogma, appealed for the people’s repentance and return to God. His open-air venue preaching and itinerancy gave way not only to mass popularity and support, but critics of his embellishing followers as well. Protestants in Connecticut soon became either aligned with the label Old Lights or New Lights, or even, like the Edwardses, moderates.

The once marginalized religious groups such as Anglicans, Baptists, and Presbyterians were soon amalgamated into the New Light grouping, who offered a more ecumenical view than the staunch and antiquated Old Light view. These two factions shaped Connecticut religion throughout the mid 18^th century, and precipitated the opinionated viewpoints that would soon shape revolutionary era rhetoric.

Bushman, Richard L.. From Puritan to Yankee. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Trumball, Benjamin. A Complete History of Connecticut, Civil and Ecclesiastical. New Haven: Maltby, Goldsmith and Co., 1818.

Week 12: Slow and steady through the 17th cen. to the 18th.

Colonial scholar Jackson Turner Main, in his book Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut, helpfully presents a detailed study of probate inventories and other tangible assets of colonial Connecticut. This academic archeology lies more in records and documents rather than in dirt, but nevertheless provides a clear understanding of everyday life in colonial Connecticut. An insightful result of such a detailed study is the ability to compare the 17^th and 18^th centuries and see how society and economy precipitated the eventual revolutionary period of the 1770’s.

A sampling of Main’s research includes (some tables are inclusive of both 17^th and 18^th centuries, others are exclusively one or the other) age distribution and life expectancy of adult men, distribution of wealth, labor and land, tables detailing various nuances of farming life, standard living tables of shoemakers, weavers, and tailors, and occupations of leaders in the colony. These are only samplings, but they help us to understand the flow of life in the colony over those two centuries. Age distribution and life expectancy of adult males help us to see why Connecticut did not grow exponentially or expediently in the 17^th century as other colonies had. The lack of women in the newly annexed colony found many young men moving on through Connecticut to other frontier spaces in search of not only companionship but also land to raise families on. Connecticut thus did not enjoy an economic growth spurt until the 18^th century when the slow trickle of immigrating Massachusetts and Englishmen had settled more established towns. Plus, life expectancy was low for men unaccustomed to privations of frontier life.

The close study of farm life and the artisan-type trades show how Connecticut was first primarily a place of sustenance living, with towns founded around churches exemplifying the parish system in England. The 18^th century saw a gradual economic upswing with the introduction of more artisans and professionals as noted in the number of shoemakers, weavers, and tailors. Another interesting facet of this study shows the departure of western European stratification of social class in an aristocracy per se, a preponderance of a laboring class firmly established a healthy middle class reflecting self-actualizing ideologies that would be fleshed out more firmly towards the revolutionary period.

Another interesting piece I was able to peruse was from the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. The title was “Puritan Town Planting in New Haven.” John Davenport and other immigrant founders of New Haven, Connecticut, sought to establish the new town on principals laid out in Scripture, thus reflecting the Puritan desire to stay Biblically centered. The town itself physically is arguably demarcated in such a way that reflected a New Jerusalem. Obvious parallels are the symmetry in Biblical models and the distinctive square shape of New Haven. This reverential credence to Scriptural authority comes to the forefront as the religious fervor stimulated by the Great Awakening creates pre-revolutionary excitement in the 1770’s.

Archer, John. "Puritan Town Planning in New Haven." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34, no. 2 (May 1975): 140-149.

Main,Jackson T.. Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.