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The
History of Connecticut begins as a number of
unrelated colonial villages. These ventures
gradually coalesced into larger units until they
were finally combined under a single royal charter
in 1662. Thomas Hooker and his congregation left
Massachusetts because of religious purposes and
established Connecticut in 1639.
Colonies in Connecticut
Various
Algonquian tribes
inhabited the area prior to European settlement. The Dutch
were the first Europeans in Connecticut. In 1614
Adriaen Block explored the
coast of Long Island Sound,
and sailed up the Connecticut
River at least as far as the confluence of the
Park River, site of
modern Hartford,
Connecticut. By 1623, the new
Dutch West India Company
regularly traded for furs there and ten years later they
fortified it for protection from the
Pequot
Indians as well as from the expanding English colonies.
They fortified the site, which was named "House of Hope"
(also identified as "Fort Hoop",
"Good Hope" and "Hope"), but encroaching
English colonization made them agree to withdraw in the
Treaty of Hartford, and by
1654 they were gone.
The first
English colonists came from the
Bay Colony and
Plymouth Colony in
Massachusetts, and they settled
at Windsor in 1633,
Wethersfield
(1634), and, led by Thomas Hooker,
Hartford (1636). The
Bay colony also built
Fort Saybrook at the mouth of the River in 1636. Another
Puritan group started the New
Haven Colony in 1637. The Massachusetts colonies did not
seek to absorb their progeny in Connecticut and
Rhode Island into the
Massachusetts governments. Communication and travel was too
difficult, and it was also convenient to have a place for
nonconformists to go.
The English
settlement and trading post at Windsor especially threatened
the Dutch trade, since it was upriver and more accessible to
the Indians from the interior. That fall and winter the
Dutch sent a party upriver as far as modern
Springfield,
Massachusetts spreading gifts to convince the Indians to
bring their trade to the Dutch post at Hartford.
Unfortunately, they also spread smallpox
and, by the end of the 1633-34 winter, the Indian population
of the entire valley was reduced from over 8,000 to less
than 2,000. This left the fertile valley wide open to
further settlement.
The Pequot War
The Pequot
War was the first serious armed conflict between the
indigenous peoples and the settlers in New England. The
ravages of disease, coupled with trade pressures invited the
Pequots to tighten their hold on the river tribes.
Additional incidents began to involve the colonists in the
area, in 1635, and next spring their raid on Wethersfield
prompted the three towns to meet. Following the raid on
Wethersfield, the war climaxed when 300 Pequot men, women,
and children were burned out of their village, hunted down
and massacred.
On
May 1, 1637, they
each sent delegates to the first General Court held at the
meeting house in Hartford. This was the start of self
government in Connecticut. They pooled their militia under
the command of John
Mason of Windsor, and declared war on the Pequots. When
the war was over, there were officially no more Pequots. The
Treaty of Hartford in 1638
reached agreements with the other tribes that gave the
colonists the Pequot lands.
Under
the Fundamental Orders
The River
Towns had created a general government when faced with the
demands of a war. In 1639, they took the unprecedented step
of documenting the source and form of that government. They
enumerated individual rights and concluded that a free
people were the only source of government's authority. Rapid
growth and expansion grew under this new regime.
On
April 22, 1662,
the Connecticut Colony
succeeded in gaining a Royal Charter that embodied and
confirmed the self-government that they had created with the
Fundamental Orders. The only significant change was that it
called for a single Connecticut government with a southern
limit at Long Island Sound,
and a western limit of the Pacific ocean, which meant that
this charter was still in conflict with the
New netherland colony.
Since 1638,
the New Haven Colony had
been independent of the river towns, but there was another
factor added to the Charter. The new government in
New York, under the Duke of York (a
distrusted Catholic), had already taken their settlements on
Long Island. By January 1665, they gave in and sent
delegates from their towns to the general court.
Indian
pressures were relieved for some time by the severity and
ferocity of the Pequot War.
King Philip's War (1675-1676) brought renewed fighting
to Connecticut. Although primarily a war of
Massachusetts, Connecticut
provided men and supplies. This war effectively removed any
remaining Native American influence in Connecticut.
The
Dominion of New England
In 1686,
Sir Edmund Andros was
commissioned as the Royal Governor of the
Dominion of New England.
Andros maintained that his commission superseded their 1662
Charter. At first, Connecticut ignored this situation. But
in late October of 1687, Andros arrived with troops and
naval support. Governor Robert Treat
had no choice but to convene the assembly. Andros met with
the governor and General Court on the evening of
October 31, 1687.
Governor
Andros praised their industry and government, but after he
read them his commission, he demanded their charter. As they
placed it on the table, people blew out all the candles.
When the light was restored, the charter was missing.
According to legend, it was hidden in the
Charter Oak. Sir Edmund named
four members to his Council for the Government of New
England and proceeded to his capital at
Boston.
Since
Andros viewed New York and Massachusetts as the important
parts of his Dominion, he mostly ignored Connecticut. Aside
from some taxes demanded and sent to Boston, Connecticut
also mostly ignored the new government. When word arrived
that the Glorious Revolution
had placed William and
Mary on the throne, the citizens of Boston drove Andros
into exile. The Connecticut court met and voted on
May 9, 1689 to
restore the Charter. They also reelected Robert Treat as
governor each year until 1698.
Territorial disputes
According
to a 1650 agreement with the Dutch,
the western boundary of Connecticut ran north from the west
side of Greenwich Bay
"provided the said line come not within 10 miles of Hudson
River." On the other hand, Connecticut's original Charter in
1662 granted it all the land to the "South Sea", i.e.
the Pacific Ocean.
-
ALL
that parte of our dominions in Newe England in America
bounded on the East by Norrogancett River, commonly
called Norrogancett Bay, where the said River falleth
into the Sea, and on the North by the lyne of the
Massachusetts Plantacon, and on the south by the Sea,
and in longitude as the lyne of the Massachusetts
Colony, runinge from East to West, (that is to say) from
the Said Norrogancett Bay on the East to the South Sea
on the West parte, with the Islands thervnto adioyneinge,
Together with all firme lands ... TO HAVE AND TO HOLD
... for ever...
Needless to
say, this brought it into territorial conflict with those
states which currently lie between Connecticut and the
Pacific. A patent issued on
March 12, 1664,
granted the Duke of York "all
the land from the west side of Connecticut River to the east
side of Delaware Bay." In October, 1664, Connecticut and New
York agreed to grant Long Island
to New York, and establish the boundary between Connecticut
and New York as a line from the
Mamaroneck River
"north-northwest to the line of the Massachusetts", crossing
the Hudson River near
Peekskill and the boundary of
Massachusetts near the northwest corner of the current
Ulster County, New York.
This agreement was never really accepted, however, and
boundary disputes continued. The Governor of New York issued
arrest warrants for residents of Greenwich,
Rye, and Stamford, and founded
a settlement north of
Tarrytown in what Connecticut considered part of its
territory in May of 1682. Finally, on
November 28, 1683, the states
negotiated a new agreement establishing the border as 20
miles east of the Hudson River,
north to Massachusetts. In recognition of the wishes of the
residents, the 61,660 acres east of the
Byram River making up the
Connecticut Panhandle
were granted to Connecticut. In exchange, for
Rye was granted to New York,
along with a 1.81 mile wide strip of land running north from
Ridgefield to
Massachusetts alongside Dutchess, Putnam, and Westchester
Counties, New York, known as the "Oblong".
In the
1750s, the western frontier remained on the other side of
New York. In 1754 the
Susquehannah
Company of Windham,
Connecticut obtained from a group of Native Americans a
deed to a tract of land along the
Susquehanna River which
covered about one-third of Pennsylvania. This venture met
with the disapproval of not only Pennsylvania, but also of
many in Connecticut including the Deputy Governor, who
opposed Governor Jonathan
Trumbull's support for the company, fearing that
pressing these claims would endanger the charter of the
colony. In 1769,
Wilkes-Barre was founded by
John Durkee and a
group of 240 Connecticut settlers. The British government
finally ruled "that no Connecticut settlements could be made
until the royal pleasure was known". In 1773 the issue was
settled in favor of Connecticut and
Westmoreland,
Connecticut was established as a town and later a
county.
Pennsylvania did not accede to the ruling, however, and
open warfare broke out between
them and Connecticut, ending with an attack in July, 1778,
which killed approximately 150 of the settlers and forced
thousands to flee. While they periodically attempted to
regain their land, they were continuously repulsed, until,
in December 1783, a commission ruled in favor of
Pennsylvania. After complex litigation, in 1786, Connecticut
dropped its claims by a
deed of cession
to Congress, in exchange for freedom for war debt and
confirmation of the rights to land further west in
present-day Ohio, which became known as the
Western Reserve. Pennsylvania
granted the individual settlers from Connecticut the titles
to their land claims. Although the region had been called
Westmoreland County, Connecticut, it has no relationship
with the current Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.
The Western
Reserve, which Connecticut received in recompense for giving
up all claims to any Pennsylvania land in 1786, constituted
a strip of land in what is currently northeast
Ohio, 120 miles wide from east to west
bordering Lake Erie and
Pennsylvania. Connecticut owned
this territory until selling it to the
Connecticut Land Company
in 1795 for $1,200,000, which resold parcels of land to
settlers. In 1796, the first settlers, led by
Moses Cleaveland, began a
community which was to become
Cleveland, Ohio; in a short time, the area became known
as "New Connecticut".
An area 25
miles wide at the western end of the Western Reserve, set
aside by Connecticut in 1792 to compensate those from
Danbury, New Haven, Fairfield, Norwalk, and New London who
had suffered heavy losses when they were burnt out by fires
set by British raids during the
War of Independence,
became known as the Firelands. By
this time, however, most of those granted the relief by the
state were either dead or too old to actually move there.
The Firelands now constitutes Erie and Huron Counties, as
well as part of Ashland County, Ohio.
The American Revolution
(1775-1789)
Connecticut
was the only one of the 13 colonies
involved in the American
Revolution that did not have an internal revolution of
its own. It had been largely self-governing since its
beginnings. Governor Jonathan
Trumbull was elected every year from 1769 to 1784.
Connecticut's government continued unchanged even after the
revolution, until the
United States Constitution was adopted in 1789. A
Connecticut Privateer was the
Guilford.
Early National Period (1789-1818)
New England
was the stronghold of the
Federalist party.
One historian explains how well organized it was in
Connecticut:
-
It was
only necessary to perfect the working methods of the
organized body of office-holders who made up the nucleus
of the party. There were the state officers, the
assistants, and a large majority of the Assembly. In
every county there was a sheriff with his deputies. All
of the state, county, and town judges were potential and
generally active workers. Every town had several
justices of the peace, school directors and, in
Federalist towns, all the town officers who were ready
to carry on the party's work. Every parish had a
"standing agent," whose anathemas were said to convince
at least ten voting deacons. Militia officers, state's
attorneys, lawyers, professors and schoolteachers were
in the van of this "conscript army." In all, about a
thousand or eleven hundred dependent officer-holders
were described as the inner ring which could always be
depended upon for their own and enough more votes within
their control to decide an election. This was the
Federalist machine.
Given the
power of the Federalists, the Democratic-Republicans had to
work harder to win. In 1806, the state leadership sent town
leaders instructions for the forthcoming elections. Every
town manager was told by state leaders "to appoint a
district manager in each district or section of his town,
obtaining from each an assurance that he will faithfully do
his duty." Then, the town manager was instructed to compile
lists and total up the number of taxpayers, the number of
eligible voters, how many were "decided republicans,"
"decided federalists," or "doubtful," and finally to count
the number of supporters who were not currently eligible to
vote but who might qualify (by age or taxes) at the next
election. These highly detailed returns were to be sent to
the county manager. They, in turn, were to compile
county-wide statistics and send it on to the state manager.
Using the newly compiled lists of potential voters, the
managers were told to get all the eligibles to the town
meetings, and help the young men qualify to vote. At the
annual official town meeting, the managers were told to,
"notice what republicans are present, and see that each
stays and votes till the whole business is ended. And each
District-Manager shall report to the Town-Manager the names
of all republicans absent, and the cause of absence, if
known to him." Of utmost importance, the managers had to
nominate candidates for local elections, and to print and
distribute the party ticket. The state manager was
responsible for supplying party newspapers to each town for
distribution by town and district managers. This
highly coordinated "get-out-the-vote" drive would be
familiar to modern political campaigners, but was the first
of its kind in world history.
Connecticut
prospered during the era, as the seaports were busy and the
first textile factories were built. The American Embargo and
the British blockade during the War
of 1812 severely hurt the export business, but did help
promote the rapid growth of industry.
Eli Whitney of New Haven was one of many engineers and
inventors who made the state a world leader in machine tools
and industrial technology generally. The state was known for
its political conservatism, typified by its Federalist party
and the Yale College of Timothy
Dwight. The foremost intellectuals were Dwight and
Noah Webster, who compiled his
great dictionary in New Haven. Religious tensions polarized
the state, as the established Congregational Church, in
alliance with the Federalists, tried to maintain its grip on
power. The failure of the
Hartford Convention in 1814 wounded the Federalists, who
were finally upended by the Republicans in 1817.
Modernization and Industry
Up until
this time, Connecticut had adhered to the 1662 Charter, and
with the independence of the American colonies over forty
years prior, much of what the Charter stood for was no
longer relevant. In 1818, a new constitution was adopted
that was the first piece of written legislation to separate
church and state in Connecticut, and give equality all
religions. Gubernatorial powers were also expanded as well
as increased independence for courts by allowing their
judges to serve life terms.
Connecticut
started off with the raw materials of abundant running water
and navigable waterways, and using the Yankee work ethic
quickly became an industrial leader. Between the birth of
the U.S. patent system in 1790 and
1930, Connecticut had more patents issued per capita than
any other state; in the 1800s, when the U.S. as a whole was
issued one patent per three thousand population, Connecticut
inventors were issued one patent for every 700–1000
residents. Connecticut's first recorded invention was a
lapidary machine, by
Abel Buell of
Killingworth, in
1765.
Twentieth Century (Since 1900)
Immigration
Connecticut
factories in New Haven,
Waterbury and
Hartford were magnets
for European immigrants. The largest groups comprised
Italian American, and
Polish American, and other
Eastern Europeans. They
brought much needed unskilled labor and
Catholicism to a historically
Protestant state. A significant
number of Jewish immigrants also
arrived in this period. Connecticut's population was almost
30% immigrant by 1910.
In
World War I (1917-1918),
munitions were the most prosperous business in Connecticut,
and would remain so until the
Great Depression.
Ku
Klux Klan
The
Ku Klux Klan had a following
among some in Connecticut after it was reorganized in
Georgia in
1915. It preached a doctrine of
Protestant control of America and wanted to keep down
blacks, Jews and Catholics. The Klan enjoyed only a brief
period of popularity in the state, but it had a peak of
15,000 members in 1925. The group was
most active in New Haven,
New Britain and
Stamford, which all had
large Catholic populations.
During the
1924 election, Stamford was the location
of one of the largest Klan meetings in the state. Grand
Dragon Harry Lutterman of Darien organized the meeting,
which thousands of members of the organization attended.
The state
Republican Party had refused an anti-Klan plank in their
platform that year (Democrats, who relied on the Catholic
vote, condemned the Klan), and the Stamford Republican Party
used its Lincoln Republican Club as a front for all Klan
activities in the area. The Stamford Advocate (as
The Advocate of Stamford was then known) published an
advertisement signed by local Democrats. The Klan published
an advertisement in response, pointing out the immigrant
names in the first advertisement.
By
1926, the Klan leadership was divided,
and it lost strength, although it continued to maintain
small, local branches for years afterward in
Stamford,
Bridgeport,
Darien,
Greenwich and
Norwalk. The Klan has
since disappeared from the state.
Depression and War Years
With rising
unemployment in both urban and rural areas, Connecticut
Democrats
saw their chance to return to power. The hero of the
movement was Yale English
professor Governor Wilbur
Lucius Cross (1931-1939), who emulated much of
Franklin D. Roosevelt's
New Deal policies by creating new
public services and instituted a minimum wage. The
Merritt Parkway was
constructed in this period.
However, in
1938, the Democratic Party was wracked by controversy, which
quickly allowed the Republicans to gain control once again,
with Governor Raymond E.
Baldwin. Connecticut became a highly competitive,
two-party state.
The
lingering Depression soon gave way to unparalleled
opportunity with the United States involvement in
World War II (1941-1945).
Roosevelt's call for America to be the
Arsenal of Democracy led
to remarkable growth in munition-related inductries, such as
airplane engines, radio, radar, proximity fuzes, rifles, and
a thousand other products.
Pratt and Whitney made airplane engines, Cheney sewed
silk parachutes, and
Electric Boat built submarines. This was coupled with
traditional manufacturing including guns, ships, uniforms,
munitions, and artillery. Although most munitions production
ended in 1945, high tech electronics and airplane parts
continued.
Cold War Prosperity
In the
Cold War Connecticut built the first
nuclear-powered submarine, the USS
Nautilus and other essential weapons for the
Pentagon. The increased job market
gave the state the highest per capita income at the
beginning of the 1960s. The increased standard of living
could be seen in the various suburban neighborhoods that
began to develop outside major cities. Construction of major
highways such as the
Connecticut Turnpike caused former small towns to become
locations for large-scale development, a trend that
continues to this day. The state had its peak population
growth in this period, gaining over a million residents
between 1950 and 1970.
In 1964,
following a US Supreme Court mandate, the legislature
adopted a new constitution which allowed "one person, one
vote." The purpose of this was so that the cities could have
equal representation in the Connecticut state legislature,
rather than be dominated by small towns. This further aided
the urban dominated Democratic party in the state, which had
become dominant during the tenure of
John M. Bailey. From 1954
through 1986, the Democrats only lost one election for
Governor. A Bailey protege, Ella
T. Grasso, became the first woman elected Governor of a
state without succeeding her husband when she was elected in
1974.
Connecticut
thrived until the end of the 1980s, with many well-known
corporations moving to
Fairfield County,
including General Electric,
American Brands, and Union Carbide.
Fairfield County
prospered due to proximity to New York City with many
workers commuting to work via
Metro-North trains, becoming an integral part of the
New York metropolitan
area. Modern Connecticut became a predominantly
suburban, middle-class state, with small pockets of rural
areas, whose existence was perpetuated by their relative
isolation from highways and cities. The state particularly
prospered during the defense buildup initiated by
Ronald Reagan, due to such
major employers as Electric Boat
shipyards, Sikorsky helicopters, and
Pratt & Whitney jet
engines. Perhaps as a result, Republican presidential
candidates carried the state in every election in the 1970's
and 1980's.
The late 20th Century
Connecticut's dependence on the defense industry posed an
economic challenge at the end of the
Cold War. The resulting budget crisis helped elect
Lowell Weicker as Governor on
a third party ticket in 1990. Weicker's remedy, a state
income tax, proved effective in balancing the budget but
politically unpopular, as Weicker retired after a single
term.
It was
during this time that Connecticut began to acquire a
significant African-American
and Latino population in many of its
cities, and they did not achieve the same living conditions
as their white counterparts. The poor conditions that many
inhabited were cause for militant movements in many areas
that pushed for the gentrification
of ghettos and the
desegregation of the school
system. In 1987, Hartford became the first American city to
elect an African-American woman as mayor,
Carrie Saxon Perry.
With newly
"reconquered" land, the Pequots initiated plans for the
construction of a multi-million dollar casino complex to be
built on reservation land. The
Foxwoods Casino was
completed in 1992 and the enormous revenue it received made
the Mashantucket Pequot
Reservation one of the wealthiest in the country. With
the newfound money, great educational and cultural
initiatives were carried out, including the construction of
the
Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. The
Mohegan Reservation gained political
recognition shortly thereafter and, in 1994, opened another
successful casino (Mohegan Sun)
near the town of
Uncasville. The success of casino gambling helped shift
the state's economy away from
manufacturing to entertainment, such as
ESPN, financial services, including
hedge funds and pharmaceutical
firms such as Pfizer.
21st century
In the
terrorist attack of
September 11,
2001, 65 state residents were killed. The vast majority
were Fairfield
County residents who were working in the
World Trade Center.
Greenwich lost 12
residents, Stamford and
Norwalk each lost nine
and Darien lost six. A
state memorial was later set up at Sherwood Island State
Park in Westport. The
New York City skyline can
be seen from the park.
In April
2005, Connecticut passed a law which grants all rights of
marriage to same-sex couples. However, the law required that
such unions be called "civil unions",
and that the title of marriage be limited to those unions
whose parties are of the opposite sex. The state was the
first to pass a law permitting civil unions without a prior
court proceeding leading to the issue's saliency in state
politics.
A number of
political scandals rocked Connecticut in the early 21st
century, highlighted by the resignation of Governor
John G. Rowland during a
corruption investigation in 2004.
Rowland later plead guilty to federal charges, and his
successor M. Jodi Rell, focused
her administration on reforms in the wake of the Rowland
scandal.
The state's
criminal justice system also dealt with the first execution
in the state since 1960, the 2005
execution of serial killer Michael
Ross and was rocked by the horrific July 2007
home invasion murders in
Cheshire. As the accused perpetrators of the Petit murders
were out on parole, Governor
M. Jodi Rell promised a full
investigation into the state's criminal justice policies.
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