By the close of 1787, three States had ratified the Constitution. On January 2, 1788 Georgia added its approval to those of Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Connecticut would be next, ratifying on January 9.
Like other States, Connecticut had been facing issues either unresolved by the Confederation Congress or at odds with the interests of Connecticut. It opposed being required to pay duties to New York for goods imported through New York but sold in Connecticut. Congress was incapable of resolving the issue. It opposed the decision of Congress to grant officers of the Continental Army half-pay for life and later commuting it to full pay for five years. It disputed Congress’ request for power to collect import duties for twenty-five years. Moreover, lingering differences during the Revolutionary War between farmers and merchants over trade, paper money, and pricing of goods gave impetus to circulation of a petition to the State legislature from towns throughout Connecticut in September 1783.
Although the petition’s primary demands related to the issue of back pay and pensions for Continental Army officers, it also called for public disclosure of expenditures of public money, elimination of unnecessary government jobs, publication of votes in the legislature, opening to the public sessions of the legislature, and revision of the State Constitution. By 1786, the State was clearly divided between “the federal men and the anti-federal,” the object of their division being the power, or lack of power, of the Confederation Congress.
On February 21, 1786 the Confederation Congress voted to hold a convention “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.” On the question “to postpone,” New York requested a roll call vote. Connecticut’s representatives were divided. William Samuel Johnson voted “aye” and Stephen Mix Michell voted “no,” reflecting the political discord in Connecticut. The motion failed and the vote to hold the convention was passed without a recorded vote. Within a week, the resolution was printed in all six of Connecticut’s newspapers.
The Connecticut Assembly was scheduled to convene in May, just days before the Constitutional Convention was to meet in Philadelphia. In the meantime, Connecticut was cited as one reason why George Washington should refuse to attend the Convention. The purveyor of that advice was David Humphreys, a former aide-de-camp to Washington and a trusted, confidential advisor. After the Battle of Yorktown, the final battle of the Revolutionary War, Washington had chosen Humphreys, along with Tench Tilghman, to deliver to Congress news of the great victory and the surrendered British colors. In December 1783, Humphreys accompanied Washington to Congress when Washington presented his resignation as Commander-in-Chief and traveled with the Washingtons as they returned to Mount Vernon. He remained at Mount Vernon for nearly three years, serving as Washington’s secretary and confidante.
Humphries was born in Derby, Connecticut, graduated from Yale, and after the War became an original member of the Society of the Cincinnati, the organization of Revolutionary War veterans which had lobbied hard for promised back-pay for their service and embroiled Connecticut in a serious controversy.
In 1786, Humphries was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly. The following March he was writing to Washington that his opinion had not changed “respecting the inexpediency of your attending the convention.” In fact, “additional arguments have occurred to confirm me in the sentiment.” These additional arguments were the refusal of Rhode Island to send delegates to the Convention and his opinion that “Connecticut is under the influence of a few such miserable, narrow-minded and I may say wicked politicians, that I question very much whether the legislature will choose members to appear in the Convention; and if they do, my apprehension is still greater that they will be sent on purpose to impede any salutary measures that might be proposed.”
Contrary to Humphreys’ predictions, the Connecticut General Assembly voted in May to send three delegates to the Convention – William Samuel Johnson, Oliver Ellsworth, and Erastus Wolcott. Wolcott, a Brigadier General during the War whose brother, Oliver, had signed the Declaration of Independence, was an anti-nationalist and leading proponent of agrarian interests. However, he declined his appointment and was replaced by Roger Sherman, an astute and thoughtful supporter of a more vigorous national government who had remained cautiously reticent in the contentious debate over delegate selection in the Assembly.
Humphreys’ warning that Connecticut’s delegates to the Convention would “impede any salutary measures that might be proposed” was also unfounded. In fact, they would make important contributions to the process and the Constitution itself.
Roger Sherman is the only American to have signed all four foundational documents of the United States: the Continental Association (created by the First Continental Congress to implement a trade boycott against Great Britain), the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. Sherman had begun working as a cobbler and merchant, educated himself, and launched a career in law and politics. During the Constitutional Convention he was the prime mover behind the Connecticut Compromise which provided for a bicameral legislature in which each State would be equally represented in the Senate.
Like his colleague, Ellsworth was a lawyer and judge in Connecticut. However, he enjoyed a formal education and graduated from the College of New Jersey (Princeton) as Phi Beta Kappa. At the Convention, he joined Sherman to advocate for the bicameral compromise and served on the Committee of Detail which prepared the first draft of the Constitution based on the numerous resolutions approved by the delegates. Later, Ellsworth would draft the Judiciary Act of 1789 which established the Supreme Court, over which he would preside as its third Chief Justice.
William Samuel Johnson, also a lawyer-jurist and son of the first President of King’s College (Columbia), contributed equally to the Constitution as an ally of Sherman and Ellsworth and as chairman of the Committee of Style which shaped the final document. In mid-November, two months after the Constitutional Convention adjourned, the people of Connecticut voted for 175 delegates to attend its ratification convention in Hartford on January 3, 1788. Sherman, Ellsworth, and Johnson were among them and would be a formidable force for the Constitution.