On January 5, the day Georgia ratified the Constitution, the Connecticut ratifying convention was in its third day. The previous October, the Connecticut General Assembly had resolved that “the people of the several Towns of this State, who are qualified to vote in Town-Meetings,” meet on November 12 to choose delegates to meet in convention on January 3 for the purpose of considering ratification of the proposed United States Constitution. Each town would elect a number of delegates equal to the number it was entitled to have in the General Assembly. The convention would take place at the State House in Hartford.
Records survive from all but a few of the meetings held in the State’s ninety-eight towns, but few provide any information other than what was required, such as when the meeting took place and the names of the delegates that were elected. Seven towns actually voted to approve the Constitution while seven other towns took the opposite position. As many as five instructed their delegates how to vote at the ratifying convention, while nearly a quarter of them adjourned to a later date to continue their debates.
In the town of Lebanon, the meeting began with the Constitution and relevant documents “distinctly and audibly read.” Col. William Williams was elected as a delegate on the first ballot, but it took additional balloting before Captain Ephraim Carpenter was chosen as the second delegate. Disagreement as to whether their delegates should be instructed on how to vote in the ratifying convention was sufficient reason to cause the meeting to be adjourned until November 21 (“a very rainy” day according to the notes kept by the Town Clerk). Action was further delayed until December 10 (“a stormy day”) when the town meeting would hear the recommendations of a committee chosen to “prepare and draw instructions for their delegates” to oppose the Constitution. In the end, Lebanon voted 41 – 81 to oppose ratification. Similarly, the town of Coventry selected two delegates, Jeremiah Ripley and Ephraim Root, and instructed them as to how they should vote, but in this instance they were instructed to vote “no.”
In Killingworth, Benjamin Gale challenged the entire process of delegates being selected by the people, observing that the last article of the Articles of Confederation required that any alteration in the Articles be first agreed to by Congress and then approved by the legislatures of every State. “But now nine states shall bind all the rest to submission,” Gale argued, and “it seems the [Constitutional] Convention has fobbed off our assemblies…It would not trust our assemblies to decide on the Constitution, but “when all comes to all, our Assembly had no right to judge anything about it.” They were permitted “to order the towns to meet, but not to judge or determine anything about the Constitution, but only to choose delegates for another convention in order to judge for you, not caring to trust either you or your representatives in our assemblies to judge in this matter.” “You have no voice in the case,” he charged. Moreover, only two weeks had passed between the time the legislature called for town elections and the elections themselves. “This is another artful maneuver of our own domestic politicians thus to hurry on matters before the people have time to understand it so as to be able to make a judicious choice of delegates.”
In Stratford, the Constitution was read and “duly considered” before the town elected its two delegates, William Samuel Johnson and Elisha Mills. Later in the day, after attending the town meeting, Robert Charles Johnson wrote to his father, William Samuel, with a great sense of satisfaction that “this afternoon I spoke in the town meeting…Major Walker held me by the arm, said I should ruin everything. I stayed until the moderator called for the votes. Then I broke from him, jumped over the seats, mounted the pulpit stairs, and succeeded beyond my expectations, equal to my wishes.”
Regaling his performance, Robert noted that his remarks in favor of the Constitution had been met “amidst a general clap of applause. Everyone shook me by the hand, told me I was an honor to Stratford, to myself, I merited my name…The moderator rose from his seat, shook me by the hand, said ‘he publicly thanked me for the information and pleasure I had given.’” The next morning, Robert finished the letter to his father, adding that several people had asked for copies of his speech and desired that it should be printed for wide distribution.
On November 12, while his son was attending the town meeting in Stratford, William was in New York appearing before the trustees of Columbia College (formally King’s College), accepting their offer to become its President, the position his own father had held from 1754 – 1763. William had just resigned his seat in the Assembly, but now his election to the Connecticut ratifying convention thrust him back, albeit temporarily, into the political sphere from which he had hoped to retire. Leaving New York on December 27 and stopping briefly in Stratford, William arrived in Hartford on January 2, one day before the ratifying convention was scheduled to begin.
Nearly one-half of the delegates to Connecticut’s ratifying convention held significant public office, including Governor Samuel Huntington, the Lieutenant Governor, the Chief Justice, the four judges of the Superior Court, seven members of the Council, and sixty-seven members of the General Assembly. Connecticut was one of only two States – the other being New York – to elect its entire Constitutional Convention delegation to its ratifying convention – Oliver Ellsworth, William Samuel Johnson, and Roger Sherman.
When the ratifying convention convened on January 3, 1788, the galleries in the State House were so crowded that by the end of the day the convention agreed to move to the North Meeting House to accommodate spectators. On the second day, Oliver Ellsworth and William Samuel Johnson opened debate with high praise for the Constitution, citing numerous instances in which States had evaded their duties to the union and the necessity of forming a national government which could, within its bounds, act directly on the people and shoulder national defense. Rejecting “a plan of government, which with such favorable circumstances as offered for our acceptance,” Johnson warned, ’I fear our national existence must come to an end.”
After Johnson concluded his opening statement, the convention debated the Constitution article by article. The substance of debate paralleled those in other States while in Connecticut the divisive issues of the impost and military pensions had largely died down, paving the way for the potential of general approbation for the Constitution on the final vote on January 9.