Dark Bargain

by Lawrence Goldstone

  *This Charles Pickney was the general's uncle.

  7. THE VALUE OF A DOLLAR: CONNECTICUT

  The three delegates who represented Connecticut at the Constitutional Convention have been referred to as the "spokesmen for realpolitik"1 Each was a lawyer who had entered politics, two of whom, Oliver Ellsworth and William Samuel Johnson, were the most successful in the state. The third, Roger Sherman, while not making much of a mark in the courtroom, had become a man of vast influence in both state and national politics. While Johnson was an active participant in the proceedings, Ellsworth and Sherman would have the most profound impact on the final product.

  Connecticut sent its delegation to Philadelphia with some definite objectives in mind. Despite possessing a coastline with more than one hundred miles of harbors, many of which lay at the mouths of navigable rivers, Connecticut imported very little, instead acquiring most of its foreign goods by way of Rhode Island or New York. Still, Connecticut had begun to build ships after the Revolution—New Haven alone expanded its commercial fleet from one sloop in 1783 to sixty-one vessels in 1787—and only a shortsighted businessman would have been unaware of the potential of Connecticut's ports, particularly as the country expanded westward.2 So, while Connecticut might have been in favor of a strong central government that could regulate commerce while it was forced to rely on others, it would also have favored a weaker government that could not limit its own tariffs as time went on—unless, of course, it could have the happy confluence of a strong government that favored states involved in maritime commerce.

  Of a more immediate nature, internal security was a pressing need— Shays' Rebellion, after all, had been fought a good deal closer to Hartford than to Boston. "People at Large are more ripe for a Revolt against Government than I conceive our Rulers are generally apprized of," wrote Benjamin Gale in 1787.3 A central government pledged to aid individual states in suppressing insurrections therefore also held great appeal to Connecticut. In order to attain just the right mix of strength, weakness, and perspective from any new government, Connecticut's delegates came to Philadelphia prepared to deal.

  Oliver Ellsworth was that most determined and indefatigable of antagonists— the self-made man.

  Born in 1745, the son and grandson of subsistence farmers, Ellsworth had a boyhood so humble and bleak that it would qualify as New England caricature if it were not true. His hometown of Windsor, north of Hartford, boasted only one carriage, and most people ate their food from trenchers, crude wooden plates. Calvinism was as severe as the endless winters, manners simple to coarse, and humor, frill, and finery unknown.4 Oliver's father wanted his son to have something better, and that meant the ministry, so he scraped together enough money to send the boy to a tutor, and from there borrowed to send him to Yale in 1762.

  Yale and the young Ellsworth did not mix, however, and he left after his sophomore year. According to legend, he was expelled for a series of student pranks and protests, but that story is so at odds with everything in Ellsworth's persona and future behavior, that this might well have been wishful thinking by his supporters.5 In any event, he journeyed south to attend Princeton. Eleven of the fifty-five delegates in Philadelphia were to attend the same school at roughly the same time, and one of Ellsworth's classmates (in a class of thirty-one) was a self-assured and opinionated Maryland boy named Luther Martin.

  Ellsworth at the time was neither. He lacked sufficient experience or sophistication to forge opinions, and he had neither the wealth nor the breeding to project an aura of self-assurance. What he did have, however, was bulldog tenacity and directness, both of which were assets at Princeton, then every bit as Calvinist as northern Connecticut. Later in life, when asked the secret of his success by a young lawyer, Ellsworth issued this assessment of his adolescence. "Sir, after I left college I took a deliberate survey of my understanding. I felt that I was weak—that I had no imagination and but little knowledge or culture. I then resolved on this course of study: to take up a single subject at a time, and to cling to that with an attention so undivided that if a cannon were fired in my ears I should still cling to my subject. That, sir, is my secret."6.

  In his junior year, Ellsworth organized a debating society, which proved to be his introduction to political discourse. He particularly took aim at the Stamp Act, but even went as far as to question the relationship of the colonies to the British crown. He found to his surprise that, lack of imagination notwithstanding, preparation and attention to detail could often overcome a florid and dramatic presentation, and that he could influence the way others thought.

  After graduation in 1767, he returned home to Windsor, in debt and prepared to accede to his father's wishes and become a minister. But Ellsworth realized that he had become much more drawn to the persuasion of argument than the persuasion of Scripture, and taking on himself as his first client, convinced his father to allow him to follow the law. There were no law schools in Connecticut, so he embarked on a course of individual study. Four years later, he was admitted to the bar, and during that time he was forced to teach school to survive financially.

  Ellsworth's law career in hardscrabble Connecticut did not begin well. Although "the people of Connecticut were thought to be peculiarly and perversely litigious," few of those litigious citizens came Ellsworth's way. In his first three years as an attorney, his fees totaled only three pounds.7 When he had to appear in court, he was forced to walk to Hartford and back, a twenty-mile round-trip. As his prospects diminished, Ellsworth tried to pay off his debts by selling his only asset, some timberland that he had acquired either by inheritance or gift. When there were no takers, Ellsworth chopped down the trees himself, and then sold the timber in Hartford.8

  Things began to brighten in 1772 when Ellsworth married sixteen-year-old Abigail Wolcott, the not especially attractive daughter of a wealthy Connecticut businessman. He had gone to the Wolcott home to court Abigail's older sister, but once there, had quickly altered his plans. Although he began his married life working his father's farm to supplement his still scant legal fees, the following year, doubtless through the Wolcott connection, Ellsworth found himself a member of the Connecticut General Assembly. One year after that, he had established himself as a highly successful and sought-after attorney. In 1775, he gave up the farm and moved to Hartford, where his law practice boomed. His son-in-law reported that Ellsworth generally handled between a thousand and fifteen hundred cases at a time. "It is doubtful if in the entire history of the Connecticut bar any other lawyer has ever in so short a time accumulated so great a practice."9

  Ellsworth's courtroom manner was a pure extension of self. Years later, after he had been elevated to the bench, John Trumbull, Connecticut's resident wit, noted that "when Judge Ellsworth rose, the Jury soon began to drop their heads, and winking, looked up through their eyebrows, while the thunders of his eloquence seemed to drive every idea into their skulls in spite of them."10

  But despite Ellsworth's uninspired technique, he found that clients were interested in a lawyer who could win, and win Ellsworth did. The days of financial hardship were over as the fees rolled in. As soon as he made a dollar, Ellsworth tried to turn it into two. He speculated in local real estate, bought stock in the Hartford Bank, invested in a mill, and lent money. Eventually, he built a large house in Windsor, but no matter how successful he became, the memory of his early subsistence existence was never far off. While he did not live simply, he made it a point to conceal from his servants how wealthy he had become.

  During the Revolution, although he was a member of the local militia, Ellsworth did not participate in the fighting, but was active politically on both the state and national level. In Connecticut, he was first appointed to the five-member Committee of the Pay Table, which controlled dispersal of state funds, and then to the Council of Safety, which oversaw the state's entire war effort. But his most significant activity was as a member of the Continental Congress.

  In Congress, Ellsworth developed two relationships in
particular that would prove significant in his role in Philadelphia. The first was with a fellow citizen of Connecticut, Roger Sherman, after whom Ellsworth later said he had modeled his character. The second was more adversarial. Until his appointment to Congress, the provincial Ellsworth had rarely met citizens of neighboring New York, let alone from the far-flung reaches of the colonies. As bickering over funding the war and running a new country increased, sectional divisions became more pronounced. Ellsworth found himself increasingly locking horns with a man who in the future would be both opponent and ally.

  "Ellsworth stood with his New England colleagues, sometimes clearly op posing the interests of South Carolina and other Southern states, which were now championed in Congress by John Rutledge."11 Ellsworth had likely never met someone whom he could not overcome with steamroller persistence, but Rutledge was as immovable in protecting the values of the South as Ellsworth was in championing those of New England.

  While most of Congress' business was centered on holding the country and the army together, there were other measures that were debated, which, while trivial, gave some hint of the sectional differences that posed a constant potential for disunion. Opposed by delegates from the South, Ellsworth voted for resolutions condemning gambling, horse racing, and attending plays, "proclaiming the necessity of a very strict morality among a people fallen on such evil times."12

  After the war, Ellsworth, by then one of the most prominent citizens in the state, returned to his posts on the governor's council and as Connecticut state attorney, but soon relinquished both when he was appointed to the bench. He also returned to speculating in anything that might make him money, and during that period there were few investments more tempting than Continental paper. The fledgling government had issued bonds and notes throughout the war in a desperate attempt to raise funds, but now these securities were selling for around ten cents on the dollar. If the new nation descended into a loose Swiss-type confederation of thirteen separate republics, or even failed altogether, the securities would likely be worthless. If, on the other hand, a strong national government developed, it would almost certainly be forced to meet these obligations. Thus, anyone dabbling in Continental paper— as Ellsworth did—was also casting a vote for nationalism.*

  Oliver Ellsworth

  Still, while Ellsworth always fought tenaciously to protect his interests, he was also a man of unshakable integrity, and promoting nationalism merely for personal gain would have been unthinkable. There was never a whiff of scandal in his business or personal affairs, or even an intimation of conflict of interest. Given his own path to respectability, however, he was motivated to protect a way of life, a path of opportunity for others, rather than merely to amass wealth. He would encounter similar sentiments in Philadelphia among southern planters, in particular his old congressional adversary, John Rutledge, although the ways of life that they sought to protect were far different.

  The Oliver Ellsworth who arrived in Philadelphia had acquired a worldliness and sophistication from his years in Congress and on the bench, and was financially secure and comfortably at ease with his success. His sense of practicality had, if anything, increased, and he was convinced that politics and law often needed to coexist.13

  William Pierce of Georgia, one of his fellow delegates, described him as follows: "Mr. Ellsworth [sic] is a Judge of the Supreme Court in Connecticut;— he is a Gentleman of a clear, deep, and copious understanding; eloquent, and connected in public debate; and always attentive to his duty. He is very happy in a reply, and choice in selecting such parts of his adversary's arguments as he finds make the strongest impressions,—in order to take off the force of them, so as to admit the power of his own. Mr. Elsworth is about 37 years of age, a Man much respected for his integrity, and venerated for his abilities."14

  Colonel Pierce described Roger Sherman as well.

  Mr. Sherman exhibits the oddest shaped character I ever remember to have met with. He is awkward, un-meaning, and unaccountably strange in his manner. But in his train of thinking there is something regular, deep, and comprehensive; yet the oddity of his address, the vulgarisms that accompany his public speaking, and that strange new England cant which runs through his public as well as his private speaking make everything that is connected with him grotesque and laughable;—and yet he deserves infinite praise,—no Man has a better Heart or a clearer Head. If he cannot embellish he can furnish thoughts that are wise and useful. He is an able politician, and extremely artful in accomplishing any particular object; it is remarked that he seldom fails. I am told he sits on the Bench in Connecticut, and is very correct in the discharge of his Judicial functions. In the early part of his life he was a Shoe-maker;—but despising the lowness of his condition, he turned Almanack maker, and so progressed upwards to a Judge. He has been several years a Member of Congress, and discharged the duties of his Office with honor and credit to himself, and advantage to the State he represented. He is about 60.15

  Roger Sherman was actually sixty-six when he went to Philadelphia, the oldest delegate at the convention except for Benjamin Franklin. His profession was generally given as "politician," although the contemporary sense of that word would hardly define him. He was shambling, stiff-jointed, physically unattractive, and, by all accounts, an utterly dreadful speaker. He took no care whatsoever with his dress or appearance, nor did he exhibit any skill at conciliation or dissembling. John Adams described him as "Rigid as Starched Linen."16

  On the other hand, as Pierce also pointed out, Sherman's reasoning was always sound, his views plain, and his allegiances trustworthy. He was elected or appointed to position after position because he was, without doubt, what other politicians claimed to be—an unshakably honest man.

  The most fitting word to describe Roger Sherman is "sober." He did not drink, disapproved of those who did, felt a Calvinist God on his shoulder at every moment, and conducted his business and personal affairs with absolute gravity. His portrait shows a rumpled, solemn, stern man, an image that renders Ellsworth devil-may-care by comparison. As a birthday greeting, Sherman wrote to his beloved wife Rebecca in May 1770:

  This is your birthday. Mine was the 30th of last month. May we so number our days as to apply our Hearts to wisdom: that is, true Religion. Psalm 90:12.

  I remain affectionately yours,

  Roger Sherman

  Sherman was born in Massachusetts in 1721, the third of seven children, and spent most of his early life in Stoughton, about twenty miles south of Boston. Never poor, never rich, the Shermans were a solid, industrious family. His father William split his time between farming and cobbling. William believed in both the spiritual and practical so, in addition to teaching Roger both his trades, he sent him to the new town school to learn to read, write, and gain instruction in the Puritan interpretation of the Bible. The school was surprisingly good for the times, and Roger came away with a basic knowledge of poetry and history, and a smattering of Latin as well. From there, the boy proceeded on his own, carrying books everywhere, even on his house-to-house rounds as a shoemaker. He developed a particular skill for mathematics., His inquisitiveness came to the attention of the local pastor, a Harvard-trained protégé of Increase and Cotton Mather, and his education proceeded further.

  In 1743, after William Sr. died, the Sherman family followed the eldest son, William Jr., and relocated to New Milford, Connecticut. Here again, Roger initially farmed and supplemented his living by cobbling. Soon, however, his mathematical bent resulted in an appointment as a local surveyor. He began to buy land and became a half-partner with his brother in a general store. Most of the Shermans' business worked on barter, but in 1752, when a Connecticut law required that merchants accept depreciated Connecticut paper money, Sherman issued his first political paper, a pamphlet protesting the rule.

  In 1750, Sherman began producing almanacs. Almanacs—a combination newspaper, weather forecast, planting guide, and humor magazine—were popular at the time, second only to the Bible.17' Sherman
's almanac, as might be expected, excelled in the factual, the inspirational (sometimes in verse), and the moral, but fell somewhat short on humor. There was such a paucity of frivolity that Sherman asked his publisher to supplement the material before publication. The publisher complied but, unfortunately, decided to spice up the issue by including anecdotes that were, for the time, mildly bawdy. Sherman was so incensed when he found out that he insisted that his letters of protest and disavowal be printed in the New York Gazette.

  With fees from surveying, sales of the almanac, income from the store, and an expanding asset base from purchases of land, Roger Sherman built himself into a one-man Puritan capitalist testament to the glory of God. Eventually, at the suggestion of a neighbor, he decided to add the study of law to his repertoire, an exercise that he undertook, as had Ellsworth, on his own. Although he was admitted to the bar in 1754, he rarely practiced but soon entered local politics.

  Like the man himself, Sherman's political success was steady and inexorable. He became a selectman, a justice of the peace, a county justice, a member of the Connecticut General Assembly, a member of the local school committee, a deacon of his church, and treasurer of its building fund. In 1760, Sherman's wife Elizabeth died after giving birth to her seventh child in nine years, and the following year he left New Milford for New Haven.

  Sherman prospered in New Haven even more than he had in New Milford. Within five years, he had remarried, owned two stores instead of one, was named treasurer of Yale, was appointed a justice of the local superior court, and served in both houses of the colonial assembly.