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NOTE 26. Response in Connecticut

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Volume 3, Chapter 26, Response in Connecticut Jared Ingersoll, a High Tory of Connecticut,

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proved not as easy to convince as his fellow stamp masters. Ingersoll, as Connecticut's

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agent in London, had learned to move amiably in High Tory circles there. He had become

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a close friend of Benjamin Franklin, Richard Jackson, John Temple, Surveyor General of

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of the New England Customs, and Thomas Watley, Secretary to George Grenville and the author

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of the final draft of the Stamp Act. News of Ingersoll's appointment as stamp distributor

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did not at first arouse much wrath, but by the time he arrived at New Haven in early

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August the popular temper was beginning to rise. The attacks began with an article in

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In the Connecticut Gazette of August 9, by Naphtali Daggett, professor of divinity at

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Yale, who denounced Ingersoll as a traitor, and trenchantly ridiculed the idea that since

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tis decreed the country must fall, who can blame me for taking a part in the plunder?

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Throughout the colony in Lebanon, Norwich, Wyndham, and New London, Ingersoll was hung

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A group of 500 Easterners armed with staves, and including militia officers, formed themselves

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Ingressall argued and ranted, but severe threats of lynching finally changed his mind, and

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he was forced to confirm his resignation in front of the Connecticut Assembly.

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As a rationalist old-light Presbyterian in a colony of growing adherents to a now-deluded

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Evangelical New Light Cause, Ingersoll dealt his religious group a severe blow by becoming

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a stamp master. The blow was compounded by the conservatism of most of the Connecticut

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old lights on resistance to the hated stamp act. With the notable exception of the Reverend

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Ebenezer Devotion, old light minister in Wyndham, most of the resistors and Sons of Liberty

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in Connecticut were new lights. Furthermore, Governor Thomas Fitch, an old lighter, though

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elected by the people of Connecticut, announced his intention to enforce the stamp tax and

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thus put paid to the old light cause in the colony. Only four members of the Connecticut

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Council, supported Fitch in this most unpopular stand.