THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CONNECTICUT

BY

M. LOUISE GREENE, PhD.


PREFACE


The following monograph is the outgrowth of three earlier and shorter
essays. The first, "Church and State in Connecticut to 1818," was
presented to Yale University as a doctor's thesis. The second, a
briefer and more popularly written article, won the Straus prize
offered in 1896 through Brown University by the Hon. Oscar S. Straus.
The third, a paper containing additional matter, was so far approved
by the American Historical Association as to receive honorable mention
in the Justin Winsor prize competition of 1901.

With such encouragement, it seemed as if the history of the
development of religious liberty in Connecticut might serve a larger
purpose than that of satisfying personal interest alone. In
Connecticut such development was not marked, as so often elsewhere, by
wild disorder, outrageous oppression, tyranny of classes, civil war,
or by any great retrograde movement. Connecticut was more modern in
her progress towards such liberty, and her contribution to advancing
civilization was a pattern of stability, of reasonableness in
government, and of a slow broadening out of the conception of liberty,
as she gradually softened down her restrictions upon religious and
personal freedom.