The Political Climate of 1813–1815
By 1813, Connecticut’s ruling class—staunch Federalists—stood at a crossroads. The Titles of Nobility and Honor Amendment (TONA), proposed by Congress in 1810, carried severe consequences for anyone accepting “any title of nobility or honor” or “any present, pension, office or emolument” from a foreign power. Such an act would immediately strip them of U.S. citizenship.
In a state dominated by men whose legal, commercial, and familial ties to Britain ran deep, this amendment threatened to upend their political world. The Federalist elite—judges, merchants, and politicians—had long viewed Great Britain as a cultural and economic ally. As the Hartford Convention pamphlet observes, New England’s Federalists “appeared abandoned traitors fawning at the feet of the British government” in the eyes of their Democratic opponents
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. That perception was not far from the truth.
Connecticut’s Ratification—and Panic
In May 1813, the Connecticut General Assembly formally acted on TONA. Governor John Cotton Smith’s June 2, 1813 letter to the U.S. Secretary of State certified that the legislature had passed a “resolution adopted” on the amendment—a phrase that, under Article V, could only mean ratification.
But when word spread that Virginia and other states had followed suit, and when Secretary of State James Monroe’s circular of January 12, 1814 announced the amendment’s adoption, the implications hit home in Hartford: Connecticut’s ruling class had unknowingly voted to disqualify themselves from office.
The realization caused an immediate crisis behind closed doors. As Federalist lawyer and Hartford Convention secretary Theodore Dwight later wrote, the state’s leadership saw itself under siege by “the vulgar mob” of Jeffersonian democracy. TONA had been their undoing.
The Hartford Convention: A Counterattack
By late 1814, as the War of 1812 dragged on, New England’s Federalists convened at Hartford. The Hartford Convention proceedings reveal that the same figures connected to the 1813 TONA proceedings—Dwight, Smith, and other Connecticut Federalists—now led this “party assemblage” bent on defending state sovereignty and reversing federal encroachment
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Their rhetoric was openly seditious. The American Mercury newspaper reported that local clergy refused to open the convention with prayer, one minister remarking that he “knew no form of prayer for treason and rebellion.” Even Federalist historians later admitted that the Convention’s secrecy and tone “gave plausibility to the charge of conspiracy.”
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What they did not say publicly was that their real rebellion was against their own legislative mistake—Connecticut’s 1813 ratification of TONA.
The Convention’s objectives mirrored those of men desperate to protect their own class from political extinction:
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Resisting federal control over state militia,
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Asserting “state authority” against federal “encroachments,”
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And, most tellingly, proposing constitutional amendments designed to limit national power over state decisions.
These actions were not random grievances. They were pretexts for reclaiming the autonomy needed to undo TONA’s effects.
The Quiet Erasure of Ratification
Between 1814 and 1818, Connecticut’s legislative records were reconstructed, and the House Journal—bearing the forged signature of Clerk Charles Denison—was quietly rewritten to show that the state had “dissented to the ratification” of the amendment.
At the same time, the 1813 Committee Report was re-copied onto new rag paper, this time with the false signature of Theodore Dwight—the same man who served as secretary of the Hartford Convention and editor of the Connecticut Mirror, a Federalist paper that had ridiculed TONA as “democratic folly.”
What began as an act of embarrassment turned into a full-blown political falsification. By August 1814, a new certification—unsigned by the governor, and relying on those falsified records—was sent to Washington to replace the genuine June 1813 ratification record.
Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, only an act “duly authenticated by the proper state officers” constitutes ratification or rejection. A forged record, therefore, is void as a matter of law, and its presence invalidates every subsequent certification relying upon it.
Motive, Means, and Opportunity
The motive was self-preservation: the Federalists of Connecticut could not survive under a Constitution that disqualified them from office.
The means: control of the state archives and printing offices.
The opportunity: the fog of war, and the political cover of the Hartford Convention’s “defensive posture.”
The Hartford Convention pamphlet notes that the Convention was intended as “a safety valve… not a boiler” — in other words, to redirect public fury without admitting the real reason for the gathering
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Yet the timing is undeniable. Within months of the Convention’s adjournment and the peace at Ghent, the Connecticut certification was rewritten, and the version now on file in the National Archives bears the false attestation that “it is not ratified.”
The Legacy of a Cover-Up
The Hartford Convention marked the death of the Federalist Party. But before it fell, Connecticut’s political elite successfully buried their greatest mistake. They reversed their ratification of TONA—not by lawful legislative vote, but by forging the record of history itself.
In doing so, they protected their class, preserved their positions, and concealed an amendment that would have stripped every title-bearing American of political legitimacy.
The irony is that, in the process of “saving” themselves from TONA, they also destroyed the Federalist movement’s moral credibility forever.
Citations:
Buckley, William Edward. The Hartford Convention (Yale University Press, 1934)
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U.S. Const. art. V.
Hawke v. Smith, 253 U.S. 221 (1920).
Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130 (1922).
Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53-153 (Tampering with Records).
