(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format. Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship.
(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format. Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship.
Thomas Fitch was an American lawyer and colonial governor.
Background
He was a great-grandson of Thomas Fitch, one of the earliest settlers of Norwalk, Connecticut, and was born in that town, the son of Thomas Fitch, Jr. , and his wife Sarah. As a member of the town's wealthiest and most prominent family, he entered readily into the inner political group of the colony of Connecticut and by his own abilities gained a position of leadership.
Education
He graduated from Yale College in 1721.
Career
He began his political career in 1726 as deputy from Norwalk to the General Assembly, serving on four subsequent occasions during the next five years.
He was an Assistant in 1734-35 and again during 1740-50, when, upon the death of Gov. Jonathan Law and the advancement of Deputy Governor Roger Wolcott, he was chosen deputy governor by the Assembly over the heads of the three senior Assistants. He was reelected by the freemen in each of the three following years.
In 1754, when Governor Wolcott came under popular suspicion in connection with the embezzlement of most of the cargo of a Spanish ship which had put into New London harbor in distress, as a result, Fitch attained the distinction of being the first man to defeat a Connecticut governor for reelection when the latter was an avowed candidate. Fitch was elected governor and held the office continually thereafter until 1766 when he was defeated because of his attitude in the Stamp Act controversy.
Although regularly nominated for the magistracy in each of the remaining years of his life, he was never again elected. He was a deputy from Norwalk in 1772 but never held any royal appointments in Massachusetts as has sometimes been inferred (Gipson, post, p. 296, note 2).
As deputy governor from 1750 to 1754 he was regularly appointed, as was the custom, chief judge of the superior courts. Many years after Fitch's death President Dwight of Yale referred to him as "probably the most learned lawyer, who had ever been an inhabitant of the Colony" (Travels, III, 504). He had various other interests as well.
In 1740, together with two associates, he secured from the Assembly a fifteen-year monopoly of the right to make steel within the colony, experiments in which enterprise conducted at Simsbury were reported as successful four years later.
As a young man he served as supply for the pulpit of the Norwalk church and in 1765 there appeared a tract, attributed to Fitch, which analyzed the Saybrook Platform of the consociated churches of Connecticut.
It was, however, in his capacity as governor during a term which included the last intercolonial war and the Stamp Act controversy that he was most distinguished.
When, after the close of the war, proposals were first made for parliamentary taxation of the colonies, the Assembly requested Fitch and certain others to draw up the objections of the colony to such legislation.
The resulting "Book of Reasons, " for which the governor was chiefly responsible, was a clear and concise statement of the constitutional, historical, and economic arguments of the colony against the proposed stamp tax (Reasons why the British Colonies in America, Should not be Charged with Internal Taxes, by Authority of Parliament; Humbly offered for Consideration in Behalf of the Colony of Connecticut, 1764).
Neither this pamphlet, however, nor the support of the conservatives of the colony, was able to save him in the election of May 1766.
(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
Politics
He was an ardent supporter of the British cause during the war and was largely responsible for the fact that the Connecticut Assembly more than once exceeded its quota of troops, although he did not entirely escape the impatient criticism of the British commanders-in-chief.
Views
Although he was unsympathetic to the tax, he believed in submission to parliamentary enactment and considered it his duty to take the oath required of all governors by the act. In defense of his action he published a small tract which contained logical reasoning and sound arguments but which completely ignored the feelings and passions of the colonists (Some Reasons that Influenced the Governor to Take, and the Councillors to Administer the Oath, Required by the Act of Parliament; commonly called the Stamp-Act. Humbly submitted to the Consideration of the Publick, 1766).
Personality
Although little is known of his personality, he displayed in all his actions a high sense of duty, courage, and an outlook on politics which extended beyond the confines of his little colony and included the larger world of the British Empire.
Connections
In 1724 he married Hannah Hall of New Haven, who bore him eight children.