7
Connecticut’s “Blue Laws”
1672
Background
Although the first major settlements were established in the 1630s by the English, half of Connecticut was initially claimed by the Dutch colony New Netherland, which included much of the land between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers. Thomas Hooker and his followers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded the Connecticut Colony; other settlers from Massachusetts founded the Saybrook Colony and the New Haven Colony. The Connecticut and New Haven colonies established documents of Fundamental Orders, considered the first constitutions in America. In 1662, the three colonies were merged under a royal charter, making Connecticut a crown colony. Connecticut attempted to prevent the development of resistance to authority—social or religious—by passing a series of very strict statutes that came to be known as blue laws in 1672. Such laws could not and were not generally enforced with the severity prescribed, but they were used to impose order. The display of proper respect to God, one’s neighbors, and one’s family was deemed absolutely necessary to the success of this Christian commonwealth.
- If any man or woman, after legal conviction, shall have or worship any other God but the Lord God, he shall be put to death (Deuteronomy 13.6. Exodus 22.20.)
- If any person within this colony shall blaspheme the name of God, the Father, Son, or Holy Ghost, with direct, express, presumptuous, or highhanded blasphemy, or shall curse in the like manner, he shall be put to death (Leviticus 24.15, 16.)
- If any man or woman be a witch, that is, has or consults with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death (Exodus 22.18. Leviticus 20.27. Deuteronomy 18.10, 11.)
- If any person shall commit any willful murder, committed upon malice, hatred, or cruelty, not in a man’s just and necessary defense, nor by casualty [accident] against his will, he shall be put to death (Exodus 21.12, 13, 14. Numbers 35.30, 31.)
- If any person shall slay another through guile, either by poisoning or other such devilish practices, he shall be put to death. (Exodus 21.12, 13, 14. Numbers 35.30, 31.)
…10.If any man steals a man or mankind and sells him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall be put to death. (Exodus 21.16.)
11.If any person rise up by false witness wittingly and of purpose to take away a man’s life, he or she shall be put to death. (Deuteronomy 19.16, 18, 19.)
…14.If any child or children above sixteen years old, and of sufficient understanding, shall curse of smite their natural father or mother, he or they shall be put to death, unless it can be sufficiently testified that the parents have been very unchristianly negligent in the education of such children, or so provoked them by extreme and cruel correction that they have been forced thereunto to preserve themselves from death or maiming. (Exodus 21.17. Leviticus 20.9 Exodus 21.15.)
15.If any man have a stubborn or rebellious son, of sufficient understanding and years, viz. Sixteen years of age, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that when they have chastened him, he will not harken unto them; then may his father or mother, being his natural parents, lay hold on him, and bring him to the magistrates assembled in court, and testify unto them that their son is stubborn and rebellious, and will not obey their voice and chastisement, but lives in sundry notorious crimes, such a son shall be put to death. (Deuteronomy 21.20, 21.)[1]