Toleration Party

The Toleration Party (also known as the Toleration-Republican Party, and later the American Party or American Toleration and Reform Party) was a political party active in Connecticut in the early 19th century. The 'American' name referred not to nativism or the later American Party, but to the party's national orientation.

The Federalist Party had been dominant in Connecticut, holding a near-monopoly on power, since its foundation. The Democratic-Republican Party was established in Connecticut in 1801, but succeeded in winning merely 33 of 200 seats in the Connecticut General Assembly at best. However, after the War of 1812 (which saw the Hartford Convention and the blue lantern affair in the state) the Federalist power began to wane. The Federalists were affiliated with the Congregationalist Church, which was still the established church of Connecticut (Connecticut was the last state to disestablish its state church; all other states had done so by the 1790s). All residents of the state had to pay a tithe, which irritated members of other sects, especially the Episcopalians. Episcopalians in Connecticut were lately wealthy and at odds with the Federalists and pre-Federalists dating back to discrimination before the American Revolution. However, they avoided joining the Democratic-Republicans, partly due to the party being too radical for some of them, and partly because leading Episcopalians strongly supported the Federalists: the first Episcopalian to be appointed to the state upper house was William Samuel Johnson, who later became the head of the Committee of Style that wrote the U.S. Constitution. Among other irritations, a group of Episcopals had put up bonds for a state bank in 1814 in order to fund an Episcopal college in Cheshire to rival Congregationalist Yale; the Phoenix Bank in Hartford received state funds for Yale College but the Assembly gave nothing to the Episcopal "Bishop’s Fund" that was raising money for an Episcopal college, and refused the college a charter. This was the immediate impetus that led to the creation of the Toleration Party.

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