CT Capitol statues include slaveholders, ‘witch’ killers

HARTFORD — Lost in the public debate over the planned removal of the Maj. John Mason statue from the State Capitol’s exterior — as payback for leading the massacre of 400 Pequot Indians in 1637 — are the sordid details of other historic figures immortalized there in marble.

At least eight of the state heroes whose sculptures fill exterior Gothic niches or whose sculpted medallion heads are commemorated along the building’s third floor were known slave owners, including philosopher and Yale benefactor George Berkeley; New Haven Colony founder John Davenport; Theophilus Eaton, the colony’s first governor; theologian Jonathan Edwards; writer John Trumbull; Jonathan Trumbull, the state’s first governor; John Winthrop Jr., the sixth governor who owned the first telescope in North America; and Oliver Wolcott, who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Others tacitly accepted slavery, including Oliver

Ellsworth, one of the state’s first two U.S. senators, according to research by the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Research.

Roger Sherman, New Haven’s first mayor who was the only person to have signed all four of the great founding documents of the United States, including the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, did not have any slaves, but spoke against the abolition of slavery.

Horace Bushnell, for whom the nearby park is named and whose face is sculpted in a marble medallion on the east facade, opposed slavery, but was accused of writing racist remarks and wasn’t in favor of an immediate emancipation of slaves. Oliver Platt, who had racist views and as a U.S. senator arranged for the permanent U.S. naval base on the island of Cuba, is commemorated in a bronze medallion under the Capitol’s north entrance.

Another marble facial medallion on the east facade celebrates dictionary writer Noah Webster, who believed that the North could not legally interfere with the South’s slavery system.

Roger Ludlow, Connecticut’s first lawyer, who fought alongside Mason in the 1637 Great Swamp Fight that ended the Pequot War in Fairfield, accused two women of witchcraft, leading to the execution of Goodwife Knapp , who was hanged in Fairfield in 1653.

History is often complex with many imperfect heroes for later generations to discover and consider. That’s why state historian Walter Woodward, associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut, wants to keep the John Mason statue in its niche overlooking Hartford’s Bushnell Park, and for the growing public discussion on the state’s uncomfortable past to become more widespread.

“It’s important to rememCollege. ber any statue represents the events people celebrate and it’s just as much a reflection of the time the monument was put up, which is often lost in the consideration of monuments and what we do with them,” Woodward said, noting that Mason’s statue was erected in 1909, many generations after the Pequot War. Also on the north facade, under the six niches, is a marble sculpture called a tympana, showing an attack on a Indian fort in 1637.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for the historians, the museums and the people of the state to expand it into a very long discussion among many groups,” Woodward said. “If the State Capitol is going to be where Connecticut tells its history through all time, what’s the best way to do that?”

He recalled that architect Richard M. Upjohn, who completed the building in 1878, had 26 niches for lifesized statues, with space in between and below for smaller medallion heads, so future generations could consider remembering great figures of their own times. There are now eight niches that are empty.

The latest statue was the likeness of Gov. Ella T. Grasso, the first female governor elected in her own right in the United States, who died in 1981. Grasso’s marble statue was dedicated in 1987. Its $65,000 cost is the equivalent of more than $150,000 today.

The projected cost to remove the 3,000-pound Mason statue is in excess of $50,000, according to Eric Connery, the facilities administrator for the Office of Legislative Management, which controls the 14-acre Capitol campus, including the adjacent Legislative Office Building. He declined to detail the exact bid because the project is still under negotiation, with the Capitol Preservation & Restoration Commission scheduled to vote next month.

“Upjohn left these niches for new stories with new lessons,” Woodward said. “It takes people backing up a little, walking away from entrenched positions. This is Connecticut’s story and it needs to be thought through with all the constituencies in the state.”

State Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, who has been pushing for the removal of the Mason statue for four years, said the slaughter of 400 men, women, children and elders in May 1637 is unforgivable and as long as the sculpture remains on the Capitol, it is an intimidating reminder of the carnage that nearly caused the extinction of the Pequots and served as a national model for white Europeans to nearly eradicate Native Americans around the country.

She said that while it may seem easy to name an early tribal lead such as Uncas of the Mohegan tribe, other tribes would be insulted because Uncas joined Mason along with the Narragansett tribe and soldiers from the Massachusetts colony in the Mystic battle against the Pequots.

“Uncas was maybe the most skillful politician in the region,” Woodward said. “He defended the interests of his people and he was not afraid to push others right to the breaking point to look out for the welfare of his people.”

Woodward, however, said there are several indigenous leaders from the 17th century whose likenesses could diversify the Capitol, including Robin Cassacinamon, a 17thcentury Pequot sachem and diplomat, who worked to salvage the tribe after the war. Another Mohegan, Samson Occom, became the first ordained minister among Native Americans, who founded a college for Indians. However, when Occom returned from a fundraising trip in England, he discovered the school had been taken away from him and moved to New Hampshire, where it became Dartmouth During the recent forum, Woodward stressed that warfare is always horrific and the 17th century engagements with indigenous tribes were no different on both sides, as the English settlers presented an existential threat.

“As a historian, it is always challenging and a little bit problematic when the future sends a bill to the past for what the future thinks,” he said. In the cases of alleged witchcraft in Connecticut, while it’s hard to escape the misogyny against the mostly

women victims, at the same time, the widespread belief was they practiced a powerful and dangerous art.

“They believed it in the way that we believe terrorism is a threat to public safety,” Woodward said. “Their fight against witchcraft was the fight of a god-fearing population dealing with the devil.”

By the early 20th Century, the warts on the historic memories of colonial settlers had been smoothed over, Woodward said. “They erased the negatives,” he said. “They glorified an understanding of history that erased their own complicity in a lot of bad things. It strikes me that the outcome of taking down these statues of difficult people and replacing with counter models, takes us down the same road in a different way to correct the mistakes of a century ago and several centuries ago.”

For future commemorations, Woodward recommends looking for exemplars who try to delve into the most-difficult issues of their days.

“I think we can use most of the people on the Capitol now in a rethinking of history and put them all in a conversation about injustice and how to be a better state,” Woodward said. “As a society, we have to decide some really important questions on heroism.”