The Revolution had left Connecticut exhausted in men and in means. Her largest seaboard towns had suffered severely. With her commerce and coasting trade almost destroyed, she found herself, during the period preceding the adoption of the national Constitution and the establishment of the revenue system, a prey to New York's need on the one hand and to Massachusetts' sense of impoverishment on the other; and thus, for every article imported through either state, Connecticut paid an impost tax. It was estimated that she thus provided one third of the cost of government for each of her neighbors. Consequently she attempted to reinstate and to enlarge her early though limited commerce, and was soon sending cargoes, preëminently of the field and pasture, [c] to exchange for West India commodities, while with her larger vessels she developed an East Indian trade. As another means to wealth, the state, in 1791, passed laws for the encouragement of the small factories [d] that the necessity of the war had created; but it was not until after the act of 1833, creating the joint-stock companies, that Connecticut turned from a purely agricultural community to the great manufacturing state we know to-day. She shared in the national prosperity, which, as early as 1792, proved the wisdom of Hamilton's financial policy, and about 1795 her citizens wisely bent themselves to the improvement of internal communication. This was the era of the development of the turnpike and of the multiplicity of stage-lines. Kegular stages plied between the larger cities. Yet up to 1789 there was not a post-office or a mail route in Litchfield county, and the "Monitor" was started as a weekly paper to circulate the news. In 1790 Litchfield had a fortnightly carrier to New York and a weekly one to Hartford, while communication with the second capital [e] of the state was frequent. From 1800, there was a daily stage to Hartford, New Haven, Norwalk, Poughkeepsie, and Albany. [167] Wagons and carriages began to multiply and to replace saddle-bags and pillions, yet as late as 1815 Litchfield town had only "one phaeton, one coachee, and forty-six two-wheeled pleasure-wagons." [168]
Towns continued to commend and encourage good public schools. Every town or parish of seventy families had to keep school eleven months of the year, and those of less population for at least six months. Private schools and academies sprang up. [f] Harvard and Yale, as the best equipped of the New England colleges, competed for its young men, and drew others from the central and southern sections of the nation. Neither had either Divinity or Law School. [g] Young men after completing their college course usually went to some famous minister for graduate training. Rev. Joseph Bellamy, John Smalley, and Jonathan Edwards, Junior, were the foremost teachers in Connecticut, though the first-named had ceased his active work in 1787. [h] The New Divinity was very slowly spreading. Even as late as 1792, President Stiles of Yale declared that none of the churches had accepted it. [i] This versatile minister interested himself in languages, literatures, natural science, and in all religions, as well as in the phases of New England theology. He esteemed piety and sound doctrine, whether in Old or New Divinity men, and welcomed to his communion all of good conscience who belonged to any Christian Protestant sect. He was liberal-minded and tolerant beyond the average of his colleagues. His tolerance, however, was more for the old Calvinistic principles in the New Divinity, and not for its advanced features, for which he had little regard. President Stiles held very firmly to the belief that his ministerial privileges and authority remained with him after he became president of the college, although he was no longer pastor by the election of a particular church.