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April 3, 1861: Norwalk's Anti-Slavery Congressman Discovers He's Been Defeated

In the first article of an ongoing series about Norwalk in the Civil War, here's a look at Orris S. Ferry and public opinion just weeks before the war started.

On April 3, 1861, the differences between U.S. Rep. Orris S. Ferry, an earnest anti-slavery Republican from Norwalk, and his Fourth District constituents, who were cooler on the issue, were thrown into sharp relief.

In other words, they threw him out of office, although he only lost by a hairbreadth 82 votes.

It took until this day for the returns from the April 1 election to be counted in the close race and for the vote to become clear, but when the counting was over, the one-term incumbent had lost. Ferry had carried Norwalk by 740 to 605, but not one other town in the district.

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The district tally:

  • Orris S. Ferry (Republican): 11,657 (49.83 percent)
  • George C. Woodruff (Democrat): 11,739 (50.18 percent)

Back then, Connecticut held elections for U.S. Congress and state offices on the first Monday of April (even though the U.S. presidential election was held in November). The new Republican Party retained control of the state Legislature, but Democrats made gains, including the capture of Ferry's seat. Many of the re-elected Republicans, especially Gov. William Buckingham, became strong supporters of Abraham Lincoln and the war effort.

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The Norwalk lawyer had been elected to Congress just two years before in a relatively close vote. Norwalk, a bit of a hotbed of Republicanism (although it was by no means overwhelming) had given Ferry 654 votes in 1859, and his opponent 446.

Although only a freshman congressman, Ferry had taken an active role on the slavery issue and took part in efforts to preserve the Union in late 1860 and early 1861. But he wasn't going to compromise on the extension of slavery into the territories of the American West.

In one speech to Congress, given in February 1860, he said: "Whenever a territorial legislature is mad enough or venal enough to enact a slave code, I would exercise the power thus conferred upon Congress and annhiliate the iniquitous statute."

Later, in a private conversation with some newspaper reporters in Washington, Ferry said: "We must not compromise. We have got three things to do: first, to do right; second, to overthrow forever the power of slavery; third, to save the Republic."

In the months between Lincoln's November election and the Confederate capture of Fort Sumter in South Carolina, many were calling for compromises to save the Union as state after state secceded. First, South Carolina did so on Dec. 20, and by April 1861, seven states had seceded, forming the Confederate States of America in February. Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4.

Back in Connecticut, many wanted Congress to pass measures that would mollify the South enough to prevent a breakup of the Union, and in February various petitions were received by Congress, including one from Fairfield and another from Westport.

Many in the North were willing to give the South guarantees about the perpetuation of slavery, and other compromises were broached in these months. When a "Committee of 33" was created by the House of Representatives late in 1860, Ferry was appointed to represent Connecticut on the panel, but it's efforts went nowhere.

On Feb. 11, 1861, Ferry offered a House resolution proposing "expressly to forbid the withdrawal of any state from the union without the consent of two thirds of both houses of Congress, the approval of the president and the consent of all the states." The measure was tabled and never voted on.

That same day, Ferry and the rest of the Connecticut delegation voted in favor of a resolution stating that Congress should not interfere with the "domestic institutions" of any state.  Ferry was willing to go that far to avoid a civil war.

On Feb. 24, Ferry told the House that Southern leaders demanded a Constitutional amendment protecting slavery everywhere, but even if it passed they wouldn't agree to drop the threat of secession. "A compromise now is but the establishment of sedition as an elementary principle in our system. ... There is no course left but for the government to vindicate its dignity by an exhibition of strength."

In the April election, the Democratic platform in Connecticut recognized secession as an established fact and called for peace measures to bring back into the union the seceded states. Republicans called for national union, to be enforced by war if necessary. Out of 84,015 votes cast for governor, Buckingham was re-elected by 43,012, just 2,009 votes ahead of his opponent.

Within two weeks, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charlestown, SC. A surge in patriotism gripped Connecticut and the North in general. If Ferry's election had been held at that point, it's hard to see how he would've lost.

Both Ferry, 37, and a fellow Norwalk Republican, A. Homer Byington (editor of the Norwalk Gazette) were in Washington, DC, at the time, and both volunteered as members of the Cassius M. Clay Battalion—an all-volunteer group of armed men whose mission was to protect the capital city from any Confederate attacks.

Ferry, born in Bethel in 1823, had worked in his father's hat factory but had shown intellectual promise and was able to go to Yale (something Byington had hoped to do but couldn't afford since his father had died). Ferry studied law in Norwalk, started a very successful practice and became both a Norwalk probate judge and the Fairfield County state's attorney (lead prosecutor) from 1856 to 1859. He spent a term in the state Senate (1855 to 1856) and ran for the House of Representatives first in 1857, when he lost, and then in 1859, when he began his first and only term in that body.

He was repeatedly praised during his life as an eloquent public speaker with a fine intellect. Some thought his speechmaking during his 1859 run for Congress is what got him the job. An obituary printed in Connecticut Reports, a legal periodical, described Ferry as having

"a fine legal mind. It was not acute and subtle, but it was broad, comprehensive, logical, quick of apprehension, and rapid in its operations. He had an excellent memory, both of facts and of principles. He was not a man of especial tact, nor of artful expedients, neither was he cool, calculating and passionless; on the contrary, he was always frank, open-hearted, ardent in temperament, and naturally so impulsive that he would often have made grievous mistakes but for the restraining power of his strong common sense and clear intellect."

He was a member of the local militia and joined the First Congregational Church of Norwalk in 1859, where he would teach Bible class in the church's Sunday school whenever he was home. When he was young, he enjoyed sports and in his adulthood both fished and hunted. He married Charlotte C. Bissell, a daughter of Connecticut Governor Bissell.

His 1861 loss wouldn't have felt like a fortunate stroke at the time, but it made it easier for him to join the Fifth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteer Infantry later in 1861. He served with an "honorable though not brilliant record," as the Connecticut Reports obituary put it,  in campaigns that included Sherman's March to the Sea and battles including Gettysburg, Chancellorsville and Cedar Mountain. When the 17th Regiment, which included many Norwalkers, returned home, it was Gen. Orris S. Ferry who welcomed them back with a speech on the Norwalk Green.

A year after the war ended, Ferry was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he was known as independent-minded and no friend of the corrupt administration of President Ulysses S. Grant. In 1872, he was re-elected when 16 members of his own party joined the Democrats in the state Legislature to oppose a Republican machine candidate.

Ferry contracted a spinal disease that he shared in common with former U.S. Senator Charles Sumner, and the two wrote letters to each other about their condition. In November 1875, Ferry's health worsened, and he was brought home to Norwalk, where he died on Nov. 21. He was 52 years old.

U.S. Sen. Carl Schurz, a noted reformer of the time, spoke in Norwalk shortly after Ferry's death, and said of him: "There was in him a clearness and grasp of judgment which no sophistry could baffle, a sense of right and wrong which no party spirit could stagger; a depth and strength of conviction which no self-interest could obscure; a force of will which no opposition could bend; and independence and pride of genuine manhood which no frown of power could frighten, and no blandishment could seduce."

Sources:

The Military and Civil History of Connecticut During the War of 1861 to 1865, by W. A. Croffut and John M. Morris, New York: Ledyard Bill, 1868.

Norwalk after two hundred and fifty years, Norwalk Historical and Memorial Association, South Norwalk: C. A. Freeman, 1901.

Norwalk: Being an historical account of that Connecticut Town, by Deborah Wing Ray and Gloria P. Stewart, Canaan, NH; Phoenix Publishing for the Norwalk Historical Society

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