David Daggett (December 31, 1764 – April 12, 1851) was a U.S. senator, mayor of New Haven, Connecticut, Judge of the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors, and a founder of the Yale Law School. He helped block plans for the first college for African Americans in the United States and presided over the conviction of a woman running a boarding school for African Americans in violation of Connecticut's recently passed Black Law. He judged African Americans not to be citizens and supported their colonization to Africa.

Life

He was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts, December 31, 1764, the son of Thomas Daggett. The history of Daggett's family in Massachusetts is a distinguished one. The original Daggett, John, came over from England with Winthrop's company, in 1630, and settled in Watertown.

At the age of 16, David enrolled at Yale College, entering the junior class two years early. It appears likely that he entered Yale rather than Harvard, which was closer, because his father's cousin had been an officer at Yale. He graduated with high honor in 1783 and then earned a master's degree. Daggett was in the same class with Samuel Austin, Abiel Holmes and John Cotton Smith.

Dagget was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1815.

In November 1824, Daggett became an associate instructor of the New Haven Law School under Samuel Johnson Hitchcock; and in 1826, he was appointed Kent Professor of Law at Yale. He held these positions until health conditions forced him to resign. In the autumn of 1826, he received from Yale the honorary degree of LL.D.

In May 1840, Daggett married Mary Lines, who was with him at the time of his death.

In May 1826, at age 62, he was chosen an associate judge of the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors. He was appointed to that office by a Legislature in which a decided majority was opposed to him in political principles and preferences, and yet the respect he had garnered as a public official and lawyer swayed their vote in his favor.

Daggett and race issues

In 1831, Simeon Jocelyn and others proposed establishing a college for negros in New Haven; there was none in the United States, and the admission of blacks into existing colleges was rare. Daggett led the opposition to this plan, which was scuttled at a town meeting when a resolution against it that Daggett helped draft was passed by a vote of a 700 to 4. At the same meeting an anti-abolitionism resolution he also helped draft was passed: "The propagation of sentiments favorable to the immediate emancipation of slaves in disregard of the civil institutions of the States in which they belong, and as auxiliary thereto the contemporaneous founding of Colleges for educating colored people, is unwarrantable and dangerous interference with the internal concerns of other States, and ought to be discouraged."

After the "Negro college" affair, Daggett continued to oppose the expansion of education for blacks. In 1833, Prudence Crandall admitted a black student to her female academy. The citizens first warned her, then withdrew their daughters from the school. Crandall reopened the school exclusively for black women. Canterbury passed a bill stipulating that the selectmen of the town had to approve any out-of-state students of color seeking an education. Crandall was arrested for violating this law. Chief Justice Daggett ruled in 1833 that, since free black people could not be U.S. citizens, they could be prevented from being educated.

In 1835, Daggett undertook another town meeting linking states' rights, pro-colonization and anti-abolitionism. This meeting, held at the statehouse on September 9, 1835, found Noah Webster, Simeon Baldwin, and others helping to frame resolutions that condemned any interference by Congress with the treatment of slaves within any of the states, opposed the use of the mail for "transmission of incendiary information", proposed African colonization for "the free colored population", and "viewed with alarm the efforts of the abolitionists".

Throughout the 1830s, Daggett consistently opposed education and supported colonization for free blacks. During this time, he served as chief justice of Connecticut's Supreme Court and as Yale's only full professor of law.

References

  • David Daggett papers (MS 162). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.[http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ms.0162]