42 - Oliver Ellsworth (CT)

#42 - Oliver Ellsworth (CT)
Birthplace: Windsor, CT
Age at Convention: 42

1) Religion
-- Studied theology at Yale and College of New Jersey (Princeton)
-- Active member of the Congregational First Church of Windsor
-- "If I demean myself as a good citizen, I am accountable, not to man, but to God, for the religious opinions which I embrace, and the manner in which I worship the supreme being"
-- "A test in favour of any one denomination of Christians would be to the last degree absurd in the United States. If it were in favour of either congregationalists, presbyterians, episcopalions, baptists, or quakers, it would incapacitate more than three-fourths of the American citizens for any publick office; and thus degrade them from the rank of freemen. There need no argument to prove that the majority of our citizens would never submit to this indignity."
-- "We are almost the only people in the world, who have a full enjoyment of this important right of human nature. In our country every man has a right to worship God in that way which is most agreeable to his conscience"

2) Slavery
-- Did not own slaves
-- Opposed abolition of foreign slave trade
-- Favored slavery being subject to state authority, likely to ensure the support of Southern States to prevent a breakdown at the Convention

3) Upbringing
-- Born to Capt. David and Jemima Leavitt

References:
1) http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/convention/delegates/ellsworth.html
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Ellsworth
3) http://www.geocities.com/peterroberts.geo/Relig-Politics/OEllsworth.html

Running tabulation:
1) Religiously Active (9) or Primarily Secular (5)
2) Abolitionist (5), Partial Abolitionist (6) or Non-Abolitionist (3)
3) Wealthy (5) or Middle-Class/Poor (9)