Certain customary laws of Connecticut, not having the force of statute, commonly cited as illustrating the ideals of Puritanism.
1775. See an incident told by Burnaby (‘Travels in North America,’ pp. 188–9) of an English captain, whipped in Massachusetts Bay for kissing his wife on a Sunday, who retaliated in kind.
1781. Some of the blue laws, which were never officially printed, are given by Samuel Peters, ‘History of Connecticut,’ pp. 63–9 (Lond.).
1805. The Connecticut Courant retaliated by publishing some of the obsolete enactments of the “Old Dominion,” under the heading of “Blue Laws of Virginia.” See The Repertory (Boston), Jan. 8.
1806. If a priest shall come into this Government, he shall be admonished and led out—for a second offence, he shall be driven out,—and for a third offence, suffer death. See Blue Laws of Connecticut. The words are not exactly quoted, but we believe the sense is strictly retained.—Balt. Ev. Post, March 17, p. 3/2.
1814. Connecticut, in her blue laws, laying it down as a principle, that the laws of God should be the laws of the land.—Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Jan. 24: from Monticello.
1816. Our Eastern forefathers … came to avoid persecution, and they began to persecute; they hung honest women for witches; and they enacted a black and blue code of by-laws.—Henry C. Knight (‘Arthur Singleton’), ‘Letters,’ p. 43 (Boston, 1824).
1817. The ignorant and the prejudiced have so long ridiculed the “blue laws” of Connecticut, that, &c.—Mass. Spy, Oct. 15.
1826. The Salem Observer contains particulars of a trial which took place in Conn. in 1760, under that section of the blue laws which prohibited kissing.—Id., March 1.
1835. In “Natchez under the hill,” the Sabbath, as a day of rest and public worship, is not observed according to the strictest letter of the old “blue laws.”—Ingraham, ‘The South-West,’ ii. 54.
1854. I know that Connecticut, in the olden time, was libeled by a Tory renegade, who absconded to England to perpetrate his vindictive falsehood, as the Blue Law State.—Mr. Gillette of Conn., U.S. Senate, July 6: Cong. Globe, p. 1618.
