TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE
STATE OF CONNECTICUT
COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
ANNIE RUSSELL MARBLE
Hartford on the Connecticut," as the old records often located the place, has received merited honor for its contributions to state- craft and literature during the three hundred years of its history. From the days of the pioneer religious leader, Thomas Hooker, with strong, persuasive words in speech and written sermon, to the nineteenth- century group of noted writers who lived as neighbors— Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner, Harriet Beecher Stowe— Hartford has wielded a world-wide literary influence.
It was during the decade after the American Revolution, called by John Fiske the critical period of American history, that Hartford became famous for its group of pungent satirists, who were ardent Federalists, and who have been recalled in literary histories as the Hartford Wits.1 The lines of their aggressive poem, The Anarchiad or American antiquities, and the lighter mock-heroics of____________________