Hartford, the capital of Connecticut, is situated on the right bank of the Connecticut River, 50 miles from its mouth, and 112 by rail NE. of New York, with which it is also in daily communication by steamboat. It is a handsome city, with streets not all too regular, and many tasteful private houses. It has an imposing state capitol of white marble, a state arsenal, a new post-office and United States court-house; and on the outskirts are the new buildings of Trinity College (Episcopal), which was founded on the present site of the capitol in 1823 (see GLENALMOND). To the notable public buildings, besides the Wadsworth Athenæum and the high school, must be added the substantial offices of the many great insurance companies whose headquarters are established here, as well as a number of banks. Hartford contains a Congregational theological seminary, a large hospital, asylums for orphans, the deaf and dumb, and the insane, and possesses several important libraries; it is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop also, and has two nunneries. There are extensive manufactures of Colt's pistols, Gatling guns, engines, boilers, and machines, hardware and other metal goods, stoneware, and wooden wares. There is also some publishing, and a very considerable trade in Connecticut tobacco. The site of a Dutch fort in 1633, and of a colony of Massachusetts settlers as early as 1635-36, Hartford was incorporated as a city in 1784, and has been sole capital of the state since 1873. It was the seat of the Hartford Convention (q.v.). See also CONNECTICUT. In point of population the city stands second to New Haven, which formerly shared with Hartford the rank of semi-capital. Pop. (1870) 37,180; (1880) 42,015; (1890) 53,230. See The River Towns of Connecticut, by C. M. Andrews (Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1889).
HARTFORD CONVENTION, in the political history of the United States, was an assemblage of delegates from the New England States, at Hartford, Connecticut, December 15, 1814. This convention was proposed by the Massachusetts legislature. The war with Great Britain in 1812-14 had been from the first opposed by the majority of the people of New England, who were Federalists, and looked upon the war as a mere party measure of the Democrats; and in face of the destruction of the commerce and the fisheries, the chief interests of New England, this convention was called with the ostensible object of devising means of security and defence. It sat twenty days with closed doors; and, as it was supposed to be of a treasonable character, it was watched by a military officer of the government. The convention prepared a report recommending the adoption of measures by the state legislatures that would protect their citizens from conscriptions and impressments, and the militia from forcible drafts; the report also proposed certain amendments to the federal constitution. No treasonable act was committed, and no treasonable intention proved; yet the suspicion of disloyal tendencies clung to the convention, and completed the ruin of the Federalist party, which did not survive the election of 1816. Some ground for the public suspicion was probably afforded by the fact that a section of the Federalist leaders known as the 'Essex Junto,' who had in 1804 and 1809 seriously discussed the question of dissolving the Union and forming an Eastern confederacy, were foremost in bringing the convention about; and the charge of aiming at a kingdom of New England would therefore make no serious demand upon the credibility of partisan opponents. Yet the convention included men of the highest public character, who strenuously defended the pure purpose of its patriotism, and the charges of treasonable designs are now nearly universally regarded as baseless.