USA - Connecticut - Constitution State

CONNECTICUT
Constitution Sate

Sent by Susan from Connecticut, USA.

Connecticut’s official nickname is the “Constitution State”. 

“Connecticut was designated the Constitution State by the General Assembly in 1959. As early as the 19th Century, John Fiske, a popular historian from Connecticut made the claim that the Fundamental Orders of 1638 and 1639 were the first written constitution in history. 

Some contemporary historians dispute Fiske’s analysis. However, Simeon E. Baldwin, a former Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, defended Fiske’s view of the Fundamental Orders in Osborn’s History of Connecticut in Monographic Form by stating that ‘never had a company of men deliberately met to frame a social compact for immediate use, constituting a new and independent commonwealth, with definite officers, executive and legislative, and prescribed rules and modes of government, until the first planters of Connecticut came together for their great work on January 14th, 1638-39.’

- Connecticut State Register and Manual (1998), p. 832 (read more).