A people that have no history are the happiest, therefore we may assume that Hartford was a happy and flourishing town during the remainder of the colonial period, and even during the Revolution there is but little to tell of Hartford. Its situation, so far removed from the seacoast, secured it from the attacks of the British troops, and it was for that very reason a safe and desirable place for the meetings of Generals Washington and Rochambeau, when they wished to arrange the plans for the campaigns that ended with the surrender of Yorktown. The first of these historic meetings took place September 17, 1780. Rochambeau came from Newport through Eastern Connecticut, and Washington rode from New Windsor on the Hudson with a guard of twenty-two dragoons. The meeting took place in the public square on the site of the present post-office, and as the two tall, fine-looking commanders-in-chief approached each other bowing, an eye-witness said that it was like the meeting of two nations. The following year another meeting took place at Wethersfield. During the colonial period there was very little literary production in America, except sermons and theological treatises, and Hartford was no exception to this rule. Her first author was one of her founders, the Rev. Thomas Hooker, “The Light of the Western Churches.” His writings consisted exclusively of sermons. They were first published in London, and but few have been reprinted in this country. No preacher of great reputation succeeded him, nor any writers whatever. But during the Revolution a star arose on the horizon,--_McFingal_. The first part of the poem appeared as independent verses in the _Connecticut Courant_ in 1775. General Gage had issued a fierce proclamation, threatening to exempt from general pardon some of the Continental leaders, and Trumbull’s poem burlesqued the manifesto. It was at once reproduced in the Philadelphia papers, and undoubtedly did a very important work in stimulating the thought and passion of the American Revolution. About 1782 the whole work was published by Messrs. Hudson & Goodwin, “near the Great Bridge, Hartford.” Tradition states that the scene of the “Town Meeting” refers to the old South Church in this city. Nathaniel Patten, an enterprising, and not over-scrupulous printer in Hartford, issued a second edition of _McFingal_, without the author’s consent, and it is an interesting fact that out of this piracy of Trumbull’s work here in Hartford grew the national copyright law. Trumbull and Noah Webster both exerted themselves strenuously in favor of such a law, and, in 1783, the General Assembly of Connecticut passed an “Act for the Encouragement of Literature and Genius,” which secured to authors their copyright within the State. The personal exertions of Noah Webster in defense of his spelling-book led to the passage of similar laws by the legislatures of other States, and finally to the passage of a general