“Connecticut sent him as one of her delegates to the first Continental Congress, in 1774, and there he maintained this doctrine with all his power. John Adams reports him as declaring upon the floor that there was no legislative power superior to the Colonial Assemblies, and that Americans had adopted the common law of England, not as the common law, but as the highest reason. “It was his thorough-going republicanism, indeed, which had carried him into public life, and put him in a leading place among the legislators of his State. He had been first elected to the Governor’s Council or upper house of the General Assembly in 1766. The Stamp Act had brought the ‘Sons of Liberty’ into existence. They had forced, under threat of death, Jared Ingersoll, who, under the advice of Franklin had accepted the position of stampmaster for Connecticut, to resign the office. Governor Fitch, though with reluctance, had taken the official oath which the obnoxious Act required. It cost him his place, William Pitkin being elected his successor a year later. With him went out of office four of his Council who sympathized with his deference to parliamentary authority; dropped by the people to make room for others who were regarded as more fully Americans in spirit and doctrine. “No one was then eligible for a seat on the Council-board who had not been officially nominated in the previous year. Twenty nominations were annually made for the twelve places, and the election was so managed that the twelve in office always headed the list and were voted on first. A majority was not required for an election. To be once nominated for the upper house was in this way a substantial assurance of an ultimate election, and to be once elected was a substantial assurance of an annual re-election for life. “Sherman, in 1766, had been on the waiting list for five years. A political whirlwind, unexampled in our Colonial annals, then made five vacancies, and death a sixth. He went in with five other new men, and remained a member until after the close of the Revolution. “Religion in those days, so far as form at least was concerned, was a part of politics. There was a religious establishment in Connecticut. It put the church beside the schoolhouse on the village green. It made Church and State largely one.