Wolcott

Wolcott town (1990 pop. 13,700), New Haven co., central Conn.; inc. 1796. There is some light manufacturing. Bronson (Amos) Alcott was born nearby.

Wolcott, Roger (1679–1767), after serving in the French and Indian Wars became prominent in the politics of his native Connecticut and served as its governor (1751–54). His Poetical Meditations (1725) contains A Brief Account of the Agency of the Honourable John Winthrop (in obtaining the Connecticut charter), a rugged attempt at an epic which is an interesting link between earlier New England elegies and the American epics of the Connecticut Wits. Wolcott's prose pamphlets were concerned with religious controversies.

Wolcott, Alexander (b. Windsor, Conn., 15 Sept. 1758; d. Middletown, Conn., 26 June 1828), lawyer, public official, and unconfirmed nominee for associate justice. The son of Dr. Alexander and Mary Richards Wolcott, Wolcott attended Yale College and thereafter studied law. He commenced law practice in Windsor, Connecticut and then in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he married Frances Burbank in September 1785. He returned with his wife to Connecticut, where he became a leader of the Republican party and served as collector of the Port of Middletown.

On 4 February 1811, President James Madison nominated Wolcott for an associate justiceship of the Supreme Court. Spurred on by Wolcott's vigorous and unpopular enforcement of the Embargo, a federal statute of 1807 that prohibited all naval commerce to foreign countries, federalists greeted his nomination with contempt, describing him as a man of mediocre legal talent. Despite the partisanship of these attacks, they were not far off the mark, and even Republicans found it difficult to defend Wolcott. The extreme doubts within both parties about his judicial abilities caused the Senate to reject his nomination by a vote of 9 to 24.

Wolcott's rejection by the Senate did not discourage his political activities. He assumed a prominent role in the Connecticut State Constitutional Convention of 1818, where he argued that any judge who declared a legislative act unconstitutional should be expelled. He further contended that the Supreme Court's exercise of judicial review was a usurpation of power.

See also Nominees, Rejection of.

Robert M. Ireland