USS Hartford Cannon

One cannon, about 1953. Photo Credit: Trinity College Archives.

One of two USS Hartford Cannon on the main quad, 2022. The second cannon can be seen in the far-right background. Photo credit: Amanda Matava

Trinity College President G. Keith Funston '32 acquired two cannon ¹⁾ from the 1858 Union steamship USS Hartford for the Trinity campus in 1950.

History

When the Memorial Field House was dedicated on February 12, 1949, it commemorated 70 Trinity men who sacrificed their lives during World War II. The same year, President G. Keith Funston learned that two of the four USS Hartford cannon were in the City Park Department's storage yard. He asked City Manager Carleton Sharpe whether they could be loaned to the College for display as a Civil War memorial to Trinity men in the Union and Confederate forces.

On November 24, 1950, the two 9,000 pound IX-inch smoothbore Dahlgren broadside guns were placed facing east toward Broad Street, directly above the lower Long Walk, and behind the Brownell Statue. “It has been rumored that they will be a war memorial to those alumni who gave their lives in the fight to abolish slavery,” wrote the Tripod in December.

The cannon carriages bear plaques commemorating the 105 Trinity alumni who fought in the Civil War. 79 fought for the Union and 26 for the Confederacy; 12 gave their lives for the Union and 6 for the Confederacy.

At various times between 1950 and 1951, “prankish students” fired the cannon, disturbing the Hartford community with tremors and noise. In 1951, College administration stated that the cannon would be “jammed in such a way they won't be able to be fired again.” ²⁾ Only a few days later, Hartford was once again disrupted with “mysterious explosions” that shook their windows. When detectives arrived to investigate, the students explained that they had filled the cannon with blasting caps, nuts, bolts, and silverware in order to celebrate the new semester starting. A story later circulated that the students were actually attempting to take down the Memorial Field House. Richard A. Freytag wrote in 1955 that “the administration, feeling that although the cannon had once helped smash the Confederacy, they should not be used by the Trinity student body to help smash the campus.” ³⁾ As promised, the administration promptly plugged the cannon with cement.

In 1994, the Navy League borrowed and refurbished the cannon to mount on authentically designed carriages for display in Groton, Connecticut to celebrate the second USS Hartford, an attack submarine. While the original carriages were made of white oak, the Navy League used red oak, and the carriages needed replacing by 2006. Under the direction of Mike Roraback, construction trades foreman with the Trinity buildings and grounds department, the carriages were rebuilt and improved using white oak as in the original carriages.

Since they were mounted in 1950, the cannon have remained in their original positions on the main quad.

One of the nests is named for the cannon.

The USS Hartford

USS Hartford at Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, California, after 1887. Photo Credit: Wikipedia.

The USS Hartford was the first ship in the U.S. Navy to be named for the city of Hartford. She was an 1858 steam-powered sloop-of-war and the flagship of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron under the command of Admiral David G. Farragut.

The USS Hartford saw combat in the Battle of New Orleans (1862), Vicksburg (1862-1863), Siege of Port Hudson (1863), and most famously, the Battle of Mobile Bay (1864), in which Farragut reportedly told the squadron, as they faced running through a minefield, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” During the battle, the Hartford fought the Confederate ironclad Tennessee, a moment captured in the famous painting by William Heysham Overend, now in the Wadsworth Atheneum, which shows a gun in action, Farragut in the mizzen rigging. The work shows how close the vessels were in the battle. Two Black sailors, Landsman Wilson Brown and Landsman John Lawson, were awarded Medals of Honor for their valor on board the Hartford that day.

Two Trinity alumni served on the USS Hartford: Henry Howard Brownell, Class of 1841 and Joseph Hugg, Class of 1858. Henry, Thomas Church Brownell's nephew, was Admiral Farragut’s secretary, in time holding the rank of Lieutenant Commander. Soon after the war he published War Lyrics and Other Poems, and Oliver Wendell Holmes called him “Our Battle Laureate.” Two long poems, “The River Fight” and “The Bay Fight” are significant descriptions of the capture of New Orleans and the Battle of Mobile Bay. Joseph Hugg was an Assistant Surgeon aboard the Hartford, tending the flagship’s ill, wounded, and dying.

The Hartford was decommissioned and recommissioned several times, and rebuilt in the late 1890s. In 1898, the city of Hartford acquired four of her cannon and positioned them at the corners of the State Capitol Grounds. At some point, the cannon went into underground storage before two were acquired by Trinity College, though the Hartford's figurehead still remains at the State Capitol and the bell at the Old State House in Hartford.

In 1945, the Hartford was towed to the Norfolk Naval Yard where she was classified as a relic and allowed to deteriorate. She finally sank in November 1956.

The second USS Hartford (SSN-768), commissioned in 1994, is a submarine that is currently in service.

Plaques

The cannon have four plaques, one on each side of the cannon. The plaques on the cannon to the southern side of the Brownell statue read: (1)(a) THIS GUN formed part of the Main Battery of Admiral Farragut's Flagship Hartford during the Civil War. New Orleans * Port Hudson * Vicksburg * Mobile Bay. (1)(b) HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL Class of 1841 “Our Battle Laureate” served as secretary to Admiral Farragut during the Battle of Mobile Bay.

The plaques on the cannon to the northern side of the Brownell statue read: (2)(a) In memory of the Trinity men who fought for the principles in which they believed with the Union and Confederate forces in the Civil War and of those who gave “the last full measure of devotion.” (2)(b) THIS GUN formed part of the Main Battery of Admiral Farragut's Flagship Hartford during the Civil War. New Orleans * Port Hudson * Vicksburg * Mobile Bay.

“The last full measure of devotion” is a quotation from President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The phrase reads fully in the final (Bliss) manuscript version: “–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–….” Given the connection of the word “devotion” to loyalty to the cause of the Union implied by the placement of the phrase in Lincoln's address, the only honored dead referred to might have been just the dead Union men at Gettysburg, not both Union and Confederate war dead.

Controversy

In November 2021, the Trinity Student Government Association adopted a motion to remove the plaque which commemorates “the Trinity men who fought for the principles in which they believed with the Union and Confederate forces” and place it in the Watkinson Library College Archives.

Sponsored by Liz Foster '22, among others, the SGA resolution reads in part: “it is morally unconscionable to honor the soldiers of the Confederacy as their mission in rebelling against the United States of America was to preserve slavery and white supremacy…the presence of these memorials is to perpetuate and honor the legacy of slavery and racial oppression.” SGA President and co-sponsor Jederick Estrella '22 stated that “to suggest the Confederacy fought for the right principles stands as an oxymoron to stances Trinity has historically taken in the past and even recently with their commitment to an accurate portrayal of Trinity's history in association with Slavery through the creation of the Primus Project.”

In 2022, President Joanne Berger-Sweeney announced a new, formal process for the renaming of buildings, spaces, and commemoratives. Through this process, SGA raised a new petition in 2023 to remove the plaque. According to the new document, the plaque “is a source of contention and pain, exacerbated by the cannons' orientation towards the Hartford community.” ⁴⁾ While the cannon have always faced east, student myths and legends have circulated about where or towards whom the cannon are truly aimed – whether it be Wesleyan, Amherst, Yale, or the City of Hartford. Tripod author Edward Lawrence Jr. wrote in 1950 that the plaques which were to be placed on the cannon will designate “their significance to Broad Street residents as well as to future Trinity students,” implying that the local residents (then largely white) should have no difficulty understanding that the aim of the cannon was memorializing rather than militaristic.

This was not the first time students spoke out about Confederate iconography. In 2017, Pi Kappa Alpha supported the removal of a Chapel pew end depicting a man holding a Confederate flag, which was installed by the fraternity in 1957. Nicknamed PIKE, the fraternity was founded almost exclusively by students who fought for the Confederacy.

The cannon plaque and pew end reflect the mood of sectional reconciliation, a theme reinforced by the “lost cause” narrative. The Lost Cause was an interpretation of the Civil War which romanticized the antebellum South and excluded the perpetuation of slavery as the catalyst for the war. This erroneous myth dominated American history and historiography even after the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and persists today.