The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government/I/IX

by Jefferson Davis

CHAPTER IX.

Preparations for Withdrawal from the Union.—Northern Precedents.—New England Secessionists.—Cabot, Pickering, Quincy, etc.—On the Acquisition of Louisiana.—The Hartford Convention.—The Massachusetts Legislature on the Annexation of Texas, etc., etc.

The Convention of South Carolina had already (on the 20th of December, 1860) unanimously adopted an ordinance revoking her delegated powers and withdrawing from the Union. Her representatives, on the following day, retired from their seats in Congress. The people of the other planting States had been only waiting in the lingering hope that some action might be taken by Congress to avert the necessity for action similar to that of South Carolina. In view of the failure of all overtures for conciliation during the first month of the session, they were now making their final preparations for secession. This was generally admitted to be an unquestionable right appertaining to their sovereignty as States, and the only peaceable remedy that remained for the evils already felt and the dangers apprehended.

In the prior history of the country, repeated instances are found of the assertion of this right, and of a purpose entertained at various times to put it in execution. Notably is this true of Massachusetts and other New England States. The acquisition of Louisiana, in 1803, had created much dissatisfaction in those States, for the reason, expressed by an eminent citizen of Massachusetts,^[1] that "the influence of our [the Northeastern] part of the Union must be diminished by the acquisition of more weight at the other extremity." The project of a separation was freely discussed, with no intimation, in the records of the period, of any idea among its advocates that it could be regarded as treasonable or revolutionary.

Colonel Timothy Pickering, who had been an officer of the war of the Revolution, afterward successively Postmaster-General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State, in the Cabinet of General Washington, and, still later, long a representative of the State of Massachusetts in the Senate of the United States, was one of the leading secessionists of his day. Writing from Washington to a friend, on the 24th of December, 1803, he says:

"I will not yet despair. I will rather anticipate a new confederacy, exempt from the corrupt and corrupting influence and oppression of the aristocratic democrats of the South. There will be (and our children, at farthest, will see it) a separation. The white and black population will mark the boundary."^[2]

In another letter, written a few weeks afterward (January 29, 1804), speaking of what he regarded as wrongs and abuses perpetrated by the then existing Administration, he thus expresses his views of the remedy to be applied:

"The principles of our Revolution point to the remedy—a separation. That this can be accomplished, and without spilling one drop of blood, I have little doubt. . . .

"I do not believe in the practicability of a long-continued Union. A Northern Confederacy would unite congenial characters and present a fairer prospect of public happiness; while the Southern States, having a similarity of habits, might be left to 'manage their own affairs in their own way.' If a separation were to take place, our mutual wants would render a friendly and commercial intercourse inevitable. The Southern States would require the naval protection of the Northern Union, and the products of the former would be important to the navigation and commerce of the latter . . .

"It [the separation] must begin, in Massachusetts. The proposition would be welcomed in Connecticut; and could we doubt of New Hampshire? But New York must be associated; and how is her concurrence to be obtained? She must be made the center of the Confederacy. Vermont and New Jersey would follow of course, and Rhode Island of necessity."^[3]

Substituting South Carolina for Massachusetts; Virginia for New York; Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, for New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island; Kentucky for New Jersey, etc., etc., we find the suggestions of 1860–'61 only a reproduction of those thus outlined nearly sixty years earlier.

Mr. Pickering seems to have had a correct and intelligent perception of the altogether pacific character of the secession which he proposed, and of the mutual advantages likely to accrue to both sections from a peaceable separation. Writing in February, 1804, he explicitly disavows the idea of hostile feeling or action toward the South, expressing himself as follows:

"While thus contemplating the only means of maintaining our ancient institutions in morals and religion, and our equal rights, we wish no ill to the Southern States and those naturally connected with them. The public debts might be equitably apportioned between the new confederacies, and a separation somewhere about the line above suggested would divide the different characters of the existing Union. The manners of the Eastern portion of the States would be sufficiently congenial to form a Union, and their interests are alike intimately connected with agriculture and commerce. A friendly and commercial intercourse would be maintained with the States in the Southern Confederacy as at present. Thus all the advantages which have been for a few years depending on the general Union would be continued to its respective portions, without the jealousies and enmities which now afflict both, and which peculiarly embitter the condition of that of the North. It is not unusual for two friends, when disagreeing about the mode of conducting a common concern, to separate and manage, each in his own way, his separate interest, and thereby preserve a useful friendship, which without such separation would infallibly be destroyed."^[4]

Such were the views of an undoubted patriot who had participated in the formation of the Union, and who had long been confidentially associated with Washington in the administration of its Government, looking at the subject from a Northern standpoint, within fifteen years after the organization of that Government under the Constitution. Whether his reasons for advocating a dissolution of the Union were valid and sufficient, or not, is another question which it is not necessary to discuss. His authority is cited only as showing the opinion prevailing in the North at that day with regard to the right of secession from the Union, if deemed advisable by the ultimate and irreversible judgment of the people of a sovereign State.

In 1811, on the bill for the admission of Louisiana as a State of the Union, the Hon. Josiah Quincy, a member of Congress from Massachusetts, said

"If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of this Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation; and as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation—amicably if they can, violently if they must."

Mr. Poindexter, delegate from what was then the Mississippi Territory, took exception to these expressions of Mr. Quincy, and called him to order. The Speaker (Mr. Varnum, of Massachusetts) sustained Mr. Poindexter, and decided that the suggestion of a dissolution of the Union was out of order. An appeal was taken from this decision, and it was reversed. Mr. Quincy proceeded to vindicate the propriety of his position in a speech of some length, in the course of which he said:

"Is there a principle of public law better settled or more conformable to the plainest suggestions of reason than that the violation of a contract by one of the parties may be considered as exempting the other from its obligations? Suppose, in private life, thirteen form a partnership, and ten of them undertake to admit a new partner without the concurrence of the other three; would it not be at their option to abandon the partnership after so palpable an infringement of their rights? How much more in the political partnership, where the admission of new associates, without previous authority, is so pregnant with obvious dangers and evils!"

It is to be remembered that these men—Cabot, Pickering. Quincy, and others—whose opinions and expressions have been cited, were not Democrats, misled by extreme theories of State rights, but leaders and expositors of the highest type of "Federalism, and of a strong central Government." This fact gives their support of the right of secession the greater significance.

The celebrated Hartford Convention assembled in December, 1814. It consisted of delegates chosen by the Legislatures of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, with an irregular or imperfect representation from the other two New England States, New Hampshire and Vermont,^[5] convened for the purpose of considering the grievances complained of by those States in connection with the war with Great Britain. They sat with closed doors, and the character of their deliberations and discussions has not been authentically disclosed. It was generally understood, however, that the chief subject of their considerations was the question of the withdrawal of the States they represented from the Union. The decision, as announced in their published report, was adverse to the expediency of such a measure at that time, and under the then existing conditions; but they proceeded to indicate the circumstances in which a dissolution of the Union might become expedient, and the mode in which it should be effected; and their theoretical plan of separation corresponds very nearly with that actually adopted by the Southern States nearly fifty years afterward. They say:

"If the Union be destined to dissolution by reason of the multiplied abuses of bad administration, it should, if possible, be the work of peaceable times and deliberate consent. Some new form of confederacy should be substituted among those States which shall intend to maintain a federal relation to each other. Events may prove that the causes of our calamities are deep and permanent. They may be found to proceed, not merely from the blindness of prejudice, pride of opinion, violence of party spirit, or the confusion of the times; but they may be traced to implacable combinations of individuals or of States to monopolize power and office, and to trample without remorse upon the rights and interests of commercial sections of the Union. Whenever it shall appear that the causes are radical and permanent, a separation by equitable arrangement will be preferable to an alliance by constraint among nominal friends, but real enemies."

The omission of the single word "commercial," which does not affect the principle involved, is the only modification necessary to adapt this extract exactly to the condition of the Southern States in 1860–'61.

The obloquy which has attached to the members of the Hartford Convention has resulted partly from a want of exact knowledge of their proceedings, partly from the secrecy by which they were veiled, but mainly because it was a recognized effort to paralyze the arm of the Federal Government while engaged in a war arising from outrages committed upon American seamen on the decks of American ships. The indignation felt was no doubt aggravated by the fact that those ships belonged in a great extent to the people who were now plotting against the war-measures of the Government, and indirectly, if not directly, giving aid and comfort to the public enemy. Time, which has mollified passion, and revealed many things not then known, has largely modified the first judgment passed on the proceedings and purposes of the Hartford Convention; and, but for the circumstances of existing war which surrounded it, they might have been viewed as political opinions merely, and have received justification instead of censure.

Again, in 1844–'45 the measures taken for the annexation of Texas evoked remonstrances, accompanied by threats of a dissolution of the Union from the Northeastern States. The Legislature of Massachusetts, in 1844, adopted a resolution, declaring, in behalf of that State, that "the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, faithful to the compact between the people of the United States, according to the plain meaning and intent in which it was understood by them, is sincerely anxious for its preservation; but that it is determined, as it doubts not the other States are, to submit to undelegated powers in no body of men on earth"; and that "the project of the annexation of Texas, unless arrested on the threshold, may tend to drive these States into a dissolution of the Union."

Early in the next year (February 11, 1845), the same Legislature adopted and communicated to Congress a series of resolutions on the same subject, in one of which it was declared that, "as the powers of legislation granted in the Constitution of the United States to Congress do not embrace a case of the admission of a foreign state or foreign territory, by legislation, into the Union, such an act of admission would have no binding force whatever on the people of Massachusetts"—language which must have meant that the admission of Texas would be a justifiable ground for secession, unless it was intended to announce the purpose of nullification.

It is evident, therefore, that the people of the South, in the crisis which confronted them in 1860, had no lack either of precept or of precedent for their instruction and guidance in the teaching and the example of our brethren of the North and East. The only practical difference was, that the North threatened and the South acted.

1. George Cabot, who had been United States Senator from Massachusetts for several years during the Administration of Washington.—(See "Life of Cabot," by Lodge, p. 334.)
2. See "Life of Cabot," p. 491; letter of Pickering to Higginson.
3. Pickering to Cabot, "Life of Cabot," pp. 338–340.
4. Letter to Theodore Lyman, "Life of Cabot," pp. 445, 446.
5. Maine was not then a State.