[349] Gore to Pickering, Dec. 20, 1808; New England Federalism, p. 375.
[350] Pickering to Hillhouse, Dec. 16, 1814; New England Federalism, p. 414.
[351] Pickering to C. Gore, Jan. 8, 1809; New England Federalism, p. 376.
[352] Adams’s Gallatin, p. 384.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Among the Federalists were still a few moderate men who hoped that Jefferson might not be wholly sold to France, and who were inclined to ask for some new policy of peace or war before throwing aside the old one. Pickering’s contempt for such allies echoed the old feuds of New England, and revived the root-and-branch politics of the Puritans:
“Some cautious men here of the Federal party discovered an inclination to wait patiently till the first of June the promised repeal of the embargo. God forbid that such timid counsels should reach the Massachusetts legislature, or a single member of it! A million of such men would not save the nation. Defeat the accursed measure now, and you not only restore commerce, agriculture, and all sorts of business to activity, but you save the country from a British war. The power of the present miserable rulers—I mean their power to do material mischief—will then be annihilated.”[353]
Pickering’s instructions were exactly followed; his temper infused itself through every New England town. Once more, a popular delusion approaching frenzy,—a temporary insanity like the witchcraft and Quaker mania,—took possession of the mind of Massachusetts, and broke into acute expression. Not for a full century had the old Puritan prejudice shown itself in a form so unreasoning and unreasonable; but although nearly one half the people held aloof and wondered at the madness of their own society, the whole history of Massachusetts, a succession of half-forgotten disputes and rebellions, seemed to concentrate itself for the last time in a burst of expiring passions, mingled with hatred of Virginia and loathing for Jefferson, until the rest of America, perplexed at paroxysms so eccentric, wondered whether the spirit of Massachusetts liberty could ever have been sane. For the moment Timothy Pickering was its genius.
The decision reached by the Federalists at Washington, on or about December 21, when the Enforcement Bill passed the Senate, was quickly known in Massachusetts, and without further delay the crisis was begun. Hitherto the tone of remonstrance had been respectful; under cover of the Enforcement Act it rapidly became revolutionary. Dec. 27, 1808, a town-meeting at Bath, in the district of Maine, set the movement on foot by adopting Resolutions[354] which called on the general court, at its meeting January 25, to take “immediate steps for relieving the people, either by themselves alone, or in concert with other commercial States;” while at the same time the town voted “that a committee of safety and correspondence be appointed, to correspond with committees of other towns, ... and to watch over the safety of the people of this town, and to give immediate alarm so that a regular meeting may be called whenever any infringement of their rights shall be committed by any person or persons under color and pretence of authority derived from any officer of the United States.” This extravagant measure, evidently intended to recall the memory of 1776, was quickly imitated by the town of Gloucester, which, January 12,[355] formally approved the Resolutions passed at Bath, voted an address to the general court, and appointed a committee of public safety. These first steps went so far that other towns could not easily keep pace with them, and were obliged to fall behind. The scheme of appointing everywhere town-committees of public safety to organize combined resistance to the national government, was laid aside, or fell to the ground; but the town-meetings went on. In the county of Hampshire, a public meeting of citizens, January 12,[356] announced “that causes are continually occurring which tend to produce a most calamitous event,—a dissolution of the Union;” and January 20, a meeting at Newburyport, in Senator Pickering’s County of Essex, voted—
“That we will not aid or assist in the execution of the several embargo laws, especially the last, and that we consider all those who do as violators of the Constitution of the United States and of this Commonwealth; and that they be considered as unworthy of the confidence and esteem of their fellow-citizens.”