The sense which this invitation was intended to bear could be best understood by appreciating the temper of the body thus addressed and the time when the appeal was made. The national government had for practical purposes ceased. The Boston “Centinel,” a newspaper of large circulation, said to reach six thousand copies, announced September 10, 1814, that the Union was already practically dissolved, and that the people must rise in their majesty, protect themselves, and compel their unworthy servants to obey their will. Governor Strong knew that the legislature was controlled by extreme partisans of the Pickering type, who wished, to use his phrase, to “let the ship run aground.” Even Josiah Quincy, one of the most vehement Federalists, was aware that the members of the General Court stood in danger of doing too much rather than too little.[333]
Strong’s message of October 5 was echoed by Pickering from Washington, October 12, in a letter which closed with the exhortation to seize the national revenues:—
“As, abandoned by the general government except for taxing us, we must defend ourselves, so we ought to secure and hold fast the revenues indispensable to maintain the force necessary for our protection against the foreign enemy and the still greater evil in prospect,—domestic tyranny.”[334]
The Massachusetts legislature could not fail to understand Governor Strong’s message as an invitation to resume the powers with which the State had parted in adopting the Constitution.
The legislature referred the message to a committee, which reported only three days afterward through its chairman, Harrison Gray Otis:[335]—
“The state of the national Treasury as exhibited by the proper officer requires an augmentation of existing taxes; and if in addition to these the people of Massachusetts, deprived of their commerce and harassed by a formidable enemy, are compelled to provide for the indispensable duty of self-defence, it must soon become impossible for them to sustain this burden. There remains to them therefore no alternative but submission to the enemy, or the control of their own resources to repel his aggressions. It is impossible to hesitate in making the election. This people are not ready for conquest or submission; but being ready and determined to defend themselves, they have the greatest need of those resources derivable from themselves which the national government has hitherto thought proper to employ elsewhere.”
The report further showed that the United States Constitution had failed to secure to New England the rights and benefits expected from it, and required immediate change. The prescribed mode of amendment was insufficient:—
“When this deficiency becomes apparent, no reason can preclude the right of the whole people who were parties to it to adopt another.... But as a proposition for such a convention from a single State would probably be unsuccessful, and our danger admits not of delay, it is recommended by the committee that in the first instance a conference should be invited between those States the affinity of whose interests is closest.”
Thus, after ten years’ delay, the project of a New England Convention was brought forward by State authority, through the process of war with England, which George Cabot from the first declared to be the only means of producing it.[336] As Otis’s committee presented the subject, the conference was in the first place to devise some mode of common defence; and, in the second, “to lay the foundation for a radical reform in the national compact by inviting to a future convention a deputation from all the States in the Union.” The report closed by offering seven Resolutions, recommending the enlistment of a State army of ten thousand men, a loan of a million dollars at six per cent, and the appointment of delegates “to meet and confer with delegates from the States of New England or any of them” on the defence of those States and the redress of their grievances.
The Senate committee also made a strenuous argument against the President’s decision that State militia were in State service unless called for by a United States officer and placed under his direction,[337] and recommended that the subject should be referred to the next session. To the proposition for a conference of the New England States, and to Otis’s other Resolutions, the Senate and House assented, October 13, by large majorities, varying in numbers, but amounting to two hundred and sixty against ninety in the case of the proposed convention. The minority in both Houses presented protests, charging the majority with intending more than was avowed. “The reasoning of the report,” said the Protest signed by seventy-six members of the House,[338] “is supported by the alarming assumption that the Constitution has failed in its objects, and the people of Massachusetts are absolved from their allegiance, and at liberty to adopt another. In debate it has been reiterated that the Constitution is no longer to be respected, and that revolution is not to be deprecated.” The House refused to receive the Protest, as disrespectful. The minority withdrew from further share in these proceedings; and the majority then, October 19, chose twelve delegates “to meet and confer on the 15th December next with such as may be chosen by any or all of the other New England States upon our public grievances and concerns.” The choice was marked by a conservative spirit not altogether pleasing to Timothy Pickering. George Cabot and Harrison Gray Otis stood at the head of the delegation.