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Fourthly, the manner in which the delegates exercised their power, This appears from their report, which was immediately published, and wbich set forth and enforced, by elaborate reasoning, the paramount importance of the union; and there was no just ground for imputing to them covert and nefarious designs. The main and avowed object of the convention was the defense of this part of the country against the common enemy. New England was destitute of pational troops; her treasures were exhausted ; and her taxes drawn into the national coffers.

The appeal says farther : “ The burden of that report consisted in recommending an application to congress to permit the states to provide for their own defense, and to be indemnified with the expense, by reimbursement, of at least a portion of their own money. This convention adjourned early in January. On the 27th of the same month, an act of congress was passed, which gave to the state governments the very power wbich was sought by Massachusetts, viz: that of raising, organizing, and officering state troops, to be employed in the state raising the same, or in an adjoining state, and providing for their pay and subsistence. This, we repeat, was the most important object aimed at by the institution of the convention, and by the report of that body.

It is indeed grievous to perceive Mr. Adams condescending to intimate that the convention was adjourned to Boston, and, in a strain of rhetorical pathos, connecting his imaginary plot, then at least in the thirteenth year of its age, with the catastrophe which awaited the ultimate proceedings of the convention. That assembly adjourned without day, after making its report. It was ipso facto dissolved, like other committees. One of its resolutions did indeed purport, that “if the application of these states to the government of the United States should be unsuccessful, and peace should not be concluded, and the defense of these states should be neglected as it has been since the commencement of the war, it will be, in the opinion of this convention, expedient for the legislatures of the several states, to appoint delegates to another convention, to meet at Boston on the third Tuesday of June next, with such powers and instructions as the exigency of a crisis so momentous may require.'»

The “appeal” concludes as follows : “The causes of past controversies, passing, as they were, to oblivion, among existing generations, and arranging themselves, as they must do, for the impartial scrutiny of future historians, the revival of them can be no less distasteful to the public than painful to us. Yet it could not be expected, that while Mr. Adams, from his high station sends forth the unfounded suggestions of his imagination or his jealousy, as materials for present opinion and future history, we should, by silence, give countenance to his charges; nor that we should neglect to vindicate ourselves, our associates, and our fathers."

These extracts from the letter of Mr. Adams, and the appeal of his opponents, have been extended to great length: they are, however, not more copious than justice to the parties seemed to require. Scarcely ever has there been in this country a political excitement so incessant and so intense, and for an equal period of time, as from 1807 to 1814. No political assembly ever obtained a more odious notoriety than the Hartford convention. It was extensively believed at the time, and is by many even at this day, to have had treasonable designs. Facts and circumstances existed which afforded ground for the suspicions so generally entertained. It is, however, but just to say, that no evidence has ever been elicited upon which that convention can be convicted of intentions hostile to the union.

But the sequel to this controversy has not yet been given. William Plumer, a senator in congress from Hew Hampshire in 1803 and 1804, in a letter to Mr. Adams of the 20th of December, 1828, states, that, during that session of congress, several federalists, senators, and representatives, from the New England States, informed him, at different times and places, that they thought it necessary to establish a separate government in New England. He says: “ Just before that session of congress closed, one of the gentlemen to whom I have alluded, informed me that arrangements had been made to bave the next autumn, in Boston, a select meeting of the leading federalists in New England, to consider and recommend the measures necessary to form a system of govern. ment for the northern states, and that Alexander Hamilton, of New York, had consented to attend that meeting.” And he says farther, that the gentlemen who had informed him of the contemplated meeting, told him at the next session of congress, that the death of Mr. Hamilton had prevented the meeting, but the project was not and would not be abandoned. Mr. Plumer adds :

“I owe it to you as well as to myself, to state explicitly, that in the session of congress in the winter of 1803 and 1804, I was myself in favor of forming a separate government in New England, and wrote several confidential letters to a few of my friends and correspondents recommending the measure. But afterwards, upon maturely considering the subject, I was fully convinced that my opinion in favor of separation, was the most erroneous that I ever formed upon political subjects. When the same project was revived in 1808 and 1809, during the embargo and non-intercourse, and afterwards, during the war of 1812, I used every effort in my power, both privately and publicly, to defeat the attempt then made to establish a separate independent government in the northern states."

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Mr. Adams having said in his letter to the federalists, that “this plan had been so far matured that the proposal had been made to an individual to permit himself at the proper time to be placed at the head of the military movements which it was foreseen would be necessary for carrying it into execution;" and Mr. Plumer having named Mr. Hamilton as that individual, James A. Hamilton addressed Mr. Adams, inquiring whether he was in possession of any evidence of his father's having consented to attend the alleged meeting at Boston, or been concerned in a project to effect the dissolution of the union and the establishment of a northern confederacy.

In reply, Mr. Adams says he received his information, to the best of his recollection, from Uriah Tracy, then a senator from Connecticut, or from another member of congress who was present, both since deceased. And after the close of the session, being at New York, he was informed by Rufus King, that a person had that day conversed with him and also with Mr. Hamilton's father, in favor of the project, but that both had disapproved of it. Mr. Adams expressed his belief in the statement of Mr. Plumer; but from the information given him by Mr. King, he believed that, in consenting to attend the meeting, Mr. Hamilton's purpose was to dissuade the parties concerned from the undertaking. He also declared the belief, that the project had been continued or resumed until the time of the meeting of the Hartford convention, in 1814.

On the appearance of this letter of Mr. Adams, Judge Gould, of Connecticut, son-in-law of Mr. Tracy, addressed certain questions to James Hillhouse, co-senator with Mr. Tracy, and to the other surviving members of congress in 1803 and 1804, John Davenport, John Cotton Smith, S. Baldwin, B. Tallmadge, and Calvin Goddard, who were familiar and confidential friends of Mr. Tracy, and of the same political party; and who declared in their answers to Judge Gould, that Mr. Tracy had never spoken to them of the alleged project; nor had they any reason to believe that such a project had ever existed.

Judge Gould transmitted these letters to the New York Evening Post for publication, accompanied by a letter of his own to the editor, containing a caustic review of the disclosures of Mr. Adams. He says: " It is particularly worthy of observation, that Mr. Adams' disclosures against the federal party, in the form in which he has chosen to present them to the public, are, even if untrue, absolutely incapable of direct disproof or positive contradiction. This remark is equally applicable to all the statements which have been published on this subject, under his name or avowed sanction.

Thus, although he has implicated in his project an important, and as he represents it, a formidable portion of the federal party, yet as he has avoided, except in a single instance, (which

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did not require it,) the mention of any one individual by, name, he has secured to himself the very convenient resource of exculpating, in detail, every one whom it may be hazardous to accuse or prudent to conceal, while he repeats the accusation against them collectively.

“As regards Mr. Tracy, whom only of the whole federal party, Mr. Adams has vouchsafed to name, it may be proper to state, that he has now been in his grave for nearly twenty-two years. The other member of congress' who is alleged to have been present at one of the conversations between Mr. Tracy and Mr. Adams, happens also to be dead, and is hitherto nameless. Whether there is any deep philosophy in Mr. Adams' apparent preference of dead and anonymous to living and known authority, which might confront him, I can not presume to determine. But as dead men,' according to the proverb, tell no tales,' so on the other hand, they can contradict none.

“Mr. Tracy, it is well known, was a man of unusual tact and address, in all situations, and a most acute judge of the characters of men. He was also early and well acquainted with Mr. Adams, and was not ignorant of the strength and obduracy of his personal resentments and antipathies. He knew, moreover, what many perhaps at that time did not. the terms on which Mr. Adams stood with Mr. Hamilton. The brilliant and exalted character of that great man had long been, to the house of Braintree, an object of deep jealousy and resentment. Under him,' Mr. Adams bad felt his 'genius rebuked,' and of all mankind (not excepting even Mr. Ames or Col. Pickering himself,) Mr. Hamilton was to Mr. Adams probably the most odious. In the hereditary and cherished antipathies of Mr. Adatas, Mr. Hamilton, it is believed, had no rival. All this Mr. Tracy well knew; and that a man like him, in the exercise of his understanding, should have hoped to obtain the accession of such a man as Mr. Adams to the project of the federal leaders, by proposing a measure which he knew would be most revolting to Mr. Adams' whole soul; that he should have proposed Mr. Hamilton as the leader of a great public enterprise to Mr. John Q. Adams, is, modestly speaking, something strange. It is a little singular, also, that Mr. Tracy should have made Mr. Adams the depository of so important a state secret, while his lips were absolutely sealed upon the subject to his long tried, best known, and most intimate political friends and associ. ates, whose accession to the project, if any such existed, must certainly have been contemplated by him. The survivors of the Connecticut delegation were not only his political, but his personal friends. He and they were uniformly advocates of one and the same political system With most of them from his youth, and with all of them, long before the year 1804, he was in habits of the freest and most confidential com

munication on all subjects connected with public affairs. And that he should so guardedly have concealed this same project from all those gentlemen, as not to give the slightest intimation of it to any one of them, while he divulged it so unreservedly to Mr. John Q. Adams, of Massachusetts, must be a little puzzling to ordinary understandings."

Mr. Plumer having been requested by James A. Hamilton, to give the name of the person who informed him of his father's connection with the project referred to in the letter of Mr. Plumer, replied on the 11th of April, 1829, saying that he had “made no charge or accusation against Gen. Hamilton;" he had simply stated that a member of congress, at the session of 1803–4, informed him that the general had consented to attend the meeting. He however declined giving the name of his informant: in relation to which Mr. Hamilton observes :

“ As this affair now stands, Mr. Adams may still consider himself entitled to the benefit of this witness, which he would undoubtedly lose, if a free examination were submitted to; and aware how important it was to sustain Mr. Plumer's credibility, Mr. Adams has endorsed his

statement, and tendered him a certificate of respectability. • The credibility of the associate witness must be sustained, regardless of

the reputation and honor of the accused; the charge of treason must be fixed somewhere, and the stamp of infamy, if possible, made indelible. This mighty project to dismember the union, seems only to be known to John Q. Adams and William Plumer; the late president resorting to the dead to bear him testimony, while the former governor of New Hampshire dare not trust the living or the dead. In 1804, Mr. Adams, by his own admission, knew that Gen. Hamilton advocated the union; in 1828, in his reply to the Boston federalists, he asserts that he was fixed on as the military leader to carry the plan of disunion into execution; and on the 6th of March, 1829, he most graciously affects to believe that Gen. Hamilton entertained no treasonable or disloyal views.”

Mr. Hamilton accompanies his letter to the Evening Post with the declarations of nine members of the congress of 1803–4, intimate friends and associates of Mr. Plumer, disclaiming all knowledge of any suggestion made at that time, and avowing their disbelief that Gen. Hamilton gave any countenance to a separation of the states, or consented to attend a meeting for that purpose.

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