CHAPTER X.

SIR CHARLES DILKE has a striking book on the Greater Britain, and Professor Seeley has a suggestive volume on The Expansion of Eng land. The territorial area of the United States, since they were organized into the Union of the Constitution, has been more than quadrupled. In 1789, the area was 829,600 square miles. By the acquisition of Louisiana the area obtained was 1,182,752 square miles; by the Florida cession of February 22, 1819, 59,258 square miles; by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848, 522,568 square miles; by the annexation of Texas, in 1845, 371,063 square miles, 96,707 of which were ceded to the United States and became a portion of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas; by the Gadsden purchase, December 30, 1853, 45,535 square miles; by Mexican cessions, 1848-1853, 591,318 square miles; and by the Alaska purchase of March 30, 1867, 577,390 square miles. The manner of acquisition has been by treaty and by annexation.

The history, in adequate recital, of the negotiations and other steps by which Louisiana— with its immense sweep of territory, comprising everything (except Texas) between the

Mississippi and the crest of the Rocky Mountains, and embracing the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, and parts of Colorado, Minnesota, and Idaho, and the Indian Territory, and Florida, Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico have been added to the Union, would fill a volume.

The purchase of Louisiana, necessitated by national safety and unity, was fortunately and wisely made by Jefferson for $15,000,000. Of the indispensableness of our control of the mouth and of the navigation of the Mississippi, and of the incalculable value of the vast acquisition, there are now not two opinions, and yet the Federalists in 1803 objected because the acquirement would give the South a preponderance which would "continue for all time," the States created west of the Mississippi would injure the commerce of New England, and the "admission of the Western world into the Union would compel the Eastern States to establish an Eastern empire." The purchase came near bringing to a head the threats and wishes of separation, and provoked certain leaders to devising formal and earnest plans for a dissolution of the Union. The fear of wrong and oppression inflamed New England to a pitch of violence and treason. New England is habitually represented by her historians and orators as always loyal and abhorrent of 1 Cooper's American Politics, 16.

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every scheme of nullification and disunion, and no terms of vilification and obloquy are too severe for the South, and yet secession had its genesis in New England, and in not a few instances, when her material interests were apparently endangered, has she insisted on her right of resistance, carried even to nullification or separation.

One of the most singular illustrations ever presented of the power of literature to conceal and pervert truth, to modify and falsify history, to transfer odium from the guilty to the innocent, is found in the fact that the reproach of disunion has been slipped from the shoulders of the North to those of the South. As early as 1786 the situation became "dangerous in the extreme." The agitation in Massachusetts was great, and it was declared that if Jay's negotiation for closing the Mississippi for twenty-five years could not be adopted, it was high time for the New England States to secede from the Union and form a confederation by themselves.' Plumer traces secession movements in 1792 and 1794, and says that all dissatisfied with the measures of Government looked to a separation of the States as a remedy for oppressive grievance. In 1794 Fisher Ames said: "The spirit of insurrection had tainted a vast extent of country besides Pennsylvania." In 1796 LieutenantGovernor Wolcott, of Connecticut, said: “I sincerely declare that I wish the Northern 1 Fiske's Crit. Period, 211.

States would separate from the Southern the moment that event (the election of Jefferson) shall take place." Although he was not elected until four years afterwards, the bare election. without waiting for inauguration, or an overt act, was considered a sufficient cause for separation. In 1796 a voluntary and concerted withdrawal of the States north of the Potomac was advocated by per se Disunionists from conviction of the desirableness of separation. From that year to 1800, and later, Federalist leaders in Connecticut set on foot and continued "an open propaganda for the dissolution of the Union." This was not from temporary exacerbation, but was based on the ground of permanent incompatibility in the same civil polity. Governor Plumer distinctly affirms that in 1805 the purpose of New England leaders, whose names he gives, was to dissolve the Union.1

These latent convictions were formed into a design immediately after, and as a consequence of, the acquisition of Louisiana. This purchase revived what Henry Adams calls "the old disunion project," because of the alleged disturbance of the sectional equilibrium. John Quincy Adams published over his own signature that the plot was formed in the winter of 1803-4. "The plan was so far matured that the proposal had been made to an individual to

1 Life of Plumer, 276, 278, 289–296, 309. 2 Welling on the Conn. Federation, 9–17.

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permit himself, at the proper time, to be placed at the head of the military movements, which it was foreseen would be necessary to carry it into execution." "A separation of the Union was openly stimulated in the public prints and a convention of delegates of the New England States, to meet at New Haven, was intended and proposed." In March, 1808, these facts were communicated by Adams to Jefferson. In that same year the Embargo brought to the surface the same remedy for ills, and in 1809 Massachusetts declared that the Embargo was not legally binding on her citizens. Quincy urged the people to anticipate the evil and prepare against the event. The Essex Junto was formed in March, 1810, and " their prime object was the dissolution of the General Government and a separation of the States." Griswold was a "zealous advocate of the dismemberment of the Union." In 1811, on a bill for the admission of Louisiana, Josiah Quincy-of whom Lowell said, "His fears were aroused for the balance of power between the old States, rather than by any moral sensitiveness, which would, indeed, have been an anachronism at that time"-used this language: "I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion that, if this bill passes, the bonds of the Union are virtually dissolved; that the States which compose it are free from their moral obligations; and 1 Hamilton's Reminiscences, 95, 109, 110. 2 Plumer, 293-6; ibid., 290.