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ity, are secondary considerations. All the engines of intrigue, all the means of corruption are likely to be employed for this object. A President whose political career is limited to a single election may find no other interest than will be promoted by making it glorious to himself, and beneficial to his country. But the hope of reëlection is prolific of temptations, under which these magnanimous motives are deprived of their principal force. The repeated election of the President of the United States from any one State affords inducements and means for intrigues which tend to create an undue local influence and to establish the domination of particular States. The justice, therefore, of securing to every State a fair and equal chance for the election of this officer from its own citizens is apparent, and this object will be essentially promoted by preventing an election from the same State twice in succession.

The convention dissolved with the statement that, if its proposals in regard to the embargo and related matters should not be agreed to, and if the defence of the New England States should still be neglected, a further convention would be created "with such powers and instructions as the exigency of a crisis so momentous may require." This was accepted at the time and thereafter as a threat of secession.

The ending of the war by the Treaty of Ghent rendered such a further convocation untimely, and thereafter the New England States never, by the slightest intimation, indicated that they contemplated secession, but, on the contrary, became more and more pronounced in favor of nationalism. Nevertheless the Southerners continually cast the Hartford convention up to the North as interdicting any complaint from that quarter against secession by the South.

Thus, in 1830, during the agitation over nullification, Robert Y. Hayne, Senator from South Carolina, alluded to the Hartford convention. After depicting in glowing colors the calamities of the country at the time the convention assembled, he represented the conduct of the Eastern States, in relation to the war, in as reprehensible a light as the force of language would enable him. For the facts to support his statements, he relied principally upon a partisan book entitled "The Olive

Branch," published shortly after the convention by Theodore Dwight, its secretary. Senator Hayne said:

THE TREASON OF NEW ENGLAND

SENATOR HAYNE

As soon as the public mind was sufficiently prepared for the measure [secession], the celebrated Hartford Convention was got up; not as the act of a few unauthorized individuals, but by authority of the legislature of Massachusetts; and, as has been shown by the able historian of that convention, in accordance with the views and wishes of the party of which it was the organ. Now, sir, I do not desire to call in question the motives of the gentlemen who composed that assembly; I knew many of them to be in private life accomplished and honorable men, and I doubt not there were some among them who did not perceive the dangerous tendency of their proceedings. I will even go further, and say that, if the authors of the Hartford Convention believed that "gross, deliberate, and palpable violations of the Constitution" had taken place, utterly destructive of their rights and interests, I should be the last man to deny their right to resort to any constitutional measures for redress. But, sir, in any view of the case, the time when and the circumstances under which that convention assembled, as well as the measures recommended, render their conduct, in my opinion, wholly indefensible.

Let us contemplate for a moment the spectacle then exhibited to the view of the world. I will not go over the disasters of the war nor describe the difficulties in which the Government was involved. It will be recollected that its credit was nearly gone, Washington had fallen, the whole coast was blockaded, and an immense force, collected in the West Indies, was about to make a descent which it was supposed we had no means of resisting. In this awful state of our public affairs, when the Government seemed to be almost tottering on its base, when Great Britain, relieved from all her other enemies, had proclaimed her purpose of "reducing us to unconditional submission"-we beheld the peace party in New England (in the language of the work ["The Olive Branch"] before us) pursuing a course calculated to do more injury to their country and to render England more effective service than all her armies. Those who could not find it in their hearts to rejoice at our victories sang "Te Deum" at the King's Chapel in Bos

ton at the restoration of the Bourbons. Those who would not consent to illuminate their dwellings for the capture of the Guerriere could give visible tokens of their joy at the fall of Detroit. The "beacon fires" of their hills were lighted up, not for the encouragement of their friends, but as signals to the enemy; and in the gloomy hours of midnight the very lights burned blue. Such were the dark and portentous signs of the times which ushered into being the renowned Hartford Convention. That convention met, and from their proceedings it appears that their chief object was to keep back the men and money of New England from the service of the Union and to effect radical changes in the Government-changes that can never be effected without a dissolution of the Union.

NULLIFICATION

The Tariff Act of 1828 (see Vol. XII, chapter iv) caused great indignation in the South, especially in South Carolina and Georgia. Mass meetings were held in these States, at which speeches were made and resolutions passed threatening secession from the Union unless the bill were repealed, and calling on the other Southern States to adopt the same attitude. However, this call was not heeded, since there was a general expectation that a Southern man, Andrew Jackson [Tenn.] Iwould be chosen President in the fall election and that he would uphold the cause of his section. Indeed, South Carolina and Georgia, after recording their formal protests against the tariff in the Senate, also decided to cease their agitation and await events.

The North in general, with reprehensible blindness in view of the resolution passed by the Hartford Convention under no great provocation, failed to realize the seriousness of the Southern attitude. President John Quincy Adams, however, felt the gravity of the situation and, in his message of December 2, 1828, strove to pacify the disaffected section of the country by extending hopes of a revision of the obnoxious act and by appealing to the good sense of the Southerners not to enter into a conflict in which, by an anomaly of the Constitution, there was no competent judge, and the Federal

Government would be compelled to support its claim by force.

APPEAL TO THE SOUTH

MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT ADAMS, DECEMBER 2, 1828

The tariff of the last session was, in its details, not acceptable to the great interests of any portion of the Union, not even to the interest which it was specially intended to subserve. Its object was to balance the burdens upon native industry imposed by the operation of foreign laws; but not to aggravate the burdens of one section of the Union by the relief afforded to another. To the great principle sanctioned by that act, one of those upon which the Constitution itself was formed, I hope and trust the authorities of the Union will adhere. But if any of the duties imposed by the act only relieve the manufacturer by aggravating the burden of the planter, let a careful revisal of its provisions, enlightened by the practical experience of its effects, be directed to retain those which impart protection to native industry, and remove or supply the place of those which only alleviate one great national interest by the depression of another.

The United States of America, and the people of every State of which they are composed, are each of them sovereign powers. The legislative authority of the whole is exercised by Congress, under authority granted them in the common Constitution. The legislative power of each State is exercised by assemblies deriving their authority from the constitution of the State. Each is sovereign within its own province. The distribution of power between them presupposes that these authorities will move in harmony with each other. The members of the State and general Governments are all under oath to support both, and allegiance is due to the one and to the other. The case of a conflict between these two powers has not been supposed; nor has any provision been made for it in our institutions as a virtuous nation of ancient times existed more than five centuries without a law for the punishment of parricide.

More than once, however, in the progress of our history, have the people and legislatures of one or more States, in moments of excitement, been instigated to this conflict; and the means of effecting this impulse have been allegations that the acts of Congress to be resisted were unconstitutional. The

people of no one State have ever delegated to their legislature the power of pronouncing an act of Congress unconstitutional; but they have delegated to them powers, by the exercise of which the execution of the laws of Congress within the State may be resisted. If we suppose the case of such conflicting legislation sustained by the corresponding executive and judicial authorities, patriotism and philanthropy turn their eyes from the condition in which the parties would be placed, and from that of the people of both, which must be its victims.

On January 12, 1829, the legislature of Georgia, through one of the Senators of the State, J. McPherson Berrien, entered its solemn protest against the tariff for record in the Senate archives.

PROTEST OF GEORGIA

In her sovereign character the State of Georgia protests against the act of the last session of Congress, entitled "An act in alteration of the several acts imposing duties on imports," as deceptive in its title, fraudulent in its pretexts, oppressive in its exactions, partial and unjust in its operations, unconstitutional in its well-known objects, ruinous to commerce and agriculture-to secure a hateful monopoly to a combination of importunate manufacturers.

Demanding the repeal of an act which has already disturbed the Union and endangered the public tranquillity, weakened the confidence of whole States in the Federal Government, and diminished the affection of large masses of the people to the Union itself, and the abandonment of the degrading system which considers the people as incapable of wisely directing their own enterprise; which sets up the servants of the people in Congress as the exclusive judges of what pursuits are most advantageous and suitable for those by whom they were elected, the State of Georgia expects that, in perpetual testimony thereof, the deliberate and solemn expression of her opinion will be carefully preserved among the archives of the Senate; and in justification of her character to the present generation, and to posterity, if, unfortunately, Congress, disregarding the protest, and continuing to pervert powers granted for clearly defined and well-understood purposes, to effectuate objects never intended by the great parties by whom the Constitution was framed, to be entrusted to the controlling guardianship of

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