Disunion, early threats of.
In angry debates in Congress on the subject of the fisheries, in 1779, threats of disunion were made by deputies of the
North and the
South.
It was shown that the prosperity of
New England depended on the fisheries; but in this the
Southern States had no common interest.
Indeed, in all the States the doctrine of State supremacy was so universally prevalent that the deputies in Congress, instead of willingly legislating for the whole, legislated for their respective States.
When appeals had been made in Congress for a favorable consideration of
New England in relation to the fisheries without effect,
Samuel Adams said that “it would
[
124]
become more and more necessary for the two empires [meaning the
Northern and Southern States divided by
Mason and
Dixon's line] to separate.”
When the
North offered a preliminary resolution that the country, even if deserted by
France and
Spain, would continue the war for the sake of the fisheries, four States drew up a protest, declaring peremptorily that if the resolution should be adopted they would withdraw from the confederation.
These sectional interests continually stood in the way of a perfect union of the struggling colonists.
The inflexible tenacity with which each State asserted its title to complete sovereignty often menaced the
Union with destruction, and independence became, in the minds of some, an idle dream.
When, in August, 1781, envoys from
Vermont were in
Philadelphia, entreating for the admission of their State into the
Union, the measure was opposed by the
Southern delegates, because it would “destroy the balance of power” between the two sections of the confederacy, and give the preponderance to the
North.
The purchase of
Louisiana was deprecated and violently opposed by the Federalist leaders, because it would strengthen the
Southern political influence then controlling the national government.
They professed to regard the measure as inimical to the
Northern and Eastern sections of the
Union.
The Southern politicians had made them familiar with the prescription of disunion as a remedy for incurable political evils, and they resolved to try its efficacy in the case in question.
All through the years 1803 and 1804 desires for and fears of a dissolution of the
Union were freely expressed in what were free-labor States in 1861.
East of
the Alleghanies, early in 1804, a select convention of Federalists, to be held in
Boston, was contemplated, in the ensuing autumn, to consider the question of disunion.
Alexander Hamilton was invited to attend it, but his emphatic condemnation of the whole plan, only a short time before his death, seems to have disconcerted the leaders and dissipated the scheme.
The Rev. Jedidiah Morse, then very influential in the
Church and in politics in
New England, advocated the severance of the
Eastern States from the
Union, so as to get rid of the evils of the slave system; and, later,
Josiah Quincy, in a debate in the House of Representatives, expressed his opinion that it might become necessary to divide the
Union as a cure of evils that seemed to be already chronic.
divorce laws
