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‘ [190] that a State will ever suffer itself to be used as an instrument of coercion? The thing is a dream. It is impossible.’ Massachusetts, not South Carolina, first stood sponsor for the right of secession. Nearly half a century before the convention at Charleston, another convention at Hartford had proclaimed secession as a rightful and desirable remedy against Federal grievances. The impartial observer in 1861, however deep his opposition to the views of Madison and Jefferson, must declare, as did John Quincy Adams, a New England President, when combatting them: ‘Holding the converse with a conviction as firm as an article of religious faith, I see too clearly to admit denial, that minds of the highest order of intellect and hearts of the purest integrity of purpose have been brought to different conclusions.’
Richmond, VA. 1898.
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