Secession preached and threatened in all sections—the Northern record for it and against extension of the Union.
Recall the history of the doctrine; forget not that the first mutterings of secession had come from the
North as early as 1793, in opposition to the threatened war with
England, when the sentiments uttered by
Theodore Dwight in his letter to
Wolcott were widespread.
‘Sooner would ninety-nine out of a hundred of our inhabitants separate from the
Union than plunge themselves into an abyss of misery.’
Nullification broke out in the
South in 1798, led by Jefferson, and again in 1830, led by
Calhoun; but in turn secession or nullification was preached in and out of Congress, in State Legislatures, in mass-meetings and conventions in 1803, 1812 and in 1844 to 1850, and in each case in opposition made by the
North to wars or measures conducted to win the empire and solidify the structure of the
Union.
While Jefferson was annexing
Louisiana,
Massachusetts legislators were declaring against it as ‘forming a new confederacy, to which the States united by the former compact were not bound to adhere.’
While new States were being admitted into the
Union out of its territory, and the war of 1812 was being conducted,
Josiah Quincy was maintaining the right of secession in Congress; the
Eastern States were threatening to exercise that right, and the Hartford Convention was promulgating the doctrine.
When
Texas was annexed, and
Jefferson Davis was in Congress advocating it,
Massachusetts was declaring it unconstitutional, and
[
147]
that any such ‘act or admission would have no binding obligation on its people.’
While the
Mexican war was being fought and the soldier statesman of
Mississippi was carrying the Stars and Stripes in glory over the heights of
Monterey, and bleeding under them in the battle shock of
Buena Vista,
Abraham Lincoln was denouncing the war as unconstitutional, and Northern multitudes were yet applauding the eloquence of the
Ohio orator who had said in Congress that the Mexicans should welcome our soldiers ‘with bloody hands to hospitable graves.’
