Her representatives, on the following day,
retired from their seats in Congress. The people of the other planting
States had been only waiting in the lingering hope that some action
might be taken by Congress to avert the necessity for action similar to
that of South Carolina. In view of the failure of all overtures for
conciliation during the first month of the session, they were now making
their final preparations for secession. This was generally admitted to
be an unquestionable right appertaining to their sovereignty as States,
and the only _peaceable_ remedy that remained for the evils already felt
and the dangers apprehended.
In the prior history of the country, repeated instances are found of the
assertion of this right, and of a purpose entertained at various times
to put it in execution. Notably is this true of Massachusetts and other
New England States. The acquisition of Louisiana, in 1803, had created
much dissatisfaction in those States, for the reason, expressed by an
eminent citizen of Massachusetts,[22] that "the influence of our [the
Northeastern] part of the Union must be diminished by the acquisition of
more weight at the other extremity." The project of a separation was
freely discussed, with no intimation, in the records of the period, of
any idea among its advocates that it could be regarded as treasonable or
revolutionary.
Colonel Timothy Pickering, who had been an officer of the war of the
Revolution, afterward successively Postmaster-General, Secretary of War,
and Secretary of State, in the Cabinet of General Washington, and, still
later, long a representative of the State of Massachusetts in the Senate
of the United States, was one of the leading secessionists of his day.
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