7750. SECESSION, Suppression of.—
What does this English faction with you [in
New England] mean? Their newspapers say
rebellion, and that they will not remain united
with us unless we will permit them to govern
the majority. If this be their purpose, their
anti-republican spirit, it ought to be met at
once. But a government like ours should be
slow in believing this, should put forth its
whole might, when necessary, to suppress it,
and promptly return to the paths of reconciliation.
The extent of our country secures it,
I hope, from the vindictive passions of the
petty incorporations of Greece. I rather suspect
that the principal office of the other
seventeen States will be to moderate and restrain
the excitement of our friends with you,
when they (with the aid of their brothers of
the other States, if they need it), shall have
brought the rebellious to their feet. They
count on British aid. But what can that avail
them by land? They would separate from
their friends, who alone furnish employment
for their navigation, to unite with their only
rival for that employment. When interdicted
the harbors of their quondam brethren, they
will go, I suppose, to ask and share in the
carrying trade of their rivals, and a dispensation
with their navigation act. They think
they will be happier in an association under
the rulers of Ireland, the East and West Indies,
than in an independent government,
where they are obliged to put up with their
proportional share only in the direction of
affairs. But, I trust, that such perverseness
will not be that of the honest and well-meaning
mass of the federalists of Massachusetts;
and that when the questions of separation and
rebellion shall be nakedly proposed to them,
the Gores and the Pickerings will find their
levees crowded with silk stocking gentry, but
no yeomanry; an army of officers without
soldiers.—
To Elbridge Gerry. Washington ed. vi, 63.
Ford ed., ix, 359.
(M.
1812)
