Hartford Convention

The Secret Journal of the Hartford Convention, published 1823.

The Hartford Convention was an event in 1814 in the United States during the War of 1812 in which New England's opposition to the war reached the point where secession from the United States was discussed. The end of the war with a return to the status quo ante bellum disgraced the Federalist Party, which disbanded in most places.

Policies of Jefferson and Madison: cut off trade

Thomas Jefferson's anti-foreign trade policies, particularly the Embargo Act of 1807 and Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, were very unpopular in the northeastern United States, especially among merchants and shippers. Jefferson's successor, President James Madison, was even less popular in New England, particularly after his prosecution of the War of 1812, which ended legal trade with England. The opposition Federalist Party, formerly quite weak, regained strength especially in New England, and in New York where it collaborated with Mayor DeWitt Clinton of New York City and supported him for president in 1812.

New England anger

The Federalists in New England had secretly discussed secession since 1804. The first effort to assemble a New England convention took place in 1808-9. The second was in 1812, immediately after the declaration of war against Great Britain, and that project Dexter defeated by a speech in Faneuil Hall.

When Madison was reelected in 1812 the furor in New England intensified. The war turned against the Americans, and the British effectively blockaded the entire coastline. Almost all maritime activity (apart from smuggling) was stopped and New England interests suffered. Forced at length to defend their own homes and firesides, Massachusetts and Connecticut now felt the reppercussions of their opposition to Madisons belligerant behavior. Instead of trusting their governors with the local defense as the administration had done with States which upheld the war, the President now insisted upon retaining the exclusive control of military movements. Because Massachusetts and Connecticut had refused to subject their militia to the orders of the War Department, Monroe declined to pay their expenses. The cry was raised by peace men in consequence that Washington had abandoned New England to the common enemy. Upon this assumption, the Massachusetts leaders made hasty proclamation that no choice was left between submitting to the enemy, which could not be thought of, and appropriating to the defense of the states more tax revenues. The Massachusetts Legislature appropriated $1,000,000 to support a state army of 10,000 men. Harrison Gray Otis, who inspired these measures, brought Massachusetts to the point of instituting a delegate convention of Eastern States—this convention to meet at Hartford. As early as 1804 New England Federalists had discussed secession from the Union if the national government became too oppressive.

Secession was again in the air in 1814-1815; all but one leading Federalist newspaper in New England supported a radical plan to expel the western states from the Union. Otis, the key leader of the Convention, blocked radical proposals like seizing the Federal customs house, impounding federal funds, or declaring neutrality. Otis however did think the Madison administration was near collapse and that unless conservatives like himself and the other delegates took charge, the radical secessionists might take power. Indeed, Otis was unaware that Massachusetts Governor Caleb Strong had already sent a secret mission to discuss terms with the British for a separate peace.

Delegations

On October 10, 1814, the Massachusetts state legislature called for the Hartford Convention, ostensibly to discuss several constitutional amendments necessary to protect New England's interests. On December 15, 1814, delegations from all five New England states were to meet in Hartford, Connecticut. Official delegations were sent by Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

Twelve delegates were appointed by the Massachusetts Legislature, men of worth and respectability, chief of whom were Cabot and Otis. In Connecticut, whose legislature denounced Monroe's conscription plan as barbarous and unconstitutional, a congenial delegation of seven was made up—Goodrich and Hillhouse, men of national renown, at the head. Rhode Island's Legislature added four more to the list. So deep-rooted, however, was the national distrust of this movement that Vermont and New Hampshire shrank from giving the convention a public sanction. New Hampshire had a Republican council; while in Vermont the Plattsburg victory stirred the Union spirit; Chittenden himself having changed in official tone after the war became a defensive one. Violent county conventions representing fractions of towns chose, however, three delegates, two in New Hampshire and one in Vermont, whose credentials being accepted by the convention, the whole number of delegates assembled at Hartford was twenty-six.

This Hartford Convention remains famous in American history Lawyers, they were, of State eminence, for the most part, and all of high social character, but inclined, like men of ability most used to courts than conventions, to treat constituencies like clients, and spend great pains over phraseology. Perhaps, indeed, these had been selected purposely to play the lion's part, that moderate fellow-citizens, Unionists at heart, whose conversion was essential, might not quake at the roar of the convention. Fire eaters like Josiah Quincy and Timothy Pickering did not attend. The delegates were prudent rather than earnest, better talkers than actors; men by no means calculated for bold measures.What bold measures were possible? Pickering's Confederacy of 1804 would have embraced New York, perhaps Pennsylvania. But these clannish Eastern Federalists were now circumscribed within the limits of New England, and of that section, moreover, but three States out of five had genuine delegations at Hartford.

Secret meetings

In all, 26 delegates attended. The meetings were secret and no records of the proceedings were kept. Meetings continued through January 5, 1815. After choosing George Cabot as president, and Theodore Dwight as secretary, the present convention remained in close session for three continuous weeks. Surviving letters of contemporaries show that representative Federalists labored with these delegates to procure the secession of New England. Assembling amid rumors of treason and the execration of all the country west of the Hudson, its members watched by an army officer who had been conveniently stationed in the vicinity, the Hartford Convention, remains a mystery. Cabot's journal of its proceedings, when it was eventually opened, was a meager sketch of formal proceedings; he made no record of yeas and nays, stated none of the amendments offered to the various reports, attached the name of no author to a single proposition. It is impossible to ascertain the speeches or votes of individual delegates.

Convention report

The convention ended with a report and resolutions, signed by the delegates present, and adopted on the day before final adjournment. The report said that New England had a "duty" to assert its authority over unconstitutional infringements on its sovereignty — a doctrine that echoed the policy of Jefferson and Madison in 1798 (in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions), and which would later reappear in a different context as "nullification."

The Hartford Convention's final report proposed several amendments to the United States Constitution. These attempted to combat the policies of the ruling Republicans by: 1) Prohibiting any trade embargo lasting over 60 days; 2) Requiring a two-thirds Congressional majority for any declaration of war, admission of a new state, or interdiction of foreign commerce; 3) Removing the three-fifths representation advantage of the slaveholding South; 4) Limiting future Presidents to one term; 5) Requiring each future President to be from a different state than his predecessor. (These last provisions were aimed directly at the ruling Virginia Dynasty.)

Negative reception

Report and resolutions doubtlessly disappointed both citizens who had wished for a new declaration of independence and citizens who had feared it. Constitutional amendments were here proposed which, not utterly objectionable under other circumstances, must have been deemed at this time an insult to those officially responsible for the national safety, and only admissible as a humiliation of the majority. Many citizens discovered, in the report and resolutions, a menace to the Union in its hour of tribulation, a demand for the purse and sword, to which only a craven Congress could have yielded, and a threat of local armies which, with the avowed purpose of mutual aid, might in some not remote contingency be turned against foes American not less than British.

The Republican-dominated Congress would never have recommended any of New England's proposals for ratification. Hartford Convention delegates intended for them to embarrass the President and the Republicans in Congress—and also to serve as a basis for negotiations between New England and the rest of the country.

Some Hartford Convention delegates may have been in favor of New England's secession from the United States, and forming an independent republic. No such resolution was adopted at the convention. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison (1969) rejected the notion that the Convention was an attempt to take New England out of the Union and give treasonous aid and comfort to Britain. Morison wrote, "Democratic politicians, seeking a foil to their own mismanagement of the war and to discredit the still formidable Federalist party, caressed and fed this infant myth until it became so tough and lusty as to defy both solemn denials and documentary proof."

Massachusetts actually sent three commissioners to Washington to negotiate these terms. When they arrived in February, 1815, news of Andrew Jackson's stunning victory at the Battle of New Orleans, and the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, preceded them and, consequently, their presence in the capital seemed both ludicrous and subversive. They quickly returned. Thereafter, both the Hartford Convention and the Federalist Party became synonymous with disunion and secession, especially in the South. The Federalist Party was ruined as a national party, and survived only in a few localities for several more years before vanishing entirely.

References

• Lyman, Theodore, A short account of the Hartford Convention: taken from official documents, and addressed to the fair minded and the well disposed; To which is added an attested copy of the secret journal of that body. Boston: O. Everett, 1823.
• Adams, James Truslow. New England in the Republic, 1776-1850 (1926)
• Banner, James M., Jr. "A Shadow Of Secession? The Hartford Convention, 1814." History Today 1988 38(Sep): 24-30. Issn: 0018-2753 Fulltext online at Ebsco; short summary
• Banner, James M. Jr. To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789-1815 (1970).
• Buckley, William Edward. The Hartford Convention. Yale University Press (1934)
• Samuel Eliot Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, 1765-1848: The Urbane Federalist (1913); revised edition (1969)
• Morison, Samuel Eliot. "Our Most Unpopular War," Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings 1968 80: 38-54. Issn: 0076-4981. Morison calls the War of 1812 undoubtedly the most unpopular the nation has ever waged. Opposition to the war came from other sections besides New England, although the hostility of the New England Federalists was more apparent since they controlled the State governments. He contends that the chief sponsors of the Hartford Convention intended to avoid State secession at all costs, and he scorns the myth that New England secession was thwarted by the Treaty of Ghent and Jackson's victory at New Orleans.
• Samuel Eliot Morison, Frederick Merk, and Frank Freidel, Dissent in Three American Wars (1970), ch. 1
• James Schouler, History of the United States vol 1 (1891), provides the text for portions of this article
• The Report of the Hartford Convention from the Avalon Project