Part 1: 1789â1836
1: The Language of Terrifying Prophecy
DISUNION DEBATES IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC
The era of constitution making bequeathed to the young nation not only a legacy of compromise and indecision on slavery, but also the beginnings of a discourse in which politicians summoned images of disunion to advance their own regional and partisan agendas. The early years of the republic witnessed periodic appeals to disunion; slavery was often, but not always, the principal source of contention. In 1790 Southern and Northern representatives in Congress clashed over the twin issues of where to locate the capital and whether Congress should assume the Revolutionary War debts of the states. Assumption was a key piece of the fiscal agenda of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, whose reputation for brilliance was matched by his reputation for arrogance. In Hamiltonâs view, the United States should aspire to be a manufacturing and commercial superpower, in the model of Great Britain; âBritainâs funded debtâ had fueled the âextraordinary growth of the British economy.â Southerners in states, such as Virginia, that had already paid down their Revolutionary War debts saw Hamiltonâs plan as biased toward the North. Because Hamiltonâs assumption scheme would make the states âbeholden to the federal government,â and would create a large national debt that would need to be paid down by new federal taxes, it raised the specter of âconsolidationâ: of aggrandizing the central government at the expense of local interests. The heavily indebted New England states, by contrast, eager for federal relief, viewed assumption as a âsine qua non of a continuance of the Union,â according to Jeffersonâs memorandum on the controversy. With disunion threats on the lips of prominent Northerners and Southerners, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton reached a compromise whereby, in exchange for the passage of an assumption plan, Southerners won the promise that the national capital, after a temporary stint in Philadelphia, would be moved to a location on the Potomac, safely within slave country. The first of the âgreat compromisesâ between North and South, the measure did little to close the widening rift between Hamilton and the Virginians. Indeed, Jefferson later disowned the compromise, asserting that it âwas unjust, in itself oppressive to the states, and was acquiesced in merely for a fear of disunion.â1
In the midst of the assumption and residency controversy, the First Congress became embroiled in a bitter debate over slavery and the slave trade, sparked by an abolition petition presented to the lawmakers by the pioneering Quaker antislavery organization, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS). The petition, under the name of pas president Benjamin Franklin, contended not only that slavery and the slave trade were incompatible with the new nationâs charter, but also that Congress had the power and the obligation to terminate the slave trade prior to the end of the twenty-year waiting period stipulated in the Constitution. In response, irate representatives from the Deep South, led by William Loughton Smith of South Carolina (a pro-administration Federalist) and James Jackson of Georgia (a vocal critic of the Federalist administration), threatened disunion, reminding their Northern counterparts that they would never have agreed to enter the Union unless their property in slaves was guaranteed, and that the Southern states would never submit to an abolition scheme without civil war. Matthew Mason notes that these men and other such defenders of slavery in the early national era were not yet willing to assert, unequivocally, the morality of slavery. Their arguments on behalf of the institution were instead âexperimental and directed mainly at fellow Southerners.â The same might be said of their threatsâtheir intimations of disunion, like their justifications of slavery, served to deny the immorality of slaveholding and to disparage slaveryâs opponents. At this moment in 1790, the experiment achieved the desired result: Madison intervened, in the spirit of compromise and indecision, to shepherd through a debate-ending resolution that denied Congress the authority to initiate gradual emancipation in the Southern states. But the strident tone of these early debates was nonetheless ominousâcongressmen spoke a âlanguage of honorâ in which threats and accusations were wielded to make and break personal reputations, and to defend and promote regional interests. Certain Southern lawmakers were already cultivating a reputation for belligerenceâcapitalizing on the perception that âhot bloodedâ Southerners were more willing to resort to violence than their âcold blooded,â cautious, puritanical Northern counterparts.2
As if playing out The Federalistâs warning about the many possible sources of disunion, Southerners and Northerners clashed repeatedly in the 1790s over aspects of Hamiltonâs program such as the apportionment of the Congress, the chartering of a national bank, and John Jayâs 1795 treaty with Great Britain. Although slavery was the âmost obvious differenceâ between North and South, it was not the explicit focus of these debates. As Sean Wilentz observes, âNortherners, some of whom were still squabbling about emancipation in their own states, did not perceive an antislavery agenda behind Hamiltonâs proposals.â Southern farmers and planters viewed the Federalist position on each of these issues as a bid to increase the power of manufacturing interests at the expense of agrarian ones. In every instance, Southern intimations of disunion looked backward and forward. They tapped anxieties and resentments about the founding itself, particularly anti-Federalist fears that government consolidation would undermine state sovereignty. But disunion talk also served warning that a new opposition party was consolidating, with a strong base among Southern and Northern agrarians alike, and would challenge the Federalists for control of the national government.3
Disgust with the rising spirit of partisanship suffused George Washingtonâs âFarewell Addressâ of 1796. To counter that spirit, Washington called on the American people to reassert their devotion to the Union. Only the Union, he said, could guarantee for the citizens of the new nation prosperity, security, and happiness; the countryâs leaders had a responsibility to act not as partisans but as stewards of a sacred trust. Washington deplored regional jealousies as well as partisan ones; he explicitly argued that the North and South were economically dependent on each other and could thrive only in partnership. In his view, âLocal sentiments must be replaced by a sacred attachment to the Union and the Constitution.â4
Although his speech quickly entered the annals of âsacredâ American documents and contributed to the deification of Washington himself as the greatest single embodiment of the Union, it did little to stem the tide of partisanship or to discourage partisans, including Washingtonâs own followers, from invoking disunion. For intimations of disunion could prove efficacious not only as threats but also as accusations. Thus the Federalist press, as the nationâs âquasi-warâ with France escalated in 1798, charged that Jeffersonâs new Democratic-Republican Party (commonly abbreviated as the Republicans, but not to be confused with Lincolnâs Republican Party, which came on the scene in the 1850s) was in thrall to French Jacobin âanarchists.â Such traitorous support of bloodthirsty revolutionaries, the Federalists alleged, was a threat to national security. Moreover, Federalists maintained that Republicans were fomenting uprisings among disgruntled farmers in both North and South and would stop ânothing short of disunionââsynonymous here with class warfareâin their campaign to bring down John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Invoking the specter of the Unionâs downfall as a justification, the Adams administration used the Sedition Act, which criminalized dissent, to try to silence the Republican press.5
Republicans struck back in defense of free speech behind Jeffersonâs and Madisonâs Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. Drafted by Madison for the legislature of Virginia and by Jefferson for that of Kentucky, the resolutionsâcast as a defense of the âtrue principlesâ of the Constitution and the Unionâasserted that the federal government was a compact of the states, and that the Federalist abridgment of freedom of conscience and of the press was an unconstitutional assault on statesâ rights. Because the resolutions appealed to the states to take the ânecessary and proper measuresâ to oppose such federal âconsolidation,â Jeffersonâs and Madisonâs words were later appropriated by nineteenth-century secessionists as a theory of disunion. But modern scholars have emphasized that the resolutions did not go so far as to assert the absolute sovereignty of the states; statesâ rights was a political means, not an end, for Jefferson and Madison. They sought, in the name of constitutional fidelity, to galvanize the opposition, both in the South and in the Mid-Atlantic, and to channel its energies toward the upcoming congressional elections and presidential contestâthe âhint of disunionâ would serve paradoxically to unify the Republicans. This tactic failed to pay off in the 1799 congressional elections but succeeded in forcing the hand of President Adams. The âprospect of civil warâ so âhorrifiedâ Adams that he forged a peace with France, âdefusing the sectional crisisâ and splitting his partyâthus opening the way for the Democratic-Republican Partyâs ascendancy in 1800.6
Republicans kept up a drumbeat of disunion accusations as the 1800 elections approached, charging that Federalists were to blame for the bitter political divisions in the country and that Republicans alone could unify the nation. Integral to this Republican argument was the notion that Hamiltonians were in the thrall of the British, inviting Britainâs corrupt influence to infiltrate the United States âthrough channels of exchange and credit.â At their most strident, Republicans charged that the Federalist elite wanted to reinstate in America an English-style monarchy. Federalists countered with their own accusations. They brought sedition charges against journalists such as James Callendar on the grounds that the objective of the Republican press was to effect disunion. They held Republicans accountable for the planned slave uprising, Gabrielâs Rebellion, that Virginia authorities had aborted in the summer of 1800. By talking so recklessly of âliberty and equality,â so the Federalist accusation went, the Republicans had unwittingly emboldened the enslaved artisan Gabriel and his co-conspirators. (In fact, Gabriel had been inspired to think he might succeed by the very rumors of national ruin that overheated partisans on both sides were spreading during the election campaign.) They predicted that if he were elected, Jeffersonâs âinfidelâ regime would undermine American virtue and religion and bring civil war. The resort of politicians and editors to such language fostered a crisis mentality in the electorate. âWith partisan animosity soaring and no end in sight,â Joanne Freeman explains, âmany assumed that they were engaged in a fight to the death that would destroy the Union.â7
An electoral tie between Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr of New York (who had skillfully built a Republican base to challenge Federalist dominance there), precipitated a constitutional crisis. With the Federalist Congress threatening machinations such as anointing the Federalist president pro tem of the Senate as the successor to Adams, Republicans, led by Governors James Monroe of Virginia and Thomas McKean of Pennsylvania, assumed a disunion posture again, threatening not to accede to any such Federalist âusurpation.â Under the cloud of potential violenceârealizing they must âtake Mr. Jeffersonâ or ârisk ⊠a civil war,â as one prominent Federalist put itâthe House of Representatives finally broke the deadlock in February 1801, and Federalists conceded Jeffersonâs victory. Republicans, having successfully used disunion talk as both threat and accusation, would now confront a Federalist opposition eager to perfect that art.8
THE WAR OF 1812
President Jefferson would find the extreme statesâ rights vanguard in his own party, the âTertium Quidsâ (or âOld Republicansâ) led by John Randolph of Roanoke, willing to use intimations of disunion to counter any threat to slavery and to keep the Republican administration honestâloyal to the âprinciples of â98â as embodied in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. Randolph personally threatened disunion in 1807 to oppose Northern proposals that the interstate coastal slave trade be restricted even as the African trade was prohibited. Such posturing âcould never attract much support in the South,â William Cooper Jr. has written, âso long as southerners perceived governmental power being exercised by a party they identified as their ownâ; moreover, Randolph himself was a notorious eccentric who would âsometimes appear in Congress booted and spurred, flicking his riding whip.â But the threats were nonetheless more than transparent pressure tacticsâfor Randolph, together with fellow Virginian John Taylor of Caroline County and Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina, led a group that began to weave from the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions and the Tenth Amendment an intricate philosophy of state sovereignty. The Old Republicans maintained unequivocally that the states were sovereign (indeed, Taylor, the political theorist in the group, called them âstate-nationsâ) and that the Union was a revocable compact, a treaty of sorts, between the states. In other words, the central governmentâthey preferred the term âconfederacyâ to ânationââwas subordinate to the states. From this political philosophy, Randolph, Taylor, and Macon derived the right of secession: that is, each state could, if the government or other states tried to impose unwanted measures on it, secede, as a sovereign, from the confederacy. While Randolph and the leading Quids lacked an interest in âcareful political planning,â as Cooper has put it, they did hope to furnish successive generations of Southerners with a rationale for resisting any encroachment on the âagrarian independenceâ of the South.9
Randolph and the Old Republicans would have to bide their time, as mainstream Republicans focused during Jeffersonâs administration on stigmatizing Federalists as disunionists. Indignant that the Louisiana Purchase would open the way for the expansion of slavery and thus upset the political balance struck by the three-fifths compromise, a cadre of New England Federalists under Massachusetts senator Timothy Pickering explored, in 1803â4, the possibility of forming a New England confederacy and even allying with Quebec and Britain. Although this failed scheme âcan hardly be called a plot since it never took concrete form,â as Richard Buel Jr. points out, it nonetheless provided ammunition to Republicans in their campaign to tar their critics with treachery. So, too, did an ill-conceived scheme of Aaron Burrâs: in 1806â7 he attempted to hatch his own âfilibusterââa private military expeditionâto seize territory in the Southwest. Although the plan was stillborn, Republicans, who had abandoned and smeared Burr after the 1800 election imbroglio, cannily cast his machinations as profoundly dangerousâa grand conspiracy to destroy the Unionârather than as ineffectual. At this moment, and then again when Federalists objected to Jeffersonâs embargo of Britain and to Louisianaâs statehood, Southern Republicans, in the name of nationalism, discredited their opponents as a âfactious minorityâ that was inciting a rebellion against the government.10
Federalists persisted in trying to use disunion arguments to their own partisan advantage. When, under Jeffersonâs successor Madison, the economic standoff between the United States and Britain erupted into war in 1812, disaffected New England Federalists charged that Republicans were the tools of the French emperor Napoleon, and that the administrationâs purpose was to advance Southern and Western regional interests at the expense of the Northeast. Not only was New Englandâs commerce undermined, but also its coastline was especially vulnerable to attack from the British military base in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Paradoxically, these New England Federalists did not see their defense of their own regional interests, even their threats of disunion, as sectional in nature, for they clung fiercely to the notion that they embodied the true principles of the Constitution and of the nation itselfâthat New Englandâs founders, not Virginiaâs, had first planted the tree of liberty on Americaâs shores.11
AS FEDERALIST âFIREBRANDSâ such as John Lowell Jr. and Harrison Gray Otis of Massachusetts raised anew the possibility of New Englandâs secession, Republicans in the North and South again counterattacked. Madisonâs vice president, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, condemned the dissenters, charging that secession would be calamitous for his state and that the Federalists had fallen prey to âforeign influence.â South Carolinaâs John C. Calhoun, discoursing on the difference between legitimate and illegitimate opposition, labeled the Federalist disunion talk as illegitimateâit was a âviciousâ attempt to âdeliver the country ⊠to the mercy of the enemy.â By the time of the Hartford (Connecticut) Convention in December 1814âa meeting that advertised itself as a constitutional convention of the aggrieved New England statesâthe dissenters were in retreat. The convention attracted a mere twenty-six delegates from three states who shied away from advocating secession; instead, they proposed constitutional amendments to curtail Congressâs ability to âwage war, regulate commerce, and admit new states.â This program, writes Buel, was âscarcely less subversiveâ than disunion and left New England Federalists, in the wake of a negotiated peace that ended the war, humiliated and divided. Southern opinion makers such as Thomas Ritchie, editor of the Richmond Enquirer, and even Quid leader John Randolph, delighted in branding the Hartford proposal as treasonous. The Missouri controversy of 1819 would provide the disgruntled Federalists an opportunity, according to Buel, for ârefurbishing their morally tarnished credentials.â12
In this pictorial critique of the Hartford Convention, New England Federalists nerve themselves for the âdangerous leapâ into the arms of Englandâs King George III, while Timothy Pickering prays for their success. The image of the precipice soon became a ubiquitous metaphor for conveying the irrationality and self-destructiveness of disunion....