New England’s 1814 Hartford Convention Considers Secession

The United States Constitution defines treason as: “levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort…” (Article III, Section 3). Note that treason is not defined as against the “United States,” an abstract construct, but “levying War against them,” the sovereign States.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
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"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
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“Going back to 1796 we find the Hartford Courant assailing the South....that the union would be an impossibility for any long period in the future. “We have reached a critical period in our political existence…The Northern States can subsist as a nation, a republic, without any connection with the Southern.”

Several of her [New England’s] more reckless ministers of the gospel preached secession from the pulpit. The Sentinel, the Repertory, and the Boston Gazette advocated it, and declared the union already practically dissolved. Regarding herself as entirely separated from the Democratic administration and its war [of 1812], New England established a regular system of trade with the public enemy.

The British army and navy were supplied with cattle and provisions driven over the line from Canada. Everything possible was done to defeat the war loan of the government. The British ministry, thinking a great opportunity might have arrived, sent a Canadian lawyer, John Henry, to New England to report how near the country was ripe for revolt and union with Canada.

An English fleet blockaded the whole of our coast except New England. The Democratic Congress passed the Embargo Act of 1813 because they believed that New England, unblockaded, was trading with Great Britain and supplying with provisions the fleets and armies that were invading America.

[The] Massachusetts legislature, by an overwhelmingly large vote, called a convention of all New England. A picked body of the most respectable and conservative Federalists, twelve from Massachusetts, seven from Connecticut, four from Rhode Island, two from New Hampshire, and one from Vermont, met in what has ever since been known as the Hartford Convention of 1814, which sat with doors closed and discussed the troubles of the time.

[The Convention saw] the Democratic administration [as] dividing up the country into districts for calling out the militia, and leaving the calling of them within the discretion of the President, [which] was a violation of the Constitution, by which the militia could be converted by the President into a standing army to destroy the liberties of the States.

They go on to say: “That acts of Congress in violation of the Constitution are absolutely void, is an undeniable position. [In] cases of deliberate, dangerous and palpable infractions of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of a State and liberties of the people, it is not only the right, but the duty of such a State to interpose its authority for their protection, in the manner best calculated to secure that end. (Dwight, History of the Hartford Convention, p. 361.)

(The True Daniel Webster, Sydney George Fisher, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1911, pp. 125-131)
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New England’s 1814 Hartford Convention Considers Secession