An
irony in American history has the doctrine of secession originating in
the South when it was first advanced by New England over the issue of
Louisiana’s admission to Statehood. Jefferson and Madison, both
Southerners, opposed secession; New England Federalists demanded it.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
New England Federalists and their Secession Doctrine
“The
final political phenomenon to arise out of the North-South competition
of the 1790s was the doctrine of Secession. It represented the death
rattle of the Federalist party. The pivotal year was 1800 when the
Democratic leaders Jefferson and Burr succeeded in putting together a
coalition of the have-nots of the country – the agriculturalists of the
South and the proletarians of the Northern cities. They won control of
the nation.
The
Federalist party survived another sixteen years, although it never
again won control of the House, Senate or presidency. It did not take
defeat well.
Barely
three years after the Democratic rout, Northern Federalists began
arguing for the secession of the New England States from the Union.
There was nothing understated about their secessionist position. It was
widespread, and if it could not be done peaceably, they said, it should
be done violently.
Listen
to one of the many secessionists, Josiah Quincy III, scion of the New
England Quincy’s, future mayor of Boston and future president of Harvard
University. In 1811 he was a thirty-eight-year-old congressman
standing opposed to the admission of Louisiana as a State:
“It
is my deliberate opinion,” he said, “that if this bill passes, the
bonds of this union are virtually dissolved, that the States which
compose it are free from their moral obligations, and that as it will be
the right of all, so it will be the duty of some to prepare,
definitely, for a separation; amicably if they can; violently if they
must.”
One
man who listened carefully that year was a freshman congressman from
South Carolina. He was John C. Calhoun, who had been taught the
secessionist doctrine in the law schools of New England, who had
listened to it in the Congress, and who would one day carry it back down
South . . . .
Meanwhile, it is an unfair stroke that history has
identified the South with secession when in fact the earliest and
clearest arguments against it were proposed by Jefferson and Madison.
The creators of secession doctrine, and the teachers of it from 1800 to 1817, were New England Federalists.”
(The
Natural Superiority of Southern Politicians, A Revisionist History,
David Leon Chandler, Doubleday & Company, 1977, pp. 114-116)
No comments:
Post a Comment