Colonel
Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts advocated New England’s secession
from the United States in 1804, and creating a “Northern Confederacy.”
He and others viewed this more perfect union as having “all the
advantages which have been for a few years depending on the general
Union [which] would be continued [and] without the jealousies and
enmities that now afflict both, and which particularly embitter the
condition of that of the North.” Notably, the slave-trading States of
Massachusetts and Rhode Island would have been the cornerstone of this
new republic.
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"
Seceding from the Corrupt Aristocratic Democrats of the South
“In
the prior history of the country, repeated instances are found of the
assertion of this right [of secession], and of a purpose entertained at
various times to put it in execution. Notably is this true of
Massachusetts and other New England States. The acquisition of
Louisiana had created much dissatisfaction in those States, for the
reason, expressed by an eminent citizen of Massachusetts [George Cabot],
that “the influence of our [the Northeastern] part of the Union must be
diminished by the acquisition of more weight at the other extremity.”
The
project of separation was freely discussed, with no intimation, in the
records of the period, of any idea among its advocates that it could be
regarded as treasonable or revolutionary.
Colonel
Timothy Pickering, who had been an officer of the war of the
Revolution, afterward successively Postmaster-General, Secretary of War,
and Secretary of State in the Cabinet of General Washington, and, still
later, long a representative of the State of Massachusetts in the
Senate of the United States, was one of the leading secessionists of his
day.
Writing from Washington to a friend, on the 24th of December, 1803, he says:
“I
will not yet despair. I will rather anticipate a new confederacy,
exempt from the corrupt and corrupting influence and oppression of the
aristocratic democrats of the South. There will be (and our children, at
farthest, will see it) a separation. The white and black population
will mark the boundary.”
In
another letter, written a few weeks afterward (January 29, 1804),
speaking of what he regarded as wrongs and abuses perpetrated by the
then existing Administration, he thus expresses his views of the remedy
to be applied:
“The
principles of our Revolution point to the remedy – a separation. That
this can be accomplished, and without spilling one drop of blood, I have
little doubt . . . I do not believe in the practicality of a
long-continued Union. A Northern Union would unite congenial characters
and present a fairer prospect of public happiness; while the Southern
States, having a similarity of habits, might be left to “manage their
own affairs in their own way.” If a separation were to take place, our
mutual wants would render a friendly and commercial intercourse
inevitable.
It
[the separation] must begin in Massachusetts. The proposition would be
welcome in Connecticut; and could we doubt of New Hampshire? But New
York must be associated . . . she must be made the center of the
Confederacy. Vermont and New Jersey would follow of course, and Rhode
Island of necessity” [Pickering to Cabot, “Life of Pickering,” pp.
338-340].
Substituting
[Southern States for those Northern States above], we find the
suggestions of 1860-61 only a reproduction of those thus outlined nearly
sixty years earlier.
Such
were the views of an undoubted patriot who had participated in the
formation of the Union, and who had long been confidentially associated
with Washington in the administration of its Government, looking at the
subject from a Northern standpoint, within fifteen years after the
organization of that Government under the Constitution.
His
authority is cited only as showing the opinion prevailing in the North
at that day with regard to the right of secession from the Union, if
deemed advisable by the ultimate and irreversible judgment of the people
of a sovereign State.”
(The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume I, Jefferson Davis, D. Appleton and Company, 1881, pp. 71-73)
