The Hartford Convention

demiurge

Sergeant
Joined
Apr 15, 2016
The Hartford Convention is routinely brought up by those of a pro-secessionist bent. However, it seems a tad misunderstood. Especially if you read it within the context of its times, as opposed to looking it through the lens of justifying secession 50-200 years later.

While the discussion of disunion did occur, it was not resolved by the attendees. There's limited knowledge of the proceedings, as the president of the convention George Cabot's minutes are the only ones surviving (to my knowledge) and those are woefully incomplete.

However, there is correspondence from the delegates to their respective legislatures. They spoke against unilateral secession, especially in time of war (the war of 1812, not the possibility of war over secession).

The Delegates from Massachussets, Connecticut, and Rhode Island reported this to their legislatures:
http://archive.org/stream/hartfordconv00dwigrich#page/354/mode/2up

"Finally, if the Union be destined to dissolution, by reason of the multiple abuses of bad administration, it should, if possible, be the work of peacable times, and deliberate consent."

The report then goes on to discuss what such a disolution should look like (sorry, don't feel like typing all that in, but its on p355 bottom paragraph of that link, which is an online copy of 'History of the Hartford Convention).

It then summarizes:
"But a severance of one or more against states against the will of the rest, especially in a time of war, can be justified only by absolute necessity. These are among the principal objections of precipitous measures tending to disunite the states, and when examined in connection with the farewell address of the Father of his country, they must, it is believed, be deemed conclusive."

Washington of course spent several paragraphs in his farewell address on the avoidance of sectionalist conflict, the numerous advantages of union, the crime of speculating on disunion, and the 'permanency of this happy state (union under the constitution) and the fact that "the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. "
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

Page 376-379 gives the resolutions recommended by the convention to the legislatures, all of which are constitutional amendments, not calls for secession.

Also within the conext of the time - this was the death knell of the Federalists. The original party that managed to pass the Constitution did not survive the scorn their convention created, even when it wasn't an outright call to secession.
 
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