War of 1812, our antagonists were many. First, we had to fight the New
England Federalists.” Again, he says: “Connecticut went so far as to
raise a separate army for the defense of her own domain—whether against
England or America might be left to decide.” (U. S. History, p. 709.) And
again, he tells that by a system of blue light signals the New England
Federalists kept the English fleet informed of the plan of our troops,
thereby greatly aiding the enemy and embarrassing our movements. “Thus,”
he says, “the Blue Light Federalists secured for themselves a place of
infamy in our annals.”
The Supreme Court of Massachusetts declared that no power was given to
the President or to Congress to declare war or to levy troops; that
only to the States did they belong; and thereupon the Governor of that
State refused the request of the President for its quota to defend
their coast. When the New England members who voted for the War of 1812
returned home, they were reviled, denounced and one of them actually
kicked and cuffed by a mob in historic Plymouth. The Federalists of
New England prevented the Government’s every effort to raise money or
troops. Finally, on December 15, 1814, when Jackson was moving heaven
and earth to save New Orleans, a New England Convention, “summoned by
State authority, assembled at Hartford, Connecticut, whose object was to
secure armed resistance and overthrow of the Union.... This convention
was attended by twenty-six delegates, all respectable, cultivated
gentlemen.” (Hawthorne’s U. S. History, p. 731.) “It was composed of
twelve delegates from Massachusetts, seven from Connecticut, four from
Rhode Island (appointed by the legislatures of these States), and two
from New Hampshire, and one from Vermont (appointed by counties), all
Federalists.... Its proceedings were carried on in secret, and the
convention was suspected at the time of treason.” (Cent. Dict., Vol.
IX., p. 484.) In their declaration this convention said: “But in cases
of deliberate, dangerous and palpable infraction of the Constitution,
affecting the sovereignty of a State and liberties of a 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.
When emergencies occur which are either beyond the reach of the judicial
tribunals or too pressing to admit of the delay incident to their forms,
States which have no common umpire must be their own judges and execute
their own decisions.” (Niles Register, Vol. VII., p. 306.)
This was the view taken by the Southern States when they seceded in
1861, and which the great Civil War decided in the negative forever, not
as a question of right nor of wrong, but as a policy of a majority of the
people of this country, in arms assembled and on the field of battle.
“Whatever may have been the sins of New England, secession was not
one,” says our correspondent. In proving that our friend is mistaken
in his facts, I take the liberty also of defending New England as to
his assertion that this was a sin. It certainly was not a sin. The
New England States had this right, as did every State up to its final
settlement by arms in 1861-5. It were no more a sin then than for New
England to vote for McKinley and the gold standard in 1896, or for
the South to vote for Bryan and silver. There can be no sin in a mere
question of national policy by any people or peoples. “Not all of New
England favored the War of 1812, but that is not secession,” he adds, as
the gist of his argument.
That is true—neither did all the South favor secession in 1860-61.
Perhaps it may be interesting to relate here that Tennessee, on the
only vote taken by her as to whether it should be secession or not,
voted by nearly 60,000 majority against secession. Afterwards, Governor
Harris and the Legislature declared her out of the Union. Perhaps it
may be still more of interest when I say that although the South sent
fully 600,000 troops into the war to battle for States’ rights, she sent
nearly 400,000 to fight on the other side. But everybody knows that a
majority of the Southern people were for seceding and the foundation of
our esteemed correspondent’s argument is gone when I assert, as I can
prove, that from the election of Jefferson to the Battle of New Orleans,
the majority of the people of New England, as voiced in the Federalist
vote, were opposed to the policy of Jefferson, to War of 1812, and but
for the Treaty of Ghent and the Battle of New Orleans would have voted to
secede. In conclusion, let me say, those questions are all settled—“those
far-off, old, unhappy days.” But the truth, at all times, should be
precious, for among its many crowning glories, it teaches us that man is
not very different from his neighbor after all. In 1898, at the outbreak
of the Spanish War, and when the United States troops had rendezvoused on
Chickamauga battlefield, before marching into Cuba, Tennessee unveiled
her statue erected to both her soldiers of the Blue and the Gray who died
there. The writer was asked to read the dedicatory poem. On the stage
were General Wheeler, General Stewart and many distinguished soldiers of
both armies. And thus was the poem read:
REUNITED.
By steel-sheathed ship and iron gun
And forts that frown on a crouching sea,
Like a reef-split wave in the mad ebb’s run,
Like the foam, rock stopped, from the driven lea,
They have halted their butchering lines of red,
For a star-flung banner has published a ban:
Let the Past be past, let the dead be dead—
Now and forever, American.
It has girdled the depths of our heart’s red blood,
It has welded our chain in a white-heat fire,
And the Gray has come with the old-time flood,
And the Blue stands firm in the old-time fire.
And starving eyes, whence Hope had fled
Look up where the light of the message ran:
Let the Past be past, let the dead be dead—
Now and forever, American.
O, valorous Gray, in the grave of your fate!
Oh, valorous Blue, in the long deady ears!
Ye were sown in sorrow and harrowed in Hate,
But your harvest to-day is a nation’s tears,
For the message you left through the land has sped
From the lips of God to the heart of man:
Let the Past be past, let the dead be dead—
Now and forever, American.
JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.