Methodist union : threatened in 1844, was formally dissolved in 1848 by the legislation of Dr. (afterward Bishop) Simpson in the Northern General Conference of 1848 ... the way may be open to consider a more excellent plan

Front matter

METHODIST ONION,

THREATENED IN 1844,

WAS

Preface

The greater part of the matter contained in the following pages appeared in the Quarterly Review, under the caption: " Bishop Simpson as a Politician." The publication in book form has been called for by so many persons from every' quarter of the Church that the author does not feel at liberty to deny the request.

In addition to the three articles published in the Review, several chapters have been included in this volume, as necessary to the adequate presentation of the case. To the Church, South, and to all fair-minded people who maj- be interested in this discussion, these pages are committed by The Author.

CoPYUIGHT, 1892.

CHAPTER I. Pagk

A Grave Charge — Mr. Calhoun Following Methodist Leaders—Fallacy of the Statement — The Constitution Protected African Slavery — Missouri Compromise — A Conciliatory Spirit — No Connection between the Division of 1844 and the War of 1861 — Causes of the Separation in 1844 — Bishop Andrew — Bishop Simpson votes for Division— Some Ancient History — Contrast between Massachusetts and Virginia — Admission of Louisiana a Cause of Trouble — Nullification in Massachusetts — Patriotism at a Discount in New England — The Clerical Politicians of New England — Hartford Convention Originates Nullification— New England Sentiment 9

Chapter II

Sincerity of the North in 1844 — Real Schism Threatened — Slur upon Dr. Winans — Bowen, of Georgia, non est — . Bishop Andrew Explains His Position — Resolution Passed by the General Conference — Bishop Simpson Votes to Condemn Andrew — Declaration of Southern Delegates — Dr. Charles Elliott Moves a Committee of Nine— Dr. McFerrin's Motion — Committee's Reports — Bishop Simpson Approves the Report — Votes for Separation— Five Northern and Four Southern Men on the Committee — Every Member but One Votes for the Plan of Separation — Sudden Change — The Plan of Separation Becomes a Plan for Secession ! 37

Chapter III

New England Leads the General Conference — Bishop Andrew Not Allowed to Preside in New England — Mr. Wesley's Testimony on One Subject Applied to Another — John Street Church, New York, a Slaveholder — Mr.

Page

Whitefield — Increasing Agitation— Antecedents of the

Puritans — First Slave-ship Built in New England First

Speculators in Human Flesh — An Entire Colony in the Slave-trade — Cheapness of Slave Labor — Eliot Remonstrates— Indian Captives Sold as Slaves and Shipped Abroad — Barbarous Treatment of Slaves in New England — Legal Status of Slavery in Massachusetts — First Law Recognizing Slavery — Virginia Abolishes the Slave-trade before Massachusetts — First Argument Against the Slave-trade — Petition of the Negroes in Massachusetts Disregarded 52

Chapter IV

No Free State in 1790 — Tinkering with the Census — Humiliating Statement — Disappearance of the Negroes — Advertisements of Slaves for Sale in Boston — Sources of New England Ideas — Slavery Never Abolished in Massachusetts— Owners Discouraged from Manumission — Pitiful Spectacle — Massachusetts and South Carolina Contrasted — Negroes Not Allowed to Exercise Useful Trades in Massachusetts in 1844 — Negroes Banished from Massachusetts — Notice to Leave — Repeal of the Banishment Act — Agitation Begun — Bishop Emory — Agitation in Congress — Votes in the House of Representatives— Party Lines Foreshadowed — Morality of the Abolition Movement — Anecdote of the Elder Adams - Status of the Negro in Massachusetts in 1844 — Dr. Simpson's State Petitions for African Slavery — Petition Denied and Renewed — John Randolph's Advice — Indiana Petition Again— Did Dr. Simpson Know These Things?— An Eloquent Bishop's Opportunity— Points Proved 72

Chapter V

A Popular Error — No Connection between the Division in 1844 and the Civil War — Separation Tended to Allay Excitement— The South Sends a Fraternal Messenger

Rejected by the North— Struggle of 1861 Inevitable from the Beginning — Two Theories of Government: One Paternal, Monarchical, without Checks upon Legislation; the Other Republican, Limited by Constitutional Guards

CONTENTS. 5

Page — Mr. Jefferson Defines the Principles of the Two Parties

in 1798 — Rules for Interpretation of the Federal Compact— Liberty of the Citizen — Mr. Jefferson's Political Creed — Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, How Originated— French Arrogance and British Injustice — Alien and Sedition Laws — Liberty of the Person and of the Press Involved — Votes on the Two Bills — The South Against, New England in Favor of These Laws — Clear Demarkation of Party and Sectional Lines — Text of the Virginia Resolutions — Kentucky Resolutions, Written by Mr. Jefferson — Forwarded to the States — Replies. ... 106

Chapter VI

Mr. Madison's Defense — "General Welfare" Clause an Open Door for Every Species of Legislation — Steam-engine and Industrial Revolution— Internal Improvements — Manufactures — New England Ceases to Be Commercial and Becomes Manufacturing — African Slavery Becomes a Serious Menace— Constitution Protected the Institution— Confessed to Be an Evil— Abolition Movements Coincident with New England's Defeat— Temporizing Influence— Infant Industries— Free Soilism— Disunion Orators and Their Sayings— Higher Law than the Constitution— The South Exasperated— The Disunion of the Church a Blessing— The South Conservative— New England Radical— Increased Territory Subsequent to 1844— New Occasions for Strife— Pressure upon the Conservative Men of 1844— Dr. Elliott Favors Separation in 1844, Calls it "Secession" in 1848— Beecher, Quincy, Phillips, and Others— Disunionism in New England- Agitation Increasing— Fears of the Torch and Dagger- Friendship for the Slave, Enmity to the Free Negro- Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon— Negroes Banished from Illinois— Conclusions Drawn by the South— The Sixth Restrictive Rule— Failure of the Argument Based upon It — Triumph of Federalism J32

Chapter VII

The Case of Canada— No Precedents Needed, but a Clear Case of " Dissolving the Union"— Memorials and Peti-

-, Page

tions from Canada — Constitutional Difficulties in the

Way — No Vote on the Constitutional Question — Resolutions Giving Canada an Independent Church — Another Committee — Breakers Ahead — Division of Property in the Way — Dr. Fisk's Report Adopted — Property Question Ignored — Again before the Conference of 1832 — A Plan of Settlement — Failure of the Plan — Remarkable Mode of Settlement — Doing in One Way What Was Refused in Another — Furnishing Capital without Cost — Same Principle Involved as Before — Curious Method of Buying Sunday-school Books — Power to Donate Property— Dr. Bangs Makes a Distinction without a Difference— All Church Organizations Voluntary — No Indissoluble Church Union — Church and State Idea — Other Churches— Abolitionism Condemned in 1836 — Conference Careful to Put Itself Right — Action in 1840 — Changes in 1844 — Testimony of Distinguished Lawyers — Emancipation Impossible — Facts of Bishop Andrew's Case — Minister and Bishop Suspended for Not Doing Illegal Acts 162

Chapter VIII

Bishop Soule Laments the Absence of Forethought — Charge of Secession an After-thought — Report of Committee on Organization at Louisville — Ruin to Southern Methodism Prevented — Conservative Influence of the Southern Church — Majority of 1844 Recognize the "Plan of Separation" as a Finality — Bishops Recognize the Division of the Church — Council of July, 1845 — Bishop Morris Refuses to Aid Disruption — Declares the Contingency Transpired — Will Not Undertake a Course of Nullification — Leaves That to Editors — Bishops Know Their Duty Better — " Plan of Separation " Not to Be Voted Upon by the Annual Conferences— Onlv the Alteration of Sixth Restrictive Rule Submitted to Vote — Bishop Morris Present at Louisville in 1845 — Opportunities to Know Southern Feeling and Sentiment 1S0

CHAPTER IX. General Conference of 1848 — No Southern Delegate Pres

CONTENTS. 7

Page ent — Baltimore the " Breakwater '" Conference — Boundary Lines — Division of the Church Acknowledged — Dr. Pierce Present — His Letter to the Conference — Various Methods of Preparing to Reject Him — The Final Method — Ungenerous Treatment — Painful Exhibition of Party Feeling — No Fraternity with the South — Extraordinary Act — Pretended Infractions of the " Plan of Separation '" — Excuses for Repudiation — Treatment of Bishop Soule — His Letter to the Conference — His Presence at Pittsburg Ignored 189

Chapter X

General Conference of 1848 a Remarkable Body — Determined to Repudiate the Work of 1844 — Only Doubtful of the Means to Secure the End — Position of the South Not Understood — A Hopeless Case — Southern Delegates Did Not Refer the Plan of Separation to the Annual Conferences— Only the Change in Restrictive Rule Thus Referred — Assertion Without Proof — A Bold Statement — Two Statements by the Conference — Both Cannot Be True — Avoiding a Vote on the Reference — The Question of Dividing the Book Concern the Only Question Referred to the Vote of the Annual Conferences — Vote on the Restrictive Rule Divided the Property — Refusal to Divide the Property Did Not Annul the Plan for Dividing the Church — An Affirmative Vote Gave the South Her Share — A Negative Vote Denied the South Her Share— This Was the Only Effect of the Annual Conference Vote — South Made to Condition Church Organization upon Dividing the Property — False Position Becoming a Calumny — South Compelled to Sue in Order to Retain Her Own Possessions — Obscurity in the Returns of the Actual Vote — No Means of Ascertaining the Results Except Five Lines of a Report — No Records — Statement Contradicted — "Plan of Separation" Proves the Reference — Reasons for Repudiation — The Outcome Three Declarations — The Philosophy of Anarchy 207

Chapter XI

Dr. Simpson's Substitute — First Section Contradicts the

Page " Plan of Separation " — Adopted — Deposition of Bishop

Andrew Dissolved the Methodist Union — Absurdity of

mi

a Peace Offering — The South Only Needed One — The Border Did Not — Wisdom of This Generation — How to Hold the Border — Further Dependence — Second Section Adopted — Third Resolution Did Not Involve the Adoption of the Plan — Charge of Imbecility Against the Southern Delegates — Third Section Adopted — Was It an Intended Trap? — Fourth Section — Waiting for Ruin First, to Be Repaired Afterward — Action of Delegates after the Conference Adjourned — Objection to It a Pretext Only — Surprised Fanatics — Remembrances of 1844 — Section Five Adopted — Question of Fact Which Has Only Assertion for Proof — Section Six 'Adopted — The Wolf Finds an Excuse for Eating the Lamb — Section Seven Adopted — Absolution Decree — A High Court for Annulling Compacts — Section Eight — Closing the Book of Pretexts — Kentucky Court of Appeals Upsets Dr. Simpson's Logic — Melancholy Attitude of a General Conference — Final Settlement of the Property Question — Decree of the United States Circuit Court for Southern District of New York — Final Award of the Supreme Court of the United States— The South Receives Her Portion — Courage of Dr. Crooks 224

CHAPTER XIII. The Future of Episcopal Methodism 253

BISHOP SIMPSON AS A POLITICIAN.

Chapter I

A Grave Charge — Mr! Calhoun Following Methodist Leaders — Fallacy of the Statement — The Constitution Protected African Slavery — Missouri Compromise — A Conciliatory Spirit — No Connection between the Division of 1844 and the War of 1861 — Causes of the Separation in 1844 — Bishop Andrew — Bishop Simpson votes for Division — Some Ancient History — Contrast between Massachusetts and Virginia — Admission of Louisiana a Cause of Trouble — Nullification in Massachusetts — Patriotism at a Discount in New England— The Clerical Politicians of New England — Hartford Convention Originates Nullification — New England Sentiment.

IN a former notice of the " Life of Bishop Simpson " we have confessed our admiration for his life and character as a minister of the gospel and an eloquent expounder of the sacred oracles. If we were to pass in silence the record of political life and action, as it is given by his biographer, our silence might be construed into the admission that the grave indictment brought by Dr. Crooks against Southern Methodism is true. We read these pages of Dr. Crooks with great sorrow. They confirm us in the belief that the present generation of Northern Methodists are unable to state the issues of 1844 with common fairness. From

IO BISHOP SIMPSON AS A POLITICIAN.

many sources in the North we could expect nothing less than an ex jf>arte statement of the great struggle that ended in the division of the Methodist Episcopal Church. From Dr. Crooks we expected better things. How grievously we have been disappointed the following extract will show. Speaking of the General Conference of 1844. ^r* Crooks says:

The events of this historic General Conference deserve to be dwelt upon from their connection with the event succeeding them : the struggle for the preservation of the national union. They had an important bearing, too, upon the life of Bishop Simpson ; they formed a part of the preparatory training by which he was fitted for the service rendered by him to the country from 1861 to 1865. He was a witness of the first breaking of the bonds of the national union; for the claim of the inherent right of slavery to go anywhere in the Church, in the person of a slave-holding bishop, was followed by the claim of the right of slavery to go anywhere within the limits of the nation. Mr. Calhoun trod in the footsteps of the Southern Methodist leaders; what they demanded for slave-holding for Methodists he demanded for slave-holding as an American. The schism in the Church not only preceded in time, but led on to the greater schism: the attempt to create two nations out of one. What wearied Bishop Simpson was to witness the preliminary rehearsal of the struggle from 1861 to 1865. (" Life of Bishop Simpson," p. 232.)

We are at a loss to know what Dr. Crooks means by the statement that "Mr. Calhoun trod in the footsteps of the Southern Methodist leaders." Are we to understand that these leaders asserted the doctrine that a slave-holding bishop had the right to go, in the exercise of his functions, "anywhere in the Church," and that Mr. Calhoun asserted that slave-holders had the right to carry their property in slaves into any part of the United States? Surely Dr. Crooks must know that more than twenty years before the General Conference of 1844, by a compact known as the Missouri Compromise, slavery, or involuntary servitude, was forever forbidden north of the line of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes. It must be known to Dr. Crooks that the Missouri Compromise was the law of the land in 1844, and continued to be so until several years after the death of Mr. Calhoun. It must be known to Dr. Crooks that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise measure was caused by the agency of Stephen A. Douglas, a member of the United States Senate from Illinois. So far from accomplishing this repeal, many of the statesmen of the South saw in that action the opening of Pandora's box of evils and the hastening of that Civil War which had been threatened for more than fifty years.

, It is only just to Dr. Crooks that we copy the foot-note which he appends to the sentence which precedes the strange assertion relating to Mr. Calhoun: "As to the free Stales, it was asserted that slavery had the right of protection when it was there in the person of slaves in transit; and as to the national Territories, that it had there the right of undisturbed occupation." This assertion was made beyond question, but why is it attributed to Mr. Calhoun ? It is the language of the Constitution of the United States, adopted in 1787. Artide IV., Section 2., paragraph 3, of the Constitution of the United States, says:

No person, held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered upon claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

Here it is expressly declared that this property in slaves shall be "protected" against any "law or regulation" of any State in the Union, even when the fugitive appeals to the. political opinion of a non-slave-holding public.

It is a strange confusion of ideas that attributes to the invention of " Southern Methodist leaders" a proposition that was incorporated into the organic law of the country, without which " protection " there would have been no federal union at all. The Constitution recognized property in slaves and enacted special safeguards for its protection ; and Mr. Calhoun, prior to 1820, maintained the right of slave-holders to carry that property into any Territory of the United States except that portion which had been ceded by Virginia, in which slavery was prohibited as early as 1787- This North-west Territory, out of which Ohio and other States were afterward formed, by an organic act of renunciation by a slave-holding State, was forever closed to the slave-holder and his property. Does Dr. Crooks maintain that, notwithstanding this act of Virginia and the Missouri Compromise act, Mr. Calhoun asserted the right of slave-holders to reside and to employ their slaves in any Territory north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes ?

In 1848, four years after the division of the Church, and at the very time that the Northern General Conference were engaged in repudiating their solemn compact, Mr. Calhoun was one of the four Southern men appointed upon a committee in the Senate to make an amicable arrangement for the settlement of the slavery agitation. In order to secure peace, and quietude, Mr. Calhoun and three other Southern men on the committee voted to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean. This gave the North five-sixths of the territory and nineteen-twentieths of the value acquired from Mexico. Every Northern man on the committee voted against it!

As a last resort to preserve the union of the States, Mr. Calhoun voted with a majority of the Senate to leave the whole question to the Supreme Court of the United States. The " Clayton Compromise " passed the Senate, but was defeated in the House of Representatives by a majority of fifteen ; and. twenty-seven members of the New England States voted against Mr. Calhoun and the peace measures of 1848! Thus, indeed, "Mr. Calhoun trod in the footsteps of Southern Methodist leaders."

"All things are possible" to the imagination of our Northern brethren when they take up the pen to instruct their readers concerning the great struggle of 1844. But really this feat of the learned biographer of Bishop Simpson awakens our surprise and astonishment. Mr. Calhoun was in his grave when the Missouri Compromise was repealed and the territorial question was re-opened. He had been dead ten years before the first gun was fired in the Civil War, and what possible connection there can be between the act of deposing Bishop Andrew in 1844 and the brief subsequent career of Mr. Calhoun we cannot perceive. Doubtless that great statesman thought and felt as " the Southern Methodist leaders " thought and felt, that the act of deposing a man from the episcopal office, in the face of the admission that he had committed no offense against the laws of God or man, was a demonstration of the sorrowful truth that the time for the separation of Abraham and Lot had arrived. With all due deference to the superior judgment of Dr. Crooks, we assert that we cannot see any connection whatever between the "claim" or the action of the Southern Methodist leaders in 1844 and the breaking out of the Civil War in 1861. We can as readily connect, in the chain of cause and consequence, the visit of Jesse Lee to Boston as a Methodist preacher with the secession conspiracy in New England that threatened the dissolution of the Union in 1808, or the later and more memorable proceeding of the Hartford Secession Convention in 1814. The extinction of the Methodist Church in the South would have been the in evitable consequence if the delegates from the slave-holding States had submitted to the deposition of Bishop Andrew simply because his wife was the owner of slaves that she could not emancipate. /Whether the restraining cause in Mrs. Andrew's case was legal or moral, or merely a pecuniary one, the assertion that a Methodist bishop was disqualified for his ministerial functions because his wife had inherited a species of property recognized by the fundamental law of the land was a declaration that rendered the union of the Northern and Southern Conferences impossible.

We shall not imitate the example of Dr. Crooks. He has given his readers not merely an ex fiarte statement of the case, but he has injured his own cause by needlessly distorting and misrepresenting the facts of history. We propose to deal justly and fairly with our Northern brethren. We are prepared, even at this late day, to sympathize with the delegates from the four New England Conferences that precipitated the division of the Church in 1844. Dr. Crooks looks upon that division — " secession " he pleasantly calls it — as an unmitigated evil. We regard it as a happy event, one that had a tendency to postpone, not to hasten the period of the Civil War. We. are prepared, in feeling, to exchange places with the Methodist station preacher in Boston. Our presencewould not have been tolerated in the pulpit of Boston at that time ; and had we been a pastor in our native city of Savannah, Ga., we certainly would have felt constrained to tell Brother Sandford or Brother George Pickering, if either of them had visited that city in 1844, that we could not thrust a fire-brand into the community by asking the visitor to preach in our pulpit. But "our pulpit " is a small part of the great parish of the world, and Boston is not very much greater. Why can we not agree to do, each in his own way, the work that Providence has mapped out for us? The state of public opinion and feeling in New England was such that Bishop Andrew could not be tolerated because his wife owned several slaves who were incapable of taking care of themselves, property that she inherited, and persons that it would have been sheer cruelty to thrust out upon the tender mercies of strangers or enemies. Let us grant that fact, and we will grant, further, that all New England took a very different view of the question from that entertained by us, and that their action was based upon sober reason and Christian principle. Admitting all that, when the pressure of New England sentiment forced the Northern delegates to stigmatize Bishop Andrew as a sinner who would not be suffered to preside in a New England Conference, the death-knell of Methodist union was sounded. It might be for evil, it might be for good, but separation must come. Divorce may be an unseemly, an uncomely thing; but there are circumstances that will justify it, the Lord of life being the witness in the case. Why then should these ecclesiastical sections desire to live together, under the same roof, if either had so offended the conscience of the other as to make the marriage relation a mockery and a crime?

BISHOP SIMPSON AS A POLITICIAN I J

If Bishop Andrew had rendered himself obnoxious to the public opinion and conscience of New England, the Methodist preachers from that section did well to say so, and if the people of the North indorsed the sentiment, or admitted the necessity of deposing him from the episcopal chair, it was a manly act to do it, and that it was done in the least offensive terms is a proof that the grace of God can throw a roseate hue over the very genius of fanaticism. We have not a word of objection to urge against the New England brethren, or the great body of the Northern delegates, because they uttered the sentiment that prevailed among their people. No matter who created the sentiment, nor when it was created, the fact remains that Bishop Andrew was "unacceptable." But the fact itself, and the reason for the tact, made a proclamation oi Methodist disunion. We had a large country then, and we have a larger now. There was room for every man to work. Northern men, of abolitionist tendencies, could not serve the Church in the South. That experiment was tried, with deplorable results. Southern men, " connected with slavery," could not serve New England stations and circuits, and the Southern brethren had the good sense not to try the experiment, and deplorable results were prevented. Why should we go any farther, and become deeper and deeper entangled at every step ? When love and esteem had departed, why should the skeleton bonds of ecclesiastical union h?e perpetuated*? 2 i8

BISHOP SIMPSON AS A POLITICIAN.

Happily, the General Conference of 1844, by a unanimous vote, was of our way of thinking upon this subject. They voted— and Bishop (then Mr. ) Simpson was among them — and they voted honestly, we have no doubt, that the time had come for the Southern Conferences to set up for themselves. As an abstract question the union of a million of Methodists in 1844 was a very beautiful and a very desirable thing. As an abstract question the union of five millions of Methodists would be a very beautiful, a very striking picture in 1891. But when the cold, clear light of philosophy and spiritual wisdom irradiates the scene the impartial observer sees that the danger that existed in 1844 ^as been multiplied fivefold in 1890. The whole subject has been narrowed down into a single sentence. If Southern Methodism is the thing that Dr. Crooks has painted it, we were unworthy of the union with good men in 1844, as we are unworthy of such a union at this day. If Southern Methodism has been misrepresented by Dr. Crooks, and by many others, the moral unfitness belongs to the other party. If there be no moral question involved (and there ought not to be), yet the peculiar conditions of our country are such that the ends of peace and the cause of God require that each section should be allowed to work out its destiny and fulfill its obligations with the least possible hinderance from the other.

Dr. Crooks calls the separation of 1844 a " schism. " This is unfortunate for his case, be-

BISHOP SIMPSON AS A POLITICIAN. IO.

cause Bishop Simpson was one of the men who created this " schism." He indorsed by his vote the action of the Southern Conferences, by providing a plan for their erection into an independent Church. This we shall show presently. But this ecclesiastical schism, Dr. Crooks says, was the prelude to a civil schism of greater dimensions and of untold horrors.

We have already stated that we do not see the slightest connection, between the organization of the Southern Methodist Church and the Civil War of 1861. If any Southern delegate on the floor of the Conference or elsewhere proclaimed the separation of 1844 as a prelude to disunion and civil war, he was acting only as others have done who predicted civil war and dissolution of the Union half a century before, and many times since, the exciting and procuring cause being the state of public opinion in New England.

It is well to take a cursory view of some facts that lie beyond the observation of the casual reader. A correspondent of Mr. Jefferson, ex-President of the United States, wrote to him in 1825, concerning an interview fhat occurred between Mr. Jefferson and John Quincy Adams in 1808. Mr. Jefferson replies:

That interview I remember well; not indeed in the very words which passed between us, but in their substance, which was of a character too awful, too deeply engraved on my mind, and influencing too materially the course I had to pursue, ever to be forgotten. Mr. Adams called on me pending the embargo, and while endeavors were making to obtain its repeal. He made some apologies for the call, on the ground of our not being then in the habit of confidential communications, but that which he had then to make involved too seriously the interest of our country not to overrule all other considerations with him, and make it his duty to reveal it to myself particularly. I assured him that there was no occasion for any apology for his visit; that on the contrary his communications would be thankfully received, and would add a confirmation the more to my entire confidence in the rectitude and patriotism of his conduct and principles. He spoke then of the dissatisfaction of the eastern portion of our Confederacy with the restraints of the embargo then existing, and their restlessness under it; that there was nothing which might not be attempted to rid themselves of it; that he had information of the most unquestionable certainty that certain citizens of the Eastern States (I think he named Massachusetts particularly) were in negotiation with agents of the British Government, the object of which was an agreement that the New England States should take no further part in the war then going on ; that without formally declaring their separation from the Union of the States, they should withdraw from all aid and obedience to them ; that their navigation and commerce should be free from restraint and interruption by the British; that they should be considered and treated by them as neutrals, and as such might conduct themselves toward both parties; and at the close of the war be at liberty to rejoin the Confederacy. He assured me that there was eminent danger that the convention would take place; that the temptations were such as might debauch many from their fidelity to the Union ; and that to enable its friends to make head against it the repeal of the embargo was absolutely necessary. I expressed a just sense of the merit of this information, and of the importance of the disclosure to the safety and even the salvation of our country; and however reluctant I was to abandon the measure (a measure which, persevered in a little longer, we had subsequent and satisfactory assurance would have effected its object completely), from that moment, and influenced bv that information, I saw the necessity of abandoning it, and instead of effecting our purpose by this peaceful weapon we must fight it out or break the Union. I then recommended to mv friends to yield to the necessity of a repeal of the embargo, and to endeavor to supply its place by the best substitute in which they could procure a general concurrence. ("Jefferson's Correspondence," Vol. IV., pp. 419, 420.)