Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 22.djvu/43

 J t/,, H ''//'. .',]

The people of the South did not wish to give up the benefits of a government to the establishment of which they had so largely con- tributed. They were loyal and law-abiding, and refused to follow the example of the participants in the Shay rebellion in New York, the whiskey rebellion in Pennsylvania, the Dorr rebellion in Rhode Island, and the Hartford convention rebellion in Connecticut; but they reluctantly succumbed to the conviction that the party about to take control would have no respect for their rights. For more than half a century they had been taught by their northern brethren that when the people of a State found that it was not to their advantage to remain in the Union it was not only their privilege but their duty to peacefully withdraw from it.

SECESSION ADVOCATED BY MASSACHUSETTS.

Ninety years ago the people of Massachusetts expressed them- selves in favor of the principle of secession by the enactment of the following resolution in the Massachusetts Legislature:

That the annexation of Louisiana to the Union transcends the con- stitutional power of the Government of the United States. It formed a new Confederacy, to which the States united by the former com- pact are not bound to adhere.

It is clearly shown by the history of the times that the people of New England were very pronounced in their expressions that the Constitution recognized the unquestioned right of a State to secede from the Union.

At the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of Washington, April 30, 1839, ex-President John Quincy Adams delivered an address which was received with great approval by the people. In that speech Mr. Adams said:

But the indissoluble union between the several States of this con- federated nation is, after all, not in the right but in the heart. If the day should ever come (may Heaven avert it!) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collision of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political asseveration will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies ; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited States to part in friendship from each other than to be held together by constraint. Then will be the time for reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation