er
New England States. The acquisition of Louisiana, in 1803, had created
much dissatisfaction in those States, for the reason, expressed by an
eminent citizen of Massachusetts,[22] 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 a 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."[23]

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 practicability of a long-continued
Union. A _Northern Confederacy_ 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. The Southern States would
require the naval protection of the _Northern Union_, and the
products of the former would be important to the navigation and
commerce of the latter....

"It [the separation] must begin, in Massachusetts. The
proposition would be welcomed in Connecticut; and could we doubt