e right of a State to "interpose
its authority" for the protection of its citizens against
conscriptions and drafts, and for an arrangement with the general
government to retain "a reasonable portion" of the revenues to be used
in its own defence and in the defence of neighbouring States. In other
words, it favoured the establishment of a New England confederacy.
Thus, after ten years, the crisis had come which Pickering, the storm
petrel, desired to precipitate in the days when Hamilton declined to
listen and Aaron Burr consented to lead.

[Footnote 178: Message; _Niles_, Vol. 7, p. 113.]

[Footnote 179: Report of Oct. 8, 1814; _Niles_, Vol. 7, p. 149.]

It is doubtful if the great body of Federalists in New York really
sympathised with their eastern brethren. Those who did, like
Gouverneur Morris, proclaimed their views in private and confidential
letters. "I care nothing more for your actings and doings," Morris
wrote Pickering, then in Congress. "Your decree of conscription and
your levy of contributions are alike indifferent to one whose eyes are
fixed on a star in the east, which he believes to be the dayspring of
freedom and glory. The traitors and madmen assembled at Hartford will,
I believe, if not too tame and timid, be hailed hereafter as the
patriots and sages of their day and generation."[180] Looking back on
the history of that portentous event, one is shocked to learn that men
like Morris could have sympathy with the principle sought to be
established; but if any leading New York Federalist disapproved the
convention's report he made no public record of it at the time.[181]

[Footnote 180: Gouverneur Morris to Timothy Pickering, Dec. 22, 1814,
_Morris's Works_, Vol. 3, p. 324.]

[Footnote 181: "Among the least violent of Federalists was James
Lloyd, recently United States senator from Massachusetts. To John
Randolph's letter, remonstrating against the Hartford Convention,
Lloyd advised the Virginians to coerce Madison into retirement, and to
place Rufus King in the Presidency as the alternative to a fatal
issue. The assertion of such an alternative showed how desperate the
situation was believed by the moderate Federalists to be."--Henry
Adams, _History of the United States_, Vol. 8, p. 306.]

The violent methods of New England governors in withdrawing their
militia from the service of the United States, coupled with the action
of the New York Federalists in calling a state convention to determine