both of them, devoted friends of the Union they had helped to construct. Why should they announce a theory of the Constitution that was so full of dangerous possibilities?

The answer is, they were announcing the theory upon which the States, or at least many of the States, had ten years before ratified the Constitution. A crisis in the life of the new government had now come. Congress had usurped powers not given; it had exercised powers that had been prohibited, and the government was enforcing the obnoxious statutes with a high hand. Dissatisfaction was intense.

Jefferson and Madison were undoubtedly Republican partisans, Jefferson especially; but it is equally certain that they were both friends of the Union, and as such they concluded, with the lights before them, that the wise course would be to submit to the people, in ample time for full consideration, before the then coming presidential election, a full, clear, and comprehensive exposition of the Constitution precisely as they, and as the people, then understood it. This they did in the resolutions of 1798 and 1799, and the very same voters who had created

the Constitution of 1789, now, with their sons to aid them, endorsed these resolutions in the election of 1800, which had been laid before them by the legislatures of two Republican States as a correct construction. of that instrument.

The Republicans under Jefferson came into power with an immense majority. The people were satisfied with the Constitution as it had been construed in the election of 1800, and the country under control of the Republicans was happy and prosperous for three decades. Then the party in power began to split into National Republicans and Democratic Republicans. The National Republicans favored a liberal construction of the Constitution and became Whigs; the Democratic Republicans dropped the name Republican and became Democrats.

The foregoing sketch has been given with no intent to write a political history, but only to show with what emphasis the American people condemned all violations of the Constitution up to the time when, in 1831, our story of the Abolitionists is to begin. The sketch has also served to explain the theory of State-rights, as it was held in

early days, and later, by the Southern people.

Whether the union of the States under the Constitution as expounded by the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions would survive every trial that was to come, remained to be seen. The question was destined to perplex Mr. Jefferson himself, more than

once.

Indeed, even while Washington was President there had been disunion sentiment in Congress. In 1794 the celebrated Virginian, John Taylor, of Caroline, shortly after he had expressed an intention of publicly resigning from the United States Senate, was approached in the privacy of a committee room by Rufus King, senator from New York, and Oliver Ellsworth, a senator from Massachusetts, both Federalists, with a proposition for a dissolution of the Union by mutual consent, the line of division to be somewhere from the Potomac to the Hudson. This was on the ground "that it was utterly impossible for the Union to continue. That the Southern and the Eastern people thought quite differently," etc. Taylor contended for the Union, and noth

ing came of the conference, the story of which remained a secret for over a hundred years.1

"In the winter of 1803-4, immediately after, and as a consequence of, the acquisition of Louisiana, certain leaders of the Federal party conceived the project of the dissolution of the Union and the establishment of a Northern Confederacy, the justifying causes to those who entertained it, that the acquisition of Louisiana to the Union transcended the constitutional powers of the government of the United States; that it created, in fact, a new confederacy to which the States, united by the former compact, were not bound to adhere; that it was

1 Taylor was so deeply impressed by the conference, which was protracted, that two days later, May 11, 1794, he made an extended note of it which he sent to Mr. Madison. At the foot of his note Taylor says, among other things: "He (T.) is thoroughly convinced that the design to break up the Union is contemplated. The assurance, the manner, the earnestness, and the countenances with which the idea was uttered, all disclosed the most serious intention. It is also probable that K. (King) and E. (Ellsworth) having heard that T. (Taylor) was against the (adoption of) the Constitution have hence imbibed a mistaken opinion that he was secretly an enemy of the Union, and conceived that he was a fit instrument (as he was about retiring) to infuse notions into the anti-federal temper of Virginia, consonant to their views."-"Disunion Sentiment in the Congress in 1794" (with fac-simile of Taylor memorandum), by Gaillard Hunt, Editor of Writings of James Madison. Lowdermilk Co., Washington, D. C., 1905.

oppressive of the interests and destructive of the influence of the northern section of the Confederacy, whose right and duty it was therefore to secede from the new body politic, and to constitute one of their own. This project did not assume serious proportions.

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John Fiske in his school history says: "John Quincy Adams, a supporter of the embargo act of 1807, privately informed President Jefferson (in February, 1809) that further attempts to enforce it in the New England States would be likely to drive them to secession. Accordingly, the embargo was repealed, and the non-intercourse act substituted for it."

The spirit of nationality was yet in its infancy, threats of secession were common, and they came then mostly from New England. These threats were in no wise connected with slavery; agitators had not then made slavery a national issue; the idea of separation was prompted by the fear that power in the councils of the Union would pass into the hands of other sections.

1 C. F. Robertson, "The Louisiana Purchase," etc. "Papers of the American Association," vol. I, pp. 262, 263.