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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
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