of New Hampshire? But New York must be associated; and how is
her concurrence to be obtained? She must be made the center of
the Confederacy. Vermont and New Jersey would follow of course,
and Rhode Island of necessity."[24]

Substituting South Carolina for Massachusetts; Virginia for New York;
Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, for New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode
Island; Kentucky for New Jersey, etc., etc., we find the suggestions of
1860-'61 only a reproduction of those thus outlined nearly sixty years
earlier.

Mr. Pickering seems to have had a correct and intelligent perception of
the altogether pacific character of the secession which he proposed, and
of the mutual advantages likely to accrue to both sections from a
peaceable separation. Writing in February, 1804, he explicitly disavows
the idea of hostile feeling or action toward the South, expressing
himself as follows:

"While thus contemplating the only means of maintaining our
ancient institutions in morals and religion, and our equal rights,
we wish no ill to the Southern States and those naturally connected
with them. The public debts might be equitably apportioned
between the new confederacies, and a separation somewhere
about the line above suggested would divide the different characters
of the existing Union. The manners of the Eastern portion
of the States would be sufficiently congenial to form a Union, and
their interests are alike intimately connected with agriculture and
commerce. A friendly and commercial intercourse would be maintained
with the States in the Southern Confederacy as at present.
Thus all the advantages which have been for a few years depending
on the general Union would be continued to its respective portions,
without the jealousies and enmities which now afflict both,
and which peculiarly embitter the condition of that of the North.
It is not unusual for two friends, when disagreeing about the mode
of conducting a common concern, to separate and manage, each in
his own way, his separate interest, and thereby preserve a useful
friendship, which without such separation would infallibly be
destroyed."[25]

Such were the views of an undoubted patriot who had participated in the
formation of the Union, and who had long been confidentially associated
with Washington in the administration of its Government, looking at the
subject from a