1860-'61.

The obloquy which has attached to the members of the Hartford Convention
has resulted partly from a want of exact knowledge of their proceedings,
partly from the secrecy by which they were veiled, but mainly because it
was a recognized effort to paralyze the arm of the Federal Government
while engaged in a war arising from outrages committed upon American
seamen on the decks of American ships. The indignation felt was no doubt
aggravated by the fact that those ships belonged in a great extent to
the people who were now plotting against the war-measures of the
Government, and indirectly, if not directly, giving aid and comfort to
the public enemy. Time, which has mollified passion, and revealed many
things not then known, has largely modified the first judgment passed on
the proceedings and purposes of the Hartford Convention; and, but for
the circumstances of existing war which surrounded it, they might have
been viewed as political opinions merely, and have received
justification instead of censure.

Again, in 1844-'45 the measures taken for the annexation of Texas evoked
remonstrances, accompanied by threats of a dissolution of the Union from
the Northeastern States. The Legislature of Massachusetts, in 1844,
adopted a resolution, declaring, in behalf of that State, that "the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, faithful to the compact between the
people of the United States, according to the plain meaning and intent
in which it was understood by them, is sincerely anxious for its
preservation; but that it is determined, as it doubts not the other
States are, _to submit to undelegated powers in no body of men on
earth_"; and that "the project of the annexation of Texas, unless
arrested on the threshold, _may tend to drive these States into a
dissolution of the Union_."

Early in the next year (February 11, 1845), the same Legislature adopted
and communicated to Congress a series of resolutions on the same
subject, in one of which it was declared that, "as the powers of
legislation granted in the Constitution of the United States to Congress
do not embrace a case of the admission of a foreign state or foreign
territory, by legislation, into the Union, such an act of admission
would have _no binding force whatever on the people of Massachusetts_"--
language which must have meant that the admission of Texas would be a
justifiable ground for secession, unless it was intended to announce the
purpose of nullificatio