What the Committee Reported

Harrison Gray Otis reported for his committee:

The state of the national Treasury…requires an augmentation of existing taxes; and if in addition to these the people of Massachusetts, deprived of their commerce and harassed by a formidable enemy, are compelled to provide for the indispensable duty of self-defence, it must soon become impossible for them to sustain this burden…This people are not ready for conquest or submission; but being ready and determined to defend themselves, they have the greatest need of those resources derivable from themselves which the national government has hitherto thought proper to employ elsewhere.”[1]

                                                                   Harrison Gray Otis

The United States had not lived up to its constitutional duty to defend New England.  Rather than proposing a convention by a single state, Otis and his committee advised that states in New England should be invited to a joint convention.[2]

The convention would have several objectives.  The first was to provide defense for New England.  The second was to lay the groundwork for radical reform followed by a nation-wide convention of the states. [3]

The committee also advised enlisting a Massachusetts army of ten thousand troops, a million dollar loan, and a meeting with delegates from other New England states to devise methods for defense of New England.[4]

The Massachusetts legislature selected twelve delegates headed by moderate Federalists George Cabot and Harrison Gray Otis.  They would invite other states in New England to take part in a convention scheduled for December 15, 1814.

The need to defend New England finally galvanized moderate Federalists to organize a convention that radicals such as Timothy Pickering had long proposed.

Why Timothy Pickering Had His Doubts

Look for it Monday, August 18

 

[1] Senate Report of October 18, 1814, quoted in Henry Adams, History of the United States of America During the Administrations of James Madison (New York:  Literary Classics of the United States) 1066.

[2] Senate Report, quoted in Adams,  History…Administrations of James Madison, 1066.

[3] Senate Report, quoted in Adams,  History…Administrations of James Madison, 1067.

[4] Senate Report, quoted in Adams,  History…Administrations of James Madison, 1067.

About “Caius”

Mathew Carey (1760-1839) used the pseudonym of “Caius,” a character from King Lear who was loyal but blunt. When Mathew Carey feared New England would secede from the Union, he read everything he could find on the history of civil wars. In that spirit, “Caius” offers a historical perspective for political discussion.
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