In Washington, November 28, 1814 Timothy Pickering wrote a letter to John Lowell, Jr. After touching upon the notion he formerly held that “the Western States go off, leaving the ‘good old thirteen States…to themselves’ ” Pickering wrote of the need to amend the Constitution, after New England had decided on how to defend itself.
He proposed twelve changes:[1]
- “Abolish negro representation,” the detested Three-Fifths Clause
- Prohibit interruption of trade for any reason without agreement by the nine states on the Atlantic seaboard
- Limit the presidency to one term
- Prohibit election of a new president from the same state as the previous president
- Restore the original method of presidential and vice-presidential elections
- Change the method of appointments to military and civil offices to prevent bribery and corruption
- Make attainment of citizenship more difficult and exclude anyone but natives from Congress
- Limit the number of representatives in the House, despite any increase in population
- “Require the vote of two-thirds or three-fourths of each House of Congress” when declaring war
- Prohibit the use of “usurious loans” for the waging of war
- Question if the states west of the Mississippi might form a new confederacy
- Revise the wording “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises with the wording “but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” He noted that collection of taxes was often considered a separate power from paying debts and providing for defense and welfare. He considered that providing for general welfare ought to be considered in conjunction with the expenditure of taxes, duties, imposts and excises.
Next: What John Lowell Hoped the Hartford Convention Would Accomplish
[1] Timothy Pickering to John Lowell, Jr. 28 November, 1814, Henry Adams (ed.) Documents relating to New-England Federalism 1800-1815, (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1877) 407-9.
