New England States Asserted their Rights to President Madison in 1813
By 1813, the state governments of New England were under Federalist control. Federalists opposed the war from the beginning, and were poised to assert states’ rights to President Madison. Ironically, Madison developed arguments for states’ rights his Virginia Resolution of 1798. He suggested a state could “interpose” its authority when its citizens suffered from the actions of the Federal government.[1]
While Federal forces waged war on Canada, New England’s economy fared well. At first, the British blockade did not cover New England’s seaports. Merchants traded with Canada. They used wagons or sleds to deliver goods to the Mid-Atlantic and the South. After the governors of Rhode Island and Connecticut refused to place their militias under the leadership of the war department, Massachusetts was left to its own defenses. [2]
Federalist newspapers claimed the war aided Napoleon. They argued the Federal Constitution did not favor them. Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory without regard to the Constitution. New England had no reason to remain in the Union.[3]
Former president John Adams was concerned. On July 8, 1813 he wrote to Mathew Carey, noting the apathy of New Englanders, once so spirited during the Revolution. On July 20, Carey pessimistically responded making observations on the opposition to the federal government by the powerful, elite Federalists of Massachusetts.[4]
In May, 1814, the British blockaded New England’s coast. They occupied parts of Maine, and the Royal Navy attacked New England’s coastline.[5]
How Madison Reacted to South Carolina’s Assertion of States’ Rights during the Nullification Crisis in 1831
Jefferson and Madison secretly composed their Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798. John C. Calhoun also concealed his identity when he wrote his South Carolina Exposition in 1828. By 1833, Calhoun was ready to make his views public. Calhoun moderated his approach to states’ rights, in a newspaper article called “The Fort Hill Address.” He wrote that states’ rights curbed the excesses and tyranny of a nation-wide majority. He did not use the word “nullification.” [6] His arguments were, nevertheless, clearly based on Jefferson’s and Madison’s Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions.
Jefferson died in 1826, but Madison was still alive. Of all those who attended the Philadelphia convention in 1787, only he remained with a memory of its proceedings. When he read the South Carolina Exposition, Calhoun’s earlier anonymous work, Madison dismissed it, asserting that a state could not nullify federal acts. In his old age, and after the War of 1812, Madison was a nationalist. He regarded the term “imposition” more as a protest than the authority to nullify laws.[7]
Next: What Happened Off the Coast of Massachusetts during the War of 1812; How Calhoun’s Nullification Differs from the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
Look for it Monday, February 11.
[1] Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, Vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962) 367.
[2] Morison and Commager, Growth of the American Republic, 426-7.
[3] Morison and Commager, Growth of the American Republic, 427.
[4] Edward C. Carter II, “Mathew Carey and ‘The Olive Branch,’ 1814-1818,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 89. No. 4 (October 1965) 403.
[5] Morison and Commager, Growth of the American Republic, 427.
[6]Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) 399.
[7] Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 400, Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) 369.
