two thirds of the Senate the right to "destroy our government"? If Breckinridge had expressed those ideas in his Kentucky Resolutions, American history would have contained less dispute as to the meaning of States-rights and the powers of the central government; but Breckinridge himself would have then led the Federalist, not the Republican party.
Breckinridge’s speech was followed by one from Pickering’s colleague, the young senator from Massachusetts, son of John Adams, the Federalist President whom Jefferson had succeeded. The Federalist majority in Massachusetts was divided; one portion followed the lead of the Essex Junto, the other and larger part yielded unwillingly to the supremacy of Alexander Hamilton and George Cabot. When in the spring of 1803 both seats of Massachusetts in the United States Senate became by chance vacant at once, the Essex Junto wished to choose Timothy Pickering for the long term. The moderate Federalists set Pickering aside, elected John Quincy Adams, then thirty-six years old, for the long term, and allowed Pickering to enter the Senate only as junior senator to a man more than twenty years younger than himself, whose father had but three years before dismissed Pickering abruptly and without explanation from his Cabinet. Neither of the senators owned a temper or character likely to allay strife. From the moment of their appearance in the Senate they took opposite sides.
