1804
CONSPIRACY.
161
declared that he did not know "one reflecting Nov-Anglian" who held any other.
In the month of January, 1804, despair turned into conspiracy. Pickering, Tracy, Griswold, Plumer, and perhaps others of the New England delegation, agreed to organize a movement in their States for a dissolution of the Union. They wrote to their most influential constituents, and sketched a plan of action. In a letter to George Cabot, Pickering recounted the impending dangers[1]:—
- "By the Philadelphia papers I see that the Supreme Court judges of Pennsylvania are to be hurled from their seats, on the pretence that in punishing one Thomas Passmore for a contempt they acted illegally and tyrannically. I presume that Shippen, Yates, and Smith are to be removed by the Governor, on the representation of the Legislature. And when such grounds are taken in the National and State legislatures to destroy the rights of the judges, whose rights can be safe? Why destroy them, unless as the prelude to the destruction of every influential Federalist and of every man of considerable property who is not of the reigning sect? New judges, of characters and tempers suited to the object, will be the selected ministers of vengeance."
A separation, Pickering inferred, had become necessary; but when and how was it to be effected?
- "If Federalism is crumbling away in New England, there is no time to be lost, lest it should be overwhelmed and become unable to attempt its own relief; its last
- ↑ Pickering to George Cabot, Jan. 29, 1804; Lodge's Cabot, p. 337.
