The magnitude and jealousy of Massachusetts would render it necessary that the operation should be commenced there. If any hope can be created that New York will ultimately support the plan, it may perhaps be supported."
The first action, said he, must come from the Legislature of Massachusetts, which was not yet elected, but would meet early in June. Connecticut and New Hampshire were to follow; and to Pickering's sanguine mind the Northern Confederacy seemed already established. "The people of the East," he said, "cannot reconcile their habits, views, and interests with those of the South and West. The latter are beginning to rule with a rod of iron."
Pickering knew that the Federalist majority in Massachusetts was none too great. The election in May, four months later, showed a Federalist vote of 30,000 against a Republican minority of 24,000, while in the Legislature Harrison Gray Otis was chosen Speaker by 129 votes to 103. Pickering knew also that his colleague, Senator Adams, was watching his movements with increasing ill-will, which Pickering lost no chance to exasperate. Nothing could be more certain than that at the first suggestion of disunion Senator Adams and the moderate Federalists would attack the Essex Junto with the bitterness of long-suppressed hatred; and if they could not command fourteen votes in the Legislature and three thousand in the State, a great change must have occurred since the year before, when they elected Adams to the
