When the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions appeared they were
not opposed on constitutional grounds, but on those of expediency and of
hostility to the revolution which they were considered to embody. Hamilton,
and no one knew the Constitution better than he, treated them as the
beginnings of an attempt to change the government, as the germs of a
conspiracy to destroy the Union. As Dr. Von Holst tersely and accurately
states it, "there was no time as yet to attempt to strangle the healthy
human mind in a net of logical deductions." That was the work reserved for
John C. Calhoun.
What is true of 1799 is true of the New England leaders at Washington when
they discussed the feasibility of secession in 1804; of the declaration in
favor of secession made by Josiah Quincy in Congress a few years later; of
the resistance of New England during the war of 1812, and of the right of
"interposition" set forth by the Hartford Convention. In all these
instances no one troubled himself about the constitutional aspect; it was a
question of expediency, of moral and political right or wrong.
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