The unknown is apt to be exaggerated; so that, if these threats of disunion were now heard for the first time, we might, perhaps, pardon men who yield to their influence. But since this is not the first time such cries are heard,--since, indeed, they have been long sounding in our ears, so that their exact value is perfectly understood from the very beginning,--there seems no longer excuse or apology for hearkening to them. They are to be treated as threats, and nothing more. Look at them from the outset, and you will see their constant recurrence as weapons of political warfare.
Even while the Constitution was under discussion in the National Convention, the threats began. Georgia and South Carolina announced that they would not come into the Union, unless the African Slave-Trade, so dear in their sight, was allowed for twenty years under the Constitution; and the North ignominiously yielded this barbarous privilege, thus consenting to piracy. The cry from these States was then, “We will not come in.” Ever since it has been, “We will not stay in.”
One of the earliest and most characteristic outcries was on the ratification of Jay’s Treaty in 1795. This famous treaty, negotiated by John Jay, at that time Chief Justice of the United States, under the instructions of Washington, provided for the surrender of the Western posts by Great Britain, and indemnity to our merchants for spoliations on their commerce, and also the adjustment of claims of British merchants upon our citizens. In the opposition which it encountered we meet the following threat of disunion in Virginia, published in Davis’s Gazette, at Richmond.
“Notice is hereby given, that, in case the treaty entered into by that d--d arch-traitor, J--n J--y, with the British tyrant should be ratified, a petition will be presented to the General Assembly of Virginia, at their next session, praying that the said State may _recede_ [such was the word in that early day] from the Union, and be left under the government and protection of one hundred thousand free and independent Virginians.
“P. S.--As it is the wish of the people of the said State to enter into a treaty of amity and commerce and navigation with any other State or States of the present Union who are averse to returning again under the galling yoke of Great Britain, the printers of the (at present) United States are requested to publish the above notification.”[18]