=The Federalists Discredited.=—­By a strange turn of fortune’s wheel, the party of Hamilton, Washington, Adams, the party of the grand nation, became the party of provincialism and nullification.  New England, finding its shipping interests crippled in the European conflict and then penalized by embargoes, opposed the declaration of war on Great Britain, which meant the completion of the ruin already begun.  In the course of the struggle, the Federalist leaders came perilously near to treason in their efforts to hamper the government of the United States; and in their desperation they fell back upon the doctrine of nullification so recently condemned by them when it came from Kentucky.  The Senate of Massachusetts, while the war was in progress, resolved that it was waged “without justifiable cause,” and refused to approve military and naval projects not connected with “the defense of our seacoast and soil.”  A Boston newspaper declared that the union was nothing but a treaty among sovereign states, that states could decide for themselves the question of obeying federal law, and that armed resistance under the banner of a state would not be rebellion or treason.  The general assembly of Connecticut reminded the administration at Washington that “the state of Connecticut is a free, sovereign, and independent state.”  Gouverneur Morris, a member of the convention which had drafted the Constitution, suggested the holding of another conference to consider whether the Northern states should remain in the union.

[Illustration:  From an old cartoon

NEW ENGLAND JUMPING INTO THE HANDS OF GEORGE III]

In October, 1814, a convention of delegates from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and certain counties of New Hampshire and Vermont was held at Hartford, on the call of Massachusetts.  The counsels of the extremists were rejected but the convention solemnly went on record to the effect that acts of Congress in violation of the Constitution are void; that in cases of deliberate, dangerous, and palpable infractions the state is duty bound to interpose its authority for the protection of its citizens; and that when emergencies occur the states must be their own judges and execute their own decisions.  Thus New England answered the challenge of Calhoun and Clay.  Fortunately its actions were not as rash as its words.  The Hartford convention merely proposed certain amendments to the Constitution and adjourned.  At the close of the war, its proposals vanished harmlessly; but the men who made them were hopelessly discredited.

=The Second United States Bank.=—­In driving the Federalists towards nullification and waging a national war themselves, the Republicans lost all their old taint of provincialism.  Moreover, in turning to measures of reconstruction called forth by the war, they resorted to the national devices of the Federalists.  In 1816, they chartered for a period of twenty years a second United States Bank—­the institution which Jefferson and Madison once had condemned as unsound and unconstitutional.  The Constitution remained unchanged; times and circumstances had changed.  Calhoun dismissed the vexed question of constitutionality with a scant reference to an ancient dispute, while Madison set aside his scruples and signed the bill.