Hartford Convention
This convention discussed removing the three-fifths compromise and requiring a two-thirds majority in Congress for the admission of new states, declarations of war, and creating laws restricting trade.
However, weeks after the convention's end, news of Major General Andrew Jackson's overwhelming victory in New Orleans swept over the Northeast.
After ending their war with Napoleonic France, Great Britain was able to marshal more resources to North America and had effectively blockaded the entire eastern coastline.
Free trade with the rest of the world had virtually ceased, thousands were thrown out of work, and by August banks were suspending specie payment.
New Englanders were reluctant to have their militia, needed to defend their coasts from British attacks, assigned elsewhere or placed under the command of the regular army.
[2]: 40–41 The anti-war sentiment in Massachusetts was so strong that even Samuel Dexter, the Democratic-Republican candidate for governor, opposed the national party's commerce policies.
Even though this had not been one of the original grievances that led to the call for the convention, Federalists presented this as further proof that the Democratic-Republicans intended to bring military despotism into the nation.
There were fears that New England would negotiate a separate peace with Great Britain, an action in many ways just as harmful to the nation as actual secession.
In preparing for a worst-case scenario, Madison moved troops from the New York–Canada border to Albany where they could quickly be sent to Massachusetts or Connecticut to preserve federal authority.
[4]: 219–221 In response to the war crisis, Massachusetts Governor Strong called the newly elected General Court to a special session on October 5, 1814.
The stated purpose of the convention was to propose constitutional amendments to protect their section's interests and to make arrangements with the Federal government for their own military defense.
In Connecticut, the legislature denounced Madison's "odious and disastrous war", voiced concern about plans to implement a national draft, and selected seven delegates led by Chauncey Goodrich and James Hillhouse.
The report said that New England had a "duty" to assert its authority over unconstitutional infringements on its sovereignty—a doctrine that echoed the policy of Jefferson and Madison in 1798 (in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions), and which would later reappear in a different context as "nullification".
Historian Samuel Eliot Morison rejected the notion that the Hartford convention was an attempt to take New England out of the Union and give treasonous aid and comfort to Britain.
Morison wrote: "Democratic politicians, seeking a foil to their own mismanagement of the war and to discredit the still formidable Federalist party, caressed and fed this infant myth until it became so tough and lusty as to defy both solemn denials and documentary proof.
By the time they arrived in February 1815, news of Andrew Jackson's overwhelming victory at the Battle of New Orleans, and the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, preceded them and, consequently, their presence in the capital seemed both ludicrous and subversive.
[10] The party was ruined and ceased to be a significant force in national politics, although in a few places (notably Massachusetts, where Federalists were elected governor annually until 1823) it retained some power.
