Harrison Gray Otis reported for his committee:
“The state of the national Treasury…requires an augmentation of existing taxes; and if in addition to these the people of Massachusetts, deprived of their commerce and harassed by a formidable enemy, are compelled to provide for the indispensable duty of self-defence, it must soon become impossible for them to sustain this burden…This people are not ready for conquest or submission; but being ready and determined to defend themselves, they have the greatest need of those resources derivable from themselves which the national government has hitherto thought proper to employ elsewhere.”[1]
Harrison Gray Otis
The United States had not lived up to its constitutional duty to defend New England. Rather than proposing a convention by a single state, Otis and his committee advised that states in New England should be invited to a joint convention.[2]
The convention would have several objectives. The first was to provide defense for New England. The second was to lay the groundwork for radical reform followed by a nation-wide convention of the states. [3]
The committee also advised enlisting a Massachusetts army of ten thousand troops, a million dollar loan, and a meeting with delegates from other New England states to devise methods for defense of New England.[4]
The Massachusetts legislature selected twelve delegates headed by moderate Federalists George Cabot and Harrison Gray Otis. They would invite other states in New England to take part in a convention scheduled for December 15, 1814.
The need to defend New England finally galvanized moderate Federalists to organize a convention that radicals such as Timothy Pickering had long proposed.
Why Timothy Pickering Had His Doubts
Look for it Monday, August 18
[1] Senate Report of October 18, 1814, quoted in Henry Adams, History of the United States of America During the Administrations of James Madison (New York: Literary Classics of the United States) 1066.
[2] Senate Report, quoted in Adams, History…Administrations of James Madison, 1066.
[3] Senate Report, quoted in Adams, History…Administrations of James Madison, 1067.
[4] Senate Report, quoted in Adams, History…Administrations of James Madison, 1067.
