Despite Mathew Carey’s concerns that New England was on the brink of seceding from the Union, Harrison Gray Otis had other plans. He wrote the purpose of the convention was “to take measures to defend ourselves against the enemy; as the General Government cannot do it.” Otis intended, he said, “to treat the administration as having abdicated the Government.”[1]
Otis and the other leaders of the Hartford Convention planned to do what the Massachusetts resolution had suggested they do. They were to devise a plan for defense of New England’s coast. They also hoped to bring about changes in the national government with discussion of a constitutional amendment.[2]
[1] James M. Banner, Jr. To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts 1789-1815 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970) 333.
[2] Banner, To the Hartford Convention, 333.
