After years promoting a convention of New England states, Timothy Pickering was in favor of it. George Cabot and Harrison Gray Otis, two moderates, headed the delegation from Massachusetts. In a confidential letter to John Lowell, Pickering began by praising George Cabot. He wrote:
“His information is extensive; his experience and observation, invaluable. I do not know who has more political sagacity, a sounder judgment, or more dignity of character with unspotted integrity; and perhaps no man’s advice would go further to save a nation that was in his view salvable.”[1]
But then, Pickering had his doubts. He noted that Cabot was “pressed into this situation, reluctantly consenting to take it.” [2]
“But does he not despair of the Commonwealth? He considers the evil—the radical evil—to be inherent in the government itself, in democracy, and therefore incurable. Will he, then, think any plan which the wisdom of the Convention may devise worth an effort of his mind? … He once said to me… ‘Why can’t you and I let the world ruin itself its own way?’… In this wicked world, it is the duty of every good man, though he cannot restore it to innocence, to strive to prevent its growing worse.”[3]
Next: What John Adams Said About Cabot and the Convention
[1]Timothy Pickering to John Lowell, 7 November, 1814, Henry Adams (ed.) Documents relating to New-England Federalism. 1800-1815, (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1877)406.
2 Pickering to Lowell, 406.
[3] Pickering to Lowell, 406.
