Hartford Convention

Hartford Convention (1814–1815).The Hartford Convention was a conference of twenty‐six New England Federalists who met behind closed doors in the Connecticut state capital from December 1814 to January 1815 to channel opposition to the War of 1812. Rejecting extremist Federalist demands for resistance, nullification, and disunion, the convention pursued a moderate course.

The final report of the Hartford Convention echoed long‐standing grievances of New England Federalists against ex‐ President Thomas Jefferson, incumbent James Madison, and the Republican congressional majority. Conceding their party's permanent minority status, the Hartford Federalists recommended constitutional amendments that would give a congressional minority a qualified veto over unwanted legislation and would check the Jeffersonian Republican party's rising ascendancy. Under the proposed changes, a two‐thirds congressional majority would be required to approve all future embargoes, war declarations, and admission of new states; presidents would be limited to a single term; the three‐fifths constitutional compromise that gave southern slave states additional congressman and electoral votes would be repealed; and commercial embargoes would be limited to sixty days. The convention also demanded that Congress allow the state governments to use federal taxes collected within their own boundaries for their own defense, and recommended that states “interpose” their authority if a militia conscription proposal took effect.

Within New England, the Hartford Convention probably helped to quiet extremism. Elsewhere it had no direct effect other than to discredit the Federalist party as obstructionist. Fortuitously, news of the Treaty of Ghent, which officially ended the war, and of Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans, arrived simultaneously in Washington with the Hartford delegation, and the proposed amendments died.

Historian Henry Adams once implied that the Hartford Convention's real purpose was to promote New England's secession. In reality, the principal leaders were moderate Federalists whose purposes were to protest the war, advance constitutional proposals, protect the New England coast, and preempt radical acts by extremist Federalists.
See also Constitution; Early Republic, Era of the; Embargo Acts.

Bibliography

James M. Banner Jr. , To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789–1815, 1970.
Donald R. Hickey , The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, 1989.

Roger H. Brown