Note 12 — Chapter IV

January 14, 1811, in the debate in the House of Representatives upon the erection of the Louisiana purchase into a State, Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, opposed the measure. “He expressed his deliberate opinion that so flagrant a disregard of the Constitution would be a virtual dissolution of the bonds of the Union, freeing the States composing it from their moral obligation of adhesion to each other, and making it the right of all, as it would become the duty of some, to prepare definitively for separation, amicably if they might, forcibly if they must! This declaration, the first announcement on the floor of Congress of the doctrine of Secession, produced a call to order from Poindexter, delegate from the Mississippi Territory.” Hildreth’s Hist. U. S., Vol. III., p. 226.