Had this intolerant sectional feeling ever prevailed and
been adopted as the policy of the Atlantic States, the West would have
revolted, and would have been right in revolting. But the manifestations
of this sectionalism proved abortive; the broad patriotism of leaders
like Washington prevailed. In the actual event the East did full and
free justice to the West. In consequence we are now one nation.
Separatist and Disunion Feeling in the West.
While many of the people on the eastern seaboard thus took an
indefensible position in reference to the trans-Alleghany settlements,
in the period immediately succeeding the Revolution, there were large
bodies of the population of these same settlements, including very many
of their popular leaders, whose own attitude towards the Union was, if
anything, even more blameworthy. They were clamorous about their rights,
and were not unready to use veiled threats of disunion when they deemed
these rights infringed; but they showed little appreciation of their own
duties to the Union. For certain of the positions which they assumed no
excuse can be offered. They harped continually on the feebleness of the
Federal authorities, and the inability of these authorities to do them
justice or offer them adequate protection against the Indian and the
Spaniard; yet they bitterly opposed the adoption of the very
Constitution which provided a strong and stable Federal Government, and
turned the weak confederacy, despised at home and abroad, into one of
the great nations of the earth.
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