January the 5th, 1798.  I receive a very remarkable fact indeed, in our history, from Baldwin and Skinner.  Before the establishment of our present government, a very extensive combination had taken place in New York and the eastern States, among that description of people who were partly monarchical in principle, or frightened with Shays’s rebellion and the impotence of the old Congress.  Delegates in different places had actually had consultations on the subject of seizing on the powers of a government, and establishing them by force; had corresponded with one another, and had sent a deputy to General Washington to solicit his co-operation.  He refused to join them.  The new convention was in the mean time proposed by Virginia and appointed.  These people believed it impossible the States should ever agree on a government, as this must include the impost and all the other powers which the States had, a thousand times, refused to the general authority.  They therefore let the proposed convention go on, not doubting its failure, and confiding that on its failure would be a still more favorable moment for their enterprise.  They therefore wished it to fail, and especially, when Hamilton, their leader, brought forward his plan of government, failed entirely in carrying it, and retired in disgust from the convention.  His associates then took every method to prevent any form of government being agreed to.  But the well-intentioned never ceased trying, first one thing, then another, till they could get something agreed to.  The final passage and adoption of the constitution completely defeated the views of the combination, and saved us from an attempt to establish a government over us by force.  This fact throws a blaze of light on the conduct of several members from New York and the eastern States in the convention of Annapolis, and the grand convention.  At that of Annapolis, several eastern members most vehemently opposed Madison’s proposition for a more general convention, with more general powers.  They wished things to get more and more into confusion, to justify the violent measure they proposed.  The idea of establishing a government by reasoning and agreement, they publicly ridiculed as an Utopian project, visionary and unexampled.

February the 6th, 1798.  Mr. Baldwin tells me, that in a conversation yesterday with Goodhue, on the state of our affairs, Goodhue said, ’I’ll tell you what, I have made up my mind on this subject; I would rather the old ship should go down than not’; (meaning the Union of the States.) Mr. Hillhouse coming up, ‘Well,’ says Mr. Baldwin, ’I’ll tell my old friend Hillhouse what you say ’; and he told him.  ‘Well,’ says Goodhue, ’I repeat, that I would rather the old ship should go down, if we are to be always kept pumping so.’  ‘Mr. Hillhouse,’ says Baldwin, ’you remember when we were learning logic together at school, there was the case categorical and the case hypothetical.  Mr. Goodhue stated it to me first as the case categorical.