[rustbucket]

We are induced to hope that we shall not be altogether considered as foreigners, having no particular affinity or connexion with the United States.

Interesting, thanks.

I see that the rest of that sentence dealt with Rhode Island not threatening the revenue of the United States. Even so, Congress threatened (and maybe passed) tariffs on imports from Rhode Island and North Carolina since they had not ratified the Constitution. They treated these two states just like foreign states because that is what they were.

Perhaps if the Confederacy had not threatened the economic livelihood of the Northern states by retaining the tariff levels of 1857 instead of going along with the Morrill tariff, Lincoln would not have provoked war. However, even if the Confederacy had used the same tariff levels as the North, the North would have had a severe balance of payments problem without Southern exports. The North would have suffered inflation, and Lincoln might have still been tempted to provoke war.

[Gianni]

The letter was essentially a preemptive strike by Rhode Island, since the Senate had already considered measures to impose what amounts to an embargo in response to alleged smuggling. The goal of the senate was to force ratification, the house had laid it aside - the speech surrounding it discussed the wrong-headedness of attempted coersion, interestingly enough, and that RI would be correct in hostility toward the US were such measures to be taken.

Must not the Rhode Islanders, like the Bostonians, detest the curel attempt, resent it, and, but their resentment, may not the consequences be too much like those which followed in the case alluded to? [Gianni note: outbreak of war] May they not be applauded by true republicans throughout the world?