It is doubtful if the great body of Federalists in New York really sympathised with their eastern brethren. Those who did, like Gouverneur Morris, proclaimed their views in private and confidential letters. "I care nothing more for your actings and doings," Morris wrote Pickering, then in Congress. "Your decree of conscription and your levy of contributions are alike indifferent to one whose eyes are fixed on a star in the east, which he believes to be the dayspring of freedom and glory. The traitors and madmen assembled at Hartford will, I believe, if not too tame and timid, be hailed hereafter as the patriots and sages of their day and generation."[180] Looking back on the history of that portentous event, one is shocked to learn that men like Morris could have sympathy with the principle sought to be established; but if any leading New York Federalist disapproved the convention's report he made no public record of it at the time.[181] [Footnote 180: Gouverneur Morris to Timothy Pickering, Dec. 22, 1814, _Morris's Works_, Vol. 3, p. 324.] [Footnote 181: "Among the least violent of Federalists was James Lloyd, recently United States senator from Massachusetts. To John Randolph's letter, remonstrating against the Hartford Convention, Lloyd advised the Virginians to coerce Madison into retirement, and to place Rufus King in the Presidency as the alternative to a fatal issue. The assertion of such an alternative showed how desperate the situation was believed by the moderate Federalists to be."--Henry Adams, _History of the United States_, Vol. 8, p. 306.] The violent methods of New England governors in withdrawing their militia from the service of the United States, coupled with the action of the New York Federalists in calling a state convention to determine what course their party should pursue, were well calculated to arouse Governor Tompkins, who welcomed the privilege of upholding the general government. He did not minimise the gravity of the situation. Perhaps he did not feel the alarm expressed in Jefferson's letter to Gallatin, a year after the crisis had passed; for he now had behind him a patriotic Legislature and the nucleus of an invincible army under trained leadership. But if the war had continued, and, as the Washington authorities anticipated, the British had prevailed at New Orleans, he would have found a New England confederacy to the east of him as well as an army of English veterans on the north.