The reply was disingenuous, but decisive. The question was not whether the States in union could lawfully admit England or France into the Union, for no one denied that the States could do what they pleased. Griswold only affirmed that the people of the States had never delegated to John Randolph or Thomas Jefferson, or to a majority of the United States Senate, the right to make a political revolution by annexing a foreign State. Jefferson agreed with Griswold that they had not; if they had, “then we have no Constitution” was his comment. Yet not a voice was raised in the Administration party against Randolph’s views. After one day’s debate, ninety Republicans supported Randolph with their votes, and twenty-five Federalists alone protested. Of these twenty-five, not less than seventeen were from New England. A week afterward, Nov. 2, 1803, the Senate took up the subject. After several speeches had been made without touching deeply the constitutional difficulty, Senator Pickering of Massachusetts took the floor, and in a few words stated the extreme New England doctrine. Like Griswold and Gouverneur Morris, he affirmed the right of conquest or of purchase, and the right to govern the territory so acquired as a dependent province; but neither the President nor Congress could incorporate this territory in the Union, nor could the incorporation lawfully be effected even by an ordinary amendment to the Constitution. “I believe the assent of each individual State to be necessary for the admission of a foreign country as an associate in the Union, in like manner as in a commercial house the consent of each member would be necessary to admit a new partner into the company.” With his usual skill in saying what was calculated to annoy,--a skill in which he had no superior,--he struck one truth which no other eyes would see. “I believe that this whole transaction has been purposely wrapped in obscurity by the French government. The boundary of Louisiana, for instance, on the side of Florida is in the treaty really unintelligible; and yet nothing was more easy to define.”