The first conquest of the Republicans was that of Rhode Island in the first year of the new Administration. The President was deeply gratified by what he called "the regeneration of Rhode Island," interpreting the event as "the beginning of that resurrection of the genuine spirit of New England." Vermont, he prophesied, would next emerge from under the yoke of the Federalist hierarchy; and the fall election verified his prediction. Elsewhere the contest was more stubborn and prolonged, but the Federalists noted with alarm that the Republican vote was increasing everywhere. By the end of Jefferson's first term, the number of Republican voters in New England very nearly equaled that of their opponents. The ranks of the Republican party were recruited largely from the rural districts, where hostility to the mercantile and moneyed classes was most bitter. It was the old alignment of the men of little or no personal property against the prosperous and well-to-do classes. From this point of view the Republican movement was an attack upon the privileged orders, an attempt to break down the social hierarchy of New England. Closely connected with the political movement was also the struggle of the Baptists and the Methodists to secure religious freedom in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The dissenters looked to Jefferson as their natural leader; and the bitter opposition of the Congregational clergy to the spread of democracy was due to their persistent, and no doubt sincere, belief that dissent and democracy were manifestations of the same radical and destructive spirit. The rising tide of Republicanism and the increasing popularity of the Administration cast the Federalist leaders into the deepest gloom. The annexation of Louisiana was regarded as a mortal blow, since it imperiled the ascendency of New England in the Union, and New England was the stronghold of Federalism. At the beginning of the year 1804, most of the Federalist members of Congress from New England were agreed in thinking that a crisis was approaching. Democracy was about to triumph over the forces of law and order. The only question was how to save their section, where the ravages of Jacobinism could yet be stayed. There was but one answer, from the point of view of Senator Timothy Pickering. The people of the Eastern States could not reconcile their habits, views, and interests with those of the South and West: therefore, let them withdraw from the Union and form a Northern Confederation. Plumer, of New Hampshire, and Tracy and Griswold, of Connecticut, were in hearty agreement with this view. Pickering then put his project before the members of the coterie of Federalists in Massachusetts, which was generally known as the "Essex Junto." As the confederacy shaped itself in Pickering's imagination, it would of necessity include New York, which would act as a barrier to the insidious inroads of Southern Jacobinism; but Massachusetts should initiate the movement.