For instance, New England opposed the embargo and the retaliatory measures of Mr. Jefferson’s administration, which destroyed her splendid carrying trade, and bore distress to hundreds of thousands of her people. She opposed the War of 1812 because it seemed to her inimical to her interests, but regardless of protests and cries the embargo was laid on her ports and shipping, the War against Great Britain was declared. She was forced to dance, volens-nolens, to the rag-time music of her Southern rival. She danced in both instances while discontent grew apace in her hot, surcharged heart. She did not disguise the ugly fact that she was sick of her bargain under the Constitution—was discontented almost to disaffection with Southern domination in the Union. Out of this widespread discontent and incipient disaffection sprang the Hartford Convention to voice this growing Anti-Southern sentiment, and to cast about for a remedy for what was rightly deemed bad political conditions. The great question with which this celebrated convention grappled was, in fact, the undue and disproportionate power wielded by the slave oligarchy in national affairs, and how best to impose a check upon its further growth. It could think apparently of but one remedial measure to relieve the situation, and that was the imposition of a check on any further increase in the then existing number of states. But while the resolution which embodied this rather doubtful remedy referred to states in general, it was intended when read between the lines, to refer to slave states in particular. That was the first blow aimed by the industrial democracy of the North at this aristocratic feature of the National Constitution, namely: the right to count five slaves as three freemen in the apportionment of representatives among the states. It was felt at the time and much more strongly and generally afterward, that this three-fifths slave representation clause which enabled a small minority of the people of the South to wield the political power of that section, and in any controverted question between the sections to neutralize the free-will of every three freemen by the dummy-will of every five slaves, was an unjust and dangerous advantage possessed by the slave oligarchy over its sectional rival, the free democracy of the North.