Secret Meetings
In all, twenty-six delegates attended the secret meetings. No records of the proceedings were kept, and meetings continued through January 5, 1815. After choosing George Cabot as president, and Theodore Dwight as secretary, the present convention remained in closed session for three continuous weeks. Surviving letters of contemporaries show that representative Federalists labored with these delegates to procure the secession of New England. Assembling amid rumors of treason and the execration of all the country west of the Hudson, its members were watched by an army officer who had been conveniently stationed in the vicinity. Cabot's journal of its proceedings, when it was eventually opened, was a meager sketch of formal proceedings; he made no record of yeas and nays, stated none of the amendments offered to the various reports, and neglected to attach the name of authors to propositions. It is impossible to ascertain the speeches or votes of individual delegates.
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—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)