The succeeding years of disunion and misrule under the Danes explain the belated affection with which his countrymen came to regard him.
The legislatures of Massachusetts and Connecticut approved of these proposed amendments and sent commissioners to Washington to urge their adoption, but before their arrival the war had closed, and not only did the amendments fail to receive the approval of any other state, but the legislatures of nine states expressed their disapproval of the Hartford Convention itself, some charging it with sowing "seeds of dissension and disunion."
It might unite the different parties in Great Britain against us; and it might create disunion among ourselves.
So long as he held aloof from Ledru-Rollin and the more radical of his colleagues, the disunion resulting weakened the government; as soon as he effected an approximation to them the middle classes fell off from him.
The end of the war in 1902 showed the value of his persistency throughout the years of Liberal unpopularity and disunion.