Thomas Cushing of Salem, Mass., informed his congressman of disunion sentiments in the North. Few Americans had the perspective of John Adams, who feared that some of his "old friends in Virginia and Massachusetts hold not in horror as much as I do a division of this Continent into two or three nations and have not an equal dread of civil war." (to Stephen Higginson, March 14, 1790, Massachusetts Historical Society)
 

Text transcript of the letter.